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Comments: 362 +- Technology: eBay Denies New Design Is Broken, Blames Users on Saturday September 12, @09:44PM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Saturday September 12, @09:44PM
from the just-test-the-darn-thing dept.
from the just-test-the-darn-thing dept.
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krick-zero writes "eBay recently rolled out a new page design. Many eBay sellers are reporting issues with missing description text, resulting in lost sales. Buyers are reporting the same intermittent issue, on multiple platforms, with multiple browsers. After complaining to eBay customer service, one user got this response: 'I have reviewed several of your listings using my computer and had several of my coworkers view your listings as well and we are seeing the complete listings. Many times when buyers are not able to see the whole description or just bits and pieces it is due to browser issues they are having. A lot of times if they simply clear out their cache and cookies or change browsers (i.e. change from Internet explorer to Firefox or vice versa) they no longer have this problem.'"
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Of course they say that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Of course they say that (Score:5, Insightful)
Sounds like a lousy time for selling, but a great time for BARGAINS. If half the buyers can't access the new pages then that's half as much competition on the bidding.
Parent
I get that a lot with hotmail (Score:4, Insightful)
It seems to have a lot to do with the way they name their Javascripts and stuff. But once I clear cache and cookies, it goes away for a few weeks or a few months. That's probably when MS changes things again. This doesn't happen on most sites... seems most that it happens on ones that are, I am guessing, breaking some sort of rule.
I've had similar problems (Score:5, Interesting)
I've had similar problems and it always comes back to the javascript they are using. If I change the way the JS is allowed via AdBlock or NoScript, things start working... if I keep it at my normal settings, the descriptions disappear.
Re:I've had similar problems (Score:4, Interesting)
NoScript? I'll laugh if it turns out this problem is caused by NoScript or ad blockers. First rule of supporting a complex website - tell users to switch these tools off, clear their cache, cookies and try again (also, privacy proxies/porn filters)
No competent computer user likes to be told to do this routine sort of thing, but the unhappy fact is that there are a lot of people out there that are somewhere between total n00b and web expert, who use tools that screw around with website contents in flight and then can't figure out that it breaks things. I've had to clean up NoScript created messes before. The number of support complaints it created was amazing.
Parent
Sorry, this is eBay's fault. (Score:5, Informative)
Expecting users to switch browsers or clear cache to see page text is absurd.
If users can't see description text, they have a bug in their application.
By the way. I'm not at all pleased with the new eBay design.
They think they're being all fancy, cute, and Web 2.0-like i'm sure.
And in the process... forgetting about the quality of the user experience and ease of use (which includes not having to switch browsers, clear cache, cookies, re-login, and other voodoo "self help" techniques), which basically are hallmarks of a low-quality, poorly done, poorly tested web site.
And straight up, that sucks, and shows unprofessional behavior on eBay's part IMO.
It's not the least bit hard to hire and train CSRs who won't blame the user for everything, and who'll actually help determine what's going wrong, and get the user in touch with someone to report the bugs....
Blame the user, or their choice of browser is the absolute worst thing they could possibly do. In a decade when standards-based is the norm, and REAL web-sites are tested and qualified with the major browsers, including IE7, IE8, Firefox, Safari, Opera, etc, and any malfunction of the site is the site's problem, not just the complaining users' problem!
Re:Sorry, this is eBay's fault. (Score:5, Interesting)
As a occasional eBay user that posted an item last weekend, I can definitely say eBay is having problems.
1) Late last night, my listing and many others kept coming up as not being available.
2) Sometimes the description for a listing is shrunk down to half a visible line of text.
3) Sometimes the description for a listing is nothing empty space where you scroll down for three or four 'pages' only to find the eBay footer with nothing else, no place a bid button or whatever is usually at the bottom of a listing.
I've seen this on Firefox 3.5.2 and 3.5.3 after clearing all cache, cookies, whatever, then logging straight back into eBay.
IMO the eBay UI continues to suck even more. I can't believe no one has built anything to compete with them.
Though, the great deals from Hong Kong and China on various bits and bobs are definitely worth it. $5 including shipping for something that sells locally for $35 is worth the two week wait. $85 for an ARM9 development [ebay.com] platform with LCD touch screen - gimme!
Parent
Re:Sorry, this is eBay's fault. (Score:5, Funny)
Hey Ebay, I just fixed the cache clearing problem, can I get paid now?
Parent
Re:Sorry, this is eBay's fault. (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Sorry, this is eBay's fault. (Score:4, Funny)
HTTP in fact.
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bad plan (Score:5, Insightful)
ONe of the worst things that you can do as a company is blame the user/customer... that is unless their plan is to assume that their users are idiots and therefore wouldn't go elsewhere or they haven't thought this out at all.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
ONe of the worst things that you can do as a company is blame the user/customer.
Really? It seems to work quite well for Microsoft. :)
Nice comparison there... (Score:4, Insightful)
Interesting how in the before/after diagram, they zoomed out the old item page to make it look less clear. Also, they chose a crappier picture (and an entirely different product).
This is the kind of sloppiness/deviousness I expect fat-burning pill advertisements, not a big corporation like eBay. They should have shown the same product at the same resolution so people could objectively see the differences.
More business for Craigslist!!! (Score:5, Informative)
Excessive use of fragile and unreliable, non-standards-compliant Javascript? Check.
Excessive use of meaningless graphics, slowing browsing and usability but reducing the number of successful page changes by clients? Check.
Obvious uselessness for those with visual problems? Check.
Unnecessary re-arrangement of straightforward design to force a "new paradigm" as part of some advertising exec's "new vision"? Check.
No improvement in user experience or actual usable features added? Check.
Disable current generation of sniping tools, forcing them to hire engineers for at least 30 minutes work to update their clients? Check.
Driving people to the plain-text, plain-language, you can even rent cheap hookers there traffic of Craigslist? Check.
Javascript's the problem, not the solution (Score:5, Insightful)
"No shit, Sherlock", but eBay's cure was worse than the disease.
With the "new hotness", I now have pictures that obscure the auction listings when I'm scrolling through items because Javashit thinks I'm hovering over the image (bad! stop doing that! I didn't ask you to do that!). If I find an item of interest and want to look at the pictures, I get a pop-up window (WTF?) with a slide-show-like sidebar (worse!), and since the whole shebang requires Javashit to display anything, and that very same script denies the ability to right-click-saveAs the image, it's now considerably more difficult to actually compare the image of a product with a reference image.
For that matter, it's now practically impossible to compare two images of the same item with each other. When eBay used URLs that pointed to .JPGs, you could middle-click them to pop the image open in a new tab for viewing or saving. With the "new hotness", you're middle-clicking javascript:void(), and nothing happens.
None of which addresses the root cause of the problem: 99% of the time, it's a crappy cell phone picture taken at 640x480, or generic clipart from the item's manufacturer, where you're lucky if it's 320x200. That's not eBay's fault, that's the sellers' fault.
If you want to solve the problems with images, stop hiding them behind Javascript-reliant slide-shows. Less Web 2.0 crap, more usability testing. Fucking web designers. It's no longer an auction listing site, it's a web technology demo. Hey, web designers, maybe if you stopped this continual race of trying to keep your resumes well-padded and buzzword-compliant at the expense of end-user usability, your customers might not leave you in bewilderment and disgust, and you might not need to hand your resumes out as often.
Sounds familiar (Score:3, Funny)
This can't be ebay's falt.... (Score:5, Funny)
This doesn't surprise me at all... (Score:5, Interesting)
I went to a presentation a few years ago by a pair of eBay's senior engineers where they were discussing their architecture and technology. They explained their Java-on-Windows two-tier architecture (web front-ends which are handling all of the business logic, database backends, little-to-no caching, etc). They explained how they have pools of servers for handling different page types (i.e. search vs. gateway vs. help, etc) and how they sometimes have brownouts in some pools because they mis-predicted the number of servers they needed in that pool.
During the Q&A, somebody asked them, "what's the biggest challenge that you guys face?"; the response was "fitting enough information in the browser's cookie... 4k really isn't enough information for us". A follow-up question was asked about why they didn't just use a session-id key and store as much data as they want in a database or cache, etc. They basically admitted that they didn't have the technical strength to build something like that at their scale.
I asked them why they allow users to post JavaScript in their posts as it basically turns all of eBay into a cross-site scripting bug. I know for a fact that sellers have been able to include JS in their posts which can record the max-bid of the buyer. Sure, it's against the TOS, but only if they catch it. Their response was that it's what their customers (read sellers) want.
The point I'm getting to is that eBay, despite having one of the most popular websites in the world employs some bass-ackward technical solutions and business policies. What's reported in this doesn't surprise me at all.
Re:This doesn't surprise me at all... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm not surprised. The good engineers left eBay a long, long time ago. I've seen so many eBay resumes and bios over the last few years, and nearly all of them were junk. The whole organization is so bloated, no one sees more than a small part of the operation, and their hires don't really require more than basic knowledge of java and web applications.
In previous years, you'd see a fair amount of coders with decent university degrees end up at eBay, but in the last 5 years, you see people even less impressive than Oracle hires (if that's possible). All the flotsam and jetsam of schools you've never heard of from countries all over the far side of the world, with long histories of short-duration jobs.
Around 2004-5, Yahoo hired many of their best people. More often than not, if you see a resume/bio that says someone worked at eBay for a few years, and then suddenly became a "Sr Eng Mgr" at Yahoo in those years, it means that they were above average coders whom Yahoo paid a lot to jump ship. Because of Yahoo salary guidelines, they had to give them fancy 2nd-tier management titles in order to pay them more than a certain amount.
Probably more than you wanted to know, but my opinion is that eBay staff jumped the technological shark a long time agao.
Parent
Same story here... (Score:3, Informative)
Posting AC to protect the innocent...
A few years ago my company's software (Windows/.NET-based) was in use by eBay for some functionality. They had some dedicated Windows boxes set up to run it. One time they had a problem with it, and getting even basic diagnostic information out them was impossible (even though they were escalating it as some big emergency).
The relationship ended after they decided they wanted to re-architect things and move our stuff closer to their back end. I was on the conference
Re:This doesn't surprise me at all... (Score:4, Insightful)
Unless you design things very carefully (and the larger the site the more carefully this stuff has to be designed), creating server sessions can mean exposing your users to single points of failure. It can also mean subjecting users to bad user experiences when their session times out.
Storing sessions in memory cached in a single server, with a router to get you to the right server, backed by a clustered database seems like a good solution, but is complex and can have performance problems. Which seems to be what happened to Google. Also remember that cache layers are great for reading, but problematic in a situation with lots of writing (for example, Ebay).
Parent
Does it matter whose fault it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're a company selling something - a product or service - it's up to you to make it simple to use for the people that are trying to use it (or at least, the people in your target market that are trying to use it), or lose their business. It doesn't really matter if they're doing it wrong. If they come to your site with the same browser and system they have always used and suddenly it doesn't work, well then the fact that it's the browser that's implementing something wrong doesn't matter to them because the site worked well before. Maybe it is. Maybe there's a minor thing the site implements wrong.
I look at this and feel like this is simply a classic case where you have a team of developers that are doing the website at eBay, or any major corporation, and they like having jobs. So at some moment in time there is a necessary site redesign, and they spend months, perhaps years, working on it. Then the site goes live, they spend the next few months to work out the bugs, and there's the question "OK, so, what do we do now?"
So the obvious question is "We start work on the NEXT-NEXT generation website! We'll start on it right away!" And this cycles over and over, because if you say to management "You know what? The website we have is pretty damn good, functional, and we've worked most of the bugs out - there's no need to upgrade", the next thing to say is "So we don't need a gigantic web development team, right?"
This is the only reason I can think of for some of the upgrades I've seen at major websites the past year or so - websites that were previously functional, easy to use, fast, etc. and are now buggy, overladen with crap, etc.
Re:Does it matter whose fault it is? (Score:5, Insightful)
"This is the only reason I can think of for some of the upgrades I've seen at major websites the past year or so - websites that were previously functional, easy to use, fast, etc. and are now buggy, overladen with crap, etc."
Here's looking at you, /.
Parent
Ebay SCAM (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Ebay SCAM (Score:4, Interesting)
Two negative feedbacks? That doesn't sound like much. I've bought from sellers with more negative feedback than that, like this person: http://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=omar.m786&ftab=AllFeedback [ebay.co.uk]
Makes your story seem fishy.
Parent
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem here is there are open standards for web sites, published by the W3C. HTML4, CSS, DOM.
If eBay would follow the standards and perform some basic testing on the common browsers which all happen to be easily available for testing, they could assure the site would work for everyone.
They're going beyond the standards and trying to do some browser-specific scripting no doubt, or utilizing features that are buggy in some browsers and beyond the basic standard.
All this to try and be cute. And make their pages feel more dynamic.
If they weren't doing this, nobody would be complaining, noone's experience or ability to use the site for it's intended purpose would be getting degraded.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Of course they would do.
If i were a tape player manufacturer, i would try to "enhance" the features by offering non-standard features: like LP recording (twice the capacity at half the speed, thus making it unplayable on any other system), etc.
The fact is that punishment is absent when you don't follow standards.
If Sony made a walkman that didn't hold a Tape, it can't advertise it could hold a Tape(false adverts) and the market would instantly punish it for it.
How do you punish a monopoly like eBay?
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps it's my geeky-nerdiness, but "function first, flash second. if flash compromises function, remove the flash."
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:5, Insightful)
I would agree with that.
But a lot of people seem to prefer keeping the flash, even if it compromises function a bit.
The Google home page design philosophy seems to be the exception to the rule, most businesses follow the Yahoo philosophy, meaning more flash = better, sometimes even better than working 100% correctly.
Wanting things to just work and be simple, fast, and efficient as possible seems to be a totally nerdy/geeky thing.
Most of the marketing and business people who make actual decisions seem to think flashiness is really really important, even if it means the site's coding will be much more complex, a good bit slower/less efficient, more memory hungry, and have some bugs.
Parent
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:4, Insightful)
Yup. Slashcode is an excellent example of this. [sigh]
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Re:Lack of standards. (Score:4, Informative)
Most of the time, form and function can co-exist very well. It's just that eBay's developers are too lazy/incompetent to do it right, like the majority of web designers/developers.
It never ceases to amaze me how many "professional" web developers can't even write a basic HTML and CSS page without a dozen+ errors and sheer semantic idiocy (like using tables for layout).
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Re:Lack of standards. (Score:5, Interesting)
While true, you can't just blame the web developers. I've had at least 10 years of experience in web development, starting with mostly HTML and experimenting with CSS when it was just hitting the web, but experience doesn't count for much in the industry. So, I had some classes at a state university that didn't treat web design as a profession until recently, and transferred a couple years ago to a technical institute that does provide a BA in web design.
I'm at the end of my scholastic career, but I can assure you that despite what has been taught at my school, about 5% of the people in the web design curriculum will actually be prepared based on what they learned at this school, and most likely they had prior experience in web design (like me). We learned Flash and the other Adobe apps, some (and I mean SOME) HTML, a touch of CSS and thats about it. Javascript? Nope. W3C standards? They don't mention them. Setting up and / or using a web server? HA! Not a chance.
It's sad, but its true - creating a usable Internet depends on education, and we can't depend on people to learn that themselves - some like myself have, but many more take the route that "if I take it in a class I'll know everything I need to know," and these people will be the majority of developers working at eBay and other web sites.
That scares me.
Parent
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:4, Insightful)
That scares me.
Hmm. I have a different opinion.
a technical institute that does provide a BA in web design.
That scares me.
Parent
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is not a lack of standards. The problem is failing to follow standards.
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:5, Informative)
>>>Because [1970s] Open Standards were harsh. Like the standards for an audio tape or even an audio CD.
You wrote a nice soliloquy but it's based on a false premise. The examples you list were Not standards. Audio tapes and CDs were *proprietary* formats owned by Philips and Sony/Philips respectively. And in the 1970s there was a giant war between 8-track and compact cassette. Also Betamax and VHS. Also 3" versus 3.2" versus 3.5" floppies.
You are seeing in the golden haze of nostalgia a time period when "everything just worked" but that never existed. Format wars and differing formats have always been a problem. (Yes even the inventor of the phonograph Edison had to deal with rival formats.)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Obviously, you have never used a hammer seriously. I have. I am very picky about my hammers. What many slashdotters might call a "hammer", I would probably throw into the trash. I mean that very seriously - I have thrown hammers into the trash, because they were unfit for any serious use.
Junk aside - for what purpose do you need a hammer? I own about 15 different hammers, but I'll be damned if you'll get a ball-peen hammer to drive finishing nails with, or a chipping hammer to drive 16D nails with.
The
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
what about setting cache rules on those files. its been some time since i last really developed a web site as i cheat now and use drupal but i remember there being a tag that would tell the browser how long a page could be cached for if at all. By your logic instead of a programming managing its memory you think the user should just have to reboot the computer when the memory is full.
When you provide a service to a customer and they are complaining about something not working and you test and test and it wo
Re:Lack of standards. (Score:5, Informative)
Yep:
- Floppies ranged in size from 8 inch to 5 inch to 3.5 inch to 3 inch
- Computers were available from Atari, Apple, Commodore, Texas Instruments and not compatible with one another
- Movies might be sold on videotape, or videorecord, or laserdisc, or film
- Music might be sold on records, or 45s, or 78s, or compact cassettes, or 8-tracks
- Game systems were Odyssey, Atari,Intellivision, Magnavox
- VCRs could be either VHS or Betamax or Umatic
Any view that the 70s were somehow free of format problems is merely nostalgia. There were plenty of of problems with formats.
Parent
Re:broken by design (Score:5, Funny)
broken by design
No, people need to adapt to the technology. As technology gets better and smarter, people need to change their way of thinking and become better and smarter themselves in order to use this much more complicated technology. The Chinese had the write philosophy by sculpting the foot [wikipedia.org] to fit the shoe.
Don't argue with customer service. There's a saying in the industry; "Customer service is always right". Don't argue with the people who are paid to help you. Listen to your superiors and clear your cache instead of complaining, because complainers generally tend to get hung-up on and ignored.
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Re:broken by design (Score:5, Insightful)
problem is, eBay has critical mass. If you're a seller, you want to sell on the site people are going to buy, and that's eBay. If you're a buyer, you want to visit a site with lots of items for sale, or where there's lots of sellers. Again, eBay. If you sell on a smaller site, you either won't sell the item, have to discount it to get any bids, or hope that single bid will attract others. If you buy, the smaller sites may or may not have the item you want, so either you wait forever for it, or have to settle for whatever you find with little choice.
eBay has been doing a ton of crap the past 10 years, and people swear to never use eBay again. Yet eBay keeps growing. Either the negative press is having no effect, or the sellers who leave reluctantly come back. Face it, look at what changes have happened - increased transaction and listing fees, use of Paypal, feedback changes, etc. But eBay gets away with it because they can - the alternatives may be better for everyone, but unable to attract the critical mass to be sustainable, they fade out. There are few auction sites online that everyone knows about, so if you're looking for something, it's eBay.
I will admit I liked their old design better - it loaded faster for me and was snappier and pages were easier to use. I find the new pages awful and the new site worse. Of course, people are only complaining now because eBay just changed ebay.com - these new page layouts have been present on all the international sites for months or even years now.
What I don't understand is why people go onto eBay and buy stuff you can buy online at Amazon or retail, often for the same price or less.
Parent
Re:broken by design (Score:4, Insightful)
Not exactly. They are growing but mostly due to foreign (often Chinese) vendors who can sell direct rather than through e.g. Walmart. And they now try to attract big vendors in US (like GM) so they are growing. But the more they try to be like Amazon the more they open themselves up to competition. One of those days it will come back to haunt them but not yet.
Craigslist is only good for local purchases. Anything long distance is still Ebay.
Parent
Always the same story (Score:5, Insightful)
.
For those wishing to file a Class Action against eBay/PayPal:
http://www.43things.com/things/view/193389/file-a-class-action-lawsuit-against-ebay-and-paypal [43things.com]
http://www.screw-paypal.com/paypal_lawsuits.html [screw-paypal.com]
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Re:Always the same story (Score:5, Informative)
PayPal most certainly is a bank. In Europe. If you want entities that hold your money to be regulated as banks in the US as well, then tell your Congressman, not Slashdot.
Parent
Re:Always the same story (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar to the situation in Australia.
In Australia PayPal is classed as a financial institution, and is regulated under the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). When eBay tried to make PayPal the only payment method, and excluded things such as bank transfer, there was a huge uproar and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) stopped this from happening.
Personally, I'll never use eBay as they seem like a massive rip off and far too risky to actually get the goods you purchase.
Parent
Re:Always the same story (Score:5, Interesting)
With eBay it's always the sellers' fault. Power Sellers have dropped by the thousands, including myself, because of eBay policies. Starting 1.5 to 2 years ago they decided it was time to screw sellers to make buyers happy.
Hahahaha. That's hilarious. Have you ever tried to settle a dispute with a seller as a buyer? The hoops you have to jump through are in my view ridiculous ESPECIALLY when you use Paypal. I closed my Paypal account years ago after I had an issue with an item that had obviously been soiled, broken, repackaged and re-shrink-wrapped. They'd only look into it if i had an expert on the item write a letter on a company letter head, and if I'd just fax that internationally. Yeah for a $28 item which I had already sent back, I'm going to spend time and money finding an expert when there was no expertise required in working out that it was a broken, soiled, repackaged piece of crud. But technically they were honouring their obligation and protecting my purchase. Meanwhile the seller threatened to call in police and lawyers because I left feedback that he claimed was defaming him. (Paypal feedback is a joke). Then he tried to pressure me to use a mediation service that was in my opinion completely biased against me.
Ebay and Paypal make it hard for everyone but Ebay and Paypal. The blame lies elsewhere. They're not fussy about on whom. If you're a crook you can game the system as either buyer or seller. Not to mention the bargains dried up long ago. In fact I stopped buying things on Ebay years ago. I feel like every purchase is a bad gamble.
Parent
Re:Always the same story (Score:5, Interesting)
Ebay tells the seller "You're in the wrong, we're taking the money back"
Then Ebay tells the buyer "Tough. You're in the wrong. Money gone."
Profit !
Parent
Re:CraigsList Keeps It Simple. Shame Slashdot Does (Score:4, Funny)
I've never had a problem loading the site or having it work incorrectly,
Most of use don't have a problem getting slashdot to work incorrectly, it's true. However, having it work correctly would be more desirable.
Parent
Re:I had an idea for an ebay competitor (Score:4, Insightful)
You've just described Amazon Marketplace, except that it's for regular sales rather than auctions.
I've got a box of books and CDs in my basement that I've listed on Amazon over the past year and I can just forget about them until purchases come in. It's much nicer than dealing with Ebay.
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