The Juicy Cow

I instinctively managed to stay away from eBay for a while. Unfortunately I had to create an account and sell stuff on it recently. Interesting experience from a Web 1.0 pioneer. Here are my notes:

1. It’s incredibly complicated: It took to Rai and myself a good 20-30 minutes to put our first item for sale. And still more than 5 minutes for following items… You have to go through a painful procedure with countless clicks, drop down list box, popups and so on…

2. It’s expensive. You might think eBay is free. Well you’re wrong, very wrong! Everything has a cost. From adding pictures to your item, listing it to different categories and just putting it for sale… And of course they take a % (5% I think) of your final price… Before we even noticed, we were already charged AU$10…

3. It’s ugly and everything but user friendly. Don’t expect anyting Web 2.0 here. Interface is messy, there is links everywhere, it’s totally confusing. Of course there is advertisement to make it even worst… The color code and font are quite clever, it’s warm (red, orange, yellow) and chaotic to create excitement and invite to more bidding and stupid buy (“Arg!!!! totto2125 think is gonna bit me on this! no way! I’m gonna bid again and spend more money to get that useless thing that I would actually have to pay if I was going to a regular shop and buying a brand new one…“).

4. It’s broken. Some Javascript functions are not working with Firefox and/or Safari. The mail box is completely buggy. The email count is random. Basic functions (mark as read, delete…) are randomly working. Not very reinsuring…

5. It’s not secure. It’s certainly is secure for eBay itself. You can be sure that they are going to make money anyway and regardless of what happens to you. Regardless of all the bell and whistles they are putting on, both buyers and sellers are not protected. There is a countless list of complaints from both side on Google…

6. They have dodgy friends. In case it wasn’t enough, make sure you’re aware that eBay will do everything it can to make sure you use another awful web service: PayPal.

Conclusion: Stay as far as possible from eBay. If you really need to sell or buy second hand stuff have a look at CraigList. Otherwise, there is room for a competitor so wait for the new kid on the block that will take the dodgy giant down.

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