Topic: My Worst Buying Experience

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Posted at November 2, 2004, 3:41 pm:

I've been buying and selling on Ebay since 1999, and I've never spent so much time and effort to buy a $2 item as I did last night.

About 99.9% of the time I'm a seller, but every so often I buy something. Last night it was a $2 pair of paintball gloves. I won the auction and was getting ready to pay for it when I got several emails.

First one explained that I had to use this mandatory checkout procedure or "my payment would not processed". I wondered...so what "would" happen to my payment??

Second one explained again that I MUST use the Marketworks checkout. It also said I need to include my Marketworks Order Number or "it can take an additional 2 weeks to process my order". Wow...i better write down this number.

I click on the link in the email and it takes me to Marketworks and wants to know the auction #, which I mistype twice. I also get 2 IE security warnings.

I give up and head over to the Auction page. Marketworks is integrated with Ebay so selecting "checkout" takes you to Marketworks, followed by more IE security errors. Here's the part that bugs me. With all this integration, all it "passes" to Marketworks is the auction ID. It has no idea who I am at all, and asks me for my ebay email address.

It thinks about this for about 2 minutes, generates an IE security error, and continues.

It then takes me to a full screen page asking everything about me. Who I am, where I live, my phone number. Not a single piece of information has been accessed from my Ebay info. Even my Norton auto form filler doesn't work. I have to type it all in manually - something I've never done for an auction before. I enter it, and that's followed by 2 IE security errors.

Now it asks me how I want to pay. I choose paypal. It reminds me that this seller only accepts paypal from verified addresses, and I had better of entered the same address as I have on file on Paypal. Course, if this program was at all sophisticated, it would have accessed my paypal address after I paid and saved us both a lot of stress. There's also no way I see to go back and change that info anyway, so I cross my fingers and move on after clearing several more security errors.

I am actually relieved to see paypal, who knows who I am, and only requires me to answer 1 question before returning me to Marketworks. There I have my Order Complete screen, with a little disclaimer from my seller stating that 'Prices are subject to change without notice. Seller is not responsible for mistakes in prices. All sales subject to stock on hand." So I guess I had better hope the gloves really are only $2, assuming he actually has any to sell me.

All in all, the single worst buyer experience I've ever had online. Tedious, time-consuming, and really stressful (at least one threat per screen). As a seller, the second you start thinking of your customers in some adversarial way, it's best to go try making money somewhere else.

I guess this is why they generate almost 100 negatives a month.

Rich

Original of the message was taken from http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/

Replies:

I ordered some LP record sleeves from Brasspack 2 weeks ago and they h...

Someone might read carefully through the checkout process on Marketwor...

I just had to mention this.

now that the management service has your information, it may be easier...

-+The Ebay/Paypal process is extremely efficient and fast.


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