How can a one page checkout be "so convoluted"?

8/09/2009 at 00:26

The Times has taken eBay disposing of Skype as an opportunity to show how out of touch they are with the ins and outs of eBay buying and selling.

They kick off with the complaint that eBay and PayPal “are semi-autonomous, making selling and receiving payment, or buying and sending payment, a process so convoluted that you worry for your sanity”.

You have to wonder if the writer has actually made a purchase on eBay recently – it’s never been easier to pay via PayPal with the one page on-eBay PayPal checkout. Just to make sure I wasn’t mistaken I purchased a DVD and it really is a one page payment with no visit to PayPal’s website required.

The article moves on to point out that buyers often prefer branded goods at a fixed price and then slating eBay for delivering exactly that. They suggest eBay should be “launching the kind of niche auction websites run by competitors, many of which now do a better job than eBay”.

Of course any serious seller is well aware that eBay’s competitors may be great for listing items but in the main don’t actually have any buyers. Truth be told most the the competition wouldn’t have many listings on their sites if they hadn’t created import tools from eBay, and certainly not if sellers actually had to pay insertion fees.

The article might be great for generating traffic for The Times, but next time doing their homework and being current with how eBay works might not be a bad place to start.