I’m surprised eBay is still around

I used to be an avid eBayer — more of a seller than a buyer. It was a few years ago when selling on eBay just became a pain in the ass. In the good ol’ days, I would simply select the category in which to list my item, set a price, drop in my nifty HTML page template with my nice photos and click submit…

Then there became a lot more options. Too many options. eBay became too complicated. There were just too many mouse clicks one had to endure just to sell a single item. It might have been worth it if I were selling a big-ticket item, but if it’s a $5 item, it just wasn’t worth it anymore.

I avoid eBay at most costs whenever shopping now, too. It’s not so complicated to buy, but you have to be wary of scams. And you can’t easily find a sought after item without paying out the ass for shipping. Why would anyone pay $20 for an item that could be shipped in a regular envelope? I guess people do, so sellers take advantage.

Anyway. Elise has been shopping for a Cinderella dress for Maly’s Halloween costume. This has been a week-long endeavor. She finally won one of the auctions tonight. She called me while I was driving home this evening to share in her joy of winning her auction. She was going to pay for her purchase with PayPal. She asked me, “How do I pay with our credit card if we don’t have any money in the PayPal account.” To which I told her that our credit card should be our backup source of funds. She quickly noted that this wasn’t the case.

I came home to finish making the payment of Maly’s Halloween costume. That was a pain in the ass.

I had to go to eBay, then to Paypal, then to some new service called Auctiva, then back to PayPal to make a $20 purchase. That’s ridiculous at best. I’m a savvy guy and I was borderline confused with how many different steps I had to go through in order to purchase a costume for my daughter.

I give eBay a year.

Long live craigslist!