Are we the only ones in the world affected?
My wife was on her iPhone using the ebay app, scrolling through a listing, and all of a sudden she was told she had won the item via buy-it-now.
She did not see any buy-it-now confirmation request either.
It just happened.
The iPhone's design inherently means that scrolling requires touching parts of the page you are scrolling through, and from time to time this must inevitably mean the iPhone mistakes an attempted scroll for a click.
So designing an iPhone app in such manner that an attempted scroll can instantly become a multi-hundred-dollar buying commitment, is ridiculous.
I also suggest it is illegal - that any attempt to enforce the purchase at law would be void, due to the absence of a contract. (There was clearly no intention to enter into a contract, nor to represent an intention to enter into a contract - it was a case of poor app design.)
Now, I don't know ('coz I always use ebay in a browser on a larger computer), but it might be that ebay will turn around and claim that they always present a confirmation request for buy-it-now on the iPhone. For sure I cannot find any option to enable or disable such confirmations in the app's settings (nor even in my account settings when I log in using a browser - but the account settings are not very intuitive to me, so there is a chance I missed the relevant setting).
But if the ebay app DID present a confirmation request, it was deemed accepted and dismissed so quickly - probably in the same swipe that triggered the "buy it now" button in the first place - that my wife saw nothing.
One moment scrolling.
The next moment on the hook for hundreds of dollars for a product she was just investigating.
If ebay does not ask for confirmations for "buy it now" on the iPhone, then they are negligent.
If ebay DOES ask for confirmations for "buy it now" on the iPhone, then they are negligent once again by implementing the confirmation step in such manner as it can be so easily dismissed without even being seen. They should e.g. have it appear for at least a second with buttons disabled before enabling the buttons.
But in my attempts to find others with the same problem, and how they resolved it, my Google searching turned up nada, zip, zero. Are we the only people on the planet who have hit this snag?
I Googled for things like "ebay iPhone buy-it-now accident", "ebay buy-it-now mistake", and other combinations of words, but no, I'm not finding anyone reporting this particular problem. And of course the ebay help was useless on the topic.
Come to think of it, ebay and PayPal are bedfellows, and we had a run in with PayPal's incompetence a few years ago - still partially unresolved despite PayPal's repeated claims that they have completely remedied the problem.
So I guess it shouldn't surprise me at all if ebay too proves worse than useless in resolving the issue.
There is an ebay help article on canceling a sale for sellers who find themselves unable to complete the transaction, but nothing it seems for buyers.
And no mention of the possibility of unintentional buy-it-now activation, anywhere in the help (yet surely that must frequently occur).
And the "dispute resolution center" gives no useful options at least for the time being - it says we must wait 10 days before even contacting the dispute resolution center!
We've contacted the seller, explained the situation, and I even offered to cover his lost listing fees.
So now we're in a situation where, depending on the good graces of the seller, we might :
a) end up with merely a truckload of wasted time. Yeah, thanks ebay for facilitating that.
or
b) end up with even a bit more wasted time trying to pay whatever few dollars it turns out to be in compensation (when we were not at fault in the first place) to the seller who is as much a victim in the circumstances as we are - but we don't want ebay's negligence to spiral on and affect others, so we're willing to cover the lost listing fees, even though it is ebay's fault.
or
c) end up with a strong negative feedback with no good opportunity to defend ourselves (so much for due process) when we do very few ebay transactions, have fabulous feedback so far, and thus one strong negative would be a substantial (and unwarranted) mar on our ebay reputation.
So, we'll see how it turns out, but based on my interactions with PayPal, I'm doubting ebay will have any conscience in this regard.
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7 comments:
My message to the seller (abbreviated to fit in the ebay message length limit) :
G'day (seller's name removed),
I'm terribly sorry, but somehow the ebay iPhone app seems to make it possible to "buy it now" just by scrolling through the page, if your finger happens to hit the "buy it now" button whilst scrolling.
My wife was on her iPhone logged into my ebay account, and was horrified when suddenly the app told her she had purchased something.
She did not click the "buy it now" button (except obviously that she was scrolling and thus was touching random parts of the page to perform the scrolling).
She did not receive any confirmation message asking whether she is sure - yet I am a cautious person and always leave confirmations enabled.
I do not know what went wrong with the iPhone app, but I do know that my wife did not purchase the item, and had not made any buying decisions, and reported to me in horror what happened as soon as it happened, and we've been trying since to find a way to undo the problem.
If you've lost listing fees, we can cover them.
Thanks 4 undrstnding
And here is my email to ebay :
Device: iPhone (iPhone2.1)
OS: 3.1.3
App version: 1.6.0
UserID: (removed for blog post purposes)
eBay site: Australia (15)
Listing id : 270557695844
G'day ebay,
My wife is a frequent user of the ebay iPhone app. The app on her iPhone is connected to my ebay account.
Just about 15 minutes ago, she was scrolling through a listing on ebay, and then reported to me in horror that the ebay app on her iPhone now says she won the item (via buy-it-now it seems).
She was just scrolling.
She never saw any confirmation message asking whether or not she is sure she wants to buy it now.
If there is any option to disable a buy-it-now confirmation, I do not recall ever having disabled that confirmation in my account settings, and logging in to my account on a computer just now, I can't find any option to disable the buy-it-now confirmation step.
I can understand that iPhones might sometimes have difficulty distinguishing between a click-and-drag (to scroll) vs a simple click, but if that is your defence for my wife having "bought it now" when she was just scrolling, then how do you defend the absence of a confirmation page?
I have spent my time since then searching your site and searching the internet to find out how to resolve such issues, to no avail.
The listing id in question is 270557695844.
It is my belief that :
1) There should not have been any possibility of a scroll being mistaken for a click in the first place - but given that this is to some extent an inherent limitation of the iPhone...
2) She should have been presented with an "are you sure you want to buy it now?" message (she did not see any such message)
3) And any such confirmation request should have been on screen for at least a second before the "yes" and "no" buttons became active, and any such confirmation request should ignore any finger gesture currently in operation, so that there is no possibility that the same attempted scroll that incorrectly triggered the "buy it now" button in the first place would simultaneously dismiss the confirmation message sight unseen.
Please delete this purchase and reverse any fees to the seller.
And please log a high priority issue for your iPhone development team to review the current "buy it now" iPhone process and ensure it cannot under any circumstances be activated by simply scrolling through a page, as happened on this occasion.
Regards,
(my signature)
UPDATE : ebay's response was useless as predicted.
It came through within minutes, and looked like an automated response based on keyword analysis of my email :
"Unfortunately, after the Buy It Now feature is used, there's no way to retract your bid. Please contact the seller of the item directly."
In other words, ebay has successfully shielded themselves from some valid criticisms of the design of their iPhone app.
And they have completely avoided even contemplating the legal ramifications of the fact that we did not place a bid.
Sure there's no way to "retract your bid", but when it was poor software design, not our usage of the system, that caused the bid, and when it could have happened to literally ANYONE using the ebay iPhone app linked to their ebay account, then clearly no bid was placed.
Software failure = provider's responsibility, not a legal contract.
It would be like walking past a shop window, and whilst there, looking in and seeing a sign that says "walking past this shop is entering into a contract to buy our products". Um - no.
If a reasonable adult was participating in an action which they reasonably (and rightly) believed to be freely available to the general public, and then that action is deemed by another party as entering a contract, when in fact the unwitting party had no knowledge of the terms of the contract (in our case, the terms of the contract being "you can randomly be forced to purchase items just by viewing them on your iPhone"), then there is no contract at all.
UPDATE : The seller kindly canceled the transaction on their end, which also reversed the eBay fee.
What this means is that eBay itself remains as ignorant as ever that their software has a bug - a serious bug. Shame.
So it will affect someone else at some time.
I had the *exact* same thing happen to me. Unfortunately, my seller is not so understanding and is trying to force me to pay the $700ish dollars for the transaction to avoid a negative strike. eBay needs to have a serious look at this!
I just had this happen over the weekend. The seller said I might have to pay for the listing fee if he can't cancel. Which is far better than paying the $350.00 for the item.
I still am not quite sure what happened. Almost fell on the floor when I received the invoice from EBay.
Thanks for documenting this on the web.
The same thing just happened to me! Took me ages to find this article! I was beginning to think I was the only one and possibly insane! Haven't heard from the seller yet but I'm not an eBay novice and this is just ridic...I'm not paying $200 not to get a strike against me...
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