ebay iPhone buy-it-now issue

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.