Imaginary Landscape
RSS FeedToday, I was searching for a specific product which I found on eBay. I confess to not using eBay very often - in fact I don't remember when I last used it, but it has been many years.
And so, I proceeded through the purchase process. The site gave me the option of logging in or buying as a guest. I chose the latter, since I have no idea what my login credentials are.
I went through the purchase process and into the checkout process when the site presented me the following error message:
"This e-mail address is already registered on eBay. You may have registered on eBay with this e-mail address or if you share an e-mail account with someone, they may have registered on eBay using your shared e-mail address."
That was it. No suggestion, no path, nothing. The error message was patently unhelpful by presenting a circular argument (this e-mail is already registered because you - or someone else - has registered it).
In this case, one or two suggestions would have been really helpful. Such as:
"This e-mail address is already registered on eBay. You can try another e-mail address or click here to login. If you don't remember your username or password, you can click here to retrieve them."
I ended up abandoning the checkout path, navigating my way back to the main eBay page and hitting the forgot login link. Which led me to the reset password link.
I was able to log in and find the item again, but this time I received an "account locked due to inactivity" message. This required me to initiate a robocall to the phone number they had on file for me, which was outdated. Again I abandoned the purchase path and went to update the account information and then go back through the robocall process to retrieve a PIN to enter and complete the unlocking procedure.
Then I found the item for the third time and was able to finally purchase it.
So, that's 25 minutes I'll never get back. But it is a good example of poor user interaction. Even the big guys drop the ball.
Updated 07/14/10 @ 10:40AM CDT by brian
Categories: User Interface
