Posts with tag "e-commerce"

Kiss my ass Amazon

Category: Technology
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Posted 1121 days ago

One of my favorite female vocalists is Dido so when I saw this Twitter message come across my timeline I figured – cool a free copy of one of her newer songs.

So like any fan I clicked through on the link and found myself at Amazon which I guess is where the freebie is being made available.

You want to know what makes people turn to pirated copies of stuff?

Pain in the ass multiple screens that you have to navigate through in order to get something for free (the same applies to buying stuff but that’s another story). The first screen I see in a process that is totally and utterly irritating was the landing page. Hate the movie but really like Dido so I figure I can ignore that it is coming from the soundtrack to a stupid movie.

Once there on the landing page I clicked on the Get MP3 button figuring that I would head off to the download page. Think again, I had to sign into Amazon first (or create an account) and then I had to navigate through two screens that tried to talk me into downloading and installing the Amazon MP3 Downloader.

Uh. No.

Having made it through yet another screen to confirm my ‘purchase’ I come to this

Like you couldn’t have told me this on the first page – you know the landing page from which this mess started from?

Talk about pissing off customers – not that I could be one in the first place since you don’t accept PayPal, which I understand. I may not like it, I may want to be a long term customer of Amazon but you sure take the fun out of getting even free stuff.

Sneaky e-commerce is pissing me off

Category: Technology
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Posted 1468 days ago

money I like buying things via the web. I’m a regular customer at Barnes & Noble and TigerDirect. There are web services I’m more than willing to pay for as well as more than a few developer sites.

That said there is one thing that really .. and I mean really .. pisses me off when it comes to places on the web where you can spend your money.

To all those sites who make finding the method of payment you accept stupidly hard I have this to say.

Cut it the fuck out!

I mean it. Like, how frikken hard is it to put a link somewhere where everyone can see it that will display the form of payment that you accept. Instead you either have them buried so deep in your site or you make it so that I have to sign up first to find out how I can pay for stuff.

I bumped up against this drive-by “increase our membership numbers” once again as I took a look at Dell’s new Dell Download Store.

My first thought when I was perusing the site was that this is a great idea – then I went looking to see if they accept PayPal or if they are just another credit card only shop. The only thing I found letting me know this information was – nothing! I went through their F.A.Q. page with an eagle eye, I check any other page I though might have this information. I even went through a test purchase only to be told I’d have to join before getting to the payment page, which I presume is where I would actually find the information.

Nothing. Nada. Zip.

And Dell isn’t alone in this deception, because as far as I am concerned this is a deceptive way to pump up numbers. I’ve lost count of the number of sites that practice this type of deception and the supposedly open and transparent Web 2.0 type sites are just as bad at doing this kind of crap as any of them.

Is it really so hard to let us know right up front – remember honesty is what this “new web” is suppose to be all about – about how we can pay for our stuff?

Is hiding this information away really worth losing customers over because I know every time I have to go hunting the chances of me ending up being a customer is reduced to nil.

Why buying up web companies isn’t always in our interest

Category: Technology
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2 comments
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Posted 1826 days ago

eBay buying PayPal reduced peoples choices. I was just reading Erik Schonfeld’s post over at TechCrunch about Amazon supposedly preparing a PayPal killer. As he quite right points out though – Amazon already has a payment system in place. How it can make it any more PayPal like is up for grabs but that isn’t the intent of this post to figure it out.

What I do want to talk about and was in part prompted by Erik’s post is that one of the driving forces on the Internet; and business in general really, is the unquenchable need to expand a company’s size and product range. Sometimes these acquisitions make sense and everyone involved is a winner. The company doing the buying, the company being bought and in many cases the customers of those products from the now joined companies.

In other instances though this isn’t always the case. Sure the company doing the buying may think that the purchase might fulfill some strategic need and the company being bought is happy because they get to walk away with a shitload of money. The third part of the equation though – the customer – sometimes ends up being the loser as suddenly options that they might have had before the purchase are gone.

Nowhere is this any clearer than when eBay decided that it would be an incredibly smart business move to buy PayPal. After all the service was being used by a large majority of vendors and buyers in their auction service. So it made perfect sense for them to buy the company.

As smart as that move might have been for eBay, and as happy as the owners of PayPal would have been for such a nice payday it was – as time has proven – the users of the service that have gotten the short end of the stick. While PayPal is recognized as being the premier payment and money transfer system on the Internet the moment that eBay bought PayPal we instantly saw the marketplace hit a stone wall.

The reason for this is because eBay the parent company is considered to be one of the top web businesses around with more competitors for shopper dollars than just about anyone else. Where once places like Amazon, Apple or any other major business on the web selling products directly to consumers might have considered supporting PayPal as a payment method that option disappeared the moment the ink was drying on the eBay purchase agreement.

As I have pointed out many times here at WinExtra not everyone has credit cards, US based debit cards or even lives in the US but because of one company deciding that it wanted to corner the market on e-commerce payments we ended up being the losers. I’m not suggesting that it was given that companies like Amazon, Apple or even Microsoft would have added PayPal as one of the payment options for their products but chances were a lot more likely before eBay stepped in the picture.

The end result though, is that a larger percentage of potential customers with money to spend are now locked out of the marketplace. In my opinion this is one case where companies buying companies has proven to be a detriment to the web as a whole.

Not everyone has credit cards

Category: Technology
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17 comments
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Posted 2001 days ago

To bad my money isn't good enough. I am sick and tired of wanting to buy software, books, hardware etc etc etc but I can’t. I am sick to death of sites that make you go through the whole sign up process to buy something and then and only then do they tell you they only take credit cards. I am pissed at companies wanting my business that don’t let me buy what I want because I don’t have a stupid ass credit card.

Here’s a hint to all you pain in the ass companies wanting to sell their goods on the Internet – not everyone in the frikken world has credit cards. No wonder your stuff gets pirated by otherwise honest people who like to be able to give you the money you deserve. However the moment you limit your sales to only those people who have those magical pieces of plastic you are hurting only yourself.

I have lost count of the number of times that I have wanted to buy a specific piece of software only to find out after having to jump through hoops that they don’t take PayPal. Tonight was a prime example as I went looking to buy a copy of ESET’s new release of their Smart Security Suite. Yes I know there are free antivirus programs out there but that is not what I wanted. I wanted to buy a product but nowhere on the site did it tell me about payment methods. No .. I first had to open an account with them and then go through 5 pages of information entry before finding out that they don’t accept PayPal. It was credit card or nothing.

And it’s not like they are alone on this as just about every major software company from Microsoft on down will only accept credit cards. Try buying something on Amazon without one – it ain’t gonna happen. Try buying anything from the iTunes store without a credit card – it ain’t gonna happen. For all the bragging about the success of e-commerce and how it is growing in leaps and bound it really is nothing more than a shadow of what it could be.

Not even taking into consideration the number of people who don’t; or won’t, use their credit card online there is also a very large portion of our society who don’t have the damn pieces of plastic. For them PayPal is the most used way to purchase goods online. Why do you think eBay bought up PayPal – because it realized this simple fact.

So to all you companies that make people jump through hoops only to find out you don’t take alternate methods of payment – piss off because the next time I want to buy something online and I don’t have an easy way to find your payment methods you’ve lost a potential customer – even if you do take PayPal.

To all those companies that don’t accept PayPal; or other payment types, you’re being stupid and missing out on good long term customers not to mention contributing to the piracy of your own software by people who very well could have willingly paid you for it.

Oh and thanks for making me feel like a second class citizen in world of online e-commerce.