eBay's New Seller's Form 2.0: A thorn on a rose - or simply a thorn in your side?

There it was, backed with a bright yellow background: "click here to try the New Sell Your Item Form 2.0." Feeling adventurous that particular day, I thought, why not? I scanned through the whole eBay selling form only to find it consisted of several pages. It looked more involved and longer than the old form, which, incidentally, was working just fine.

Having a choice at the time, I decided to stick with the old form. But I realized that some of the new Sell Your Item 2.0 had crept into the old form. Case in point: the photo insertion feature. There used to be 6 squares; click on one square, and your photo would be inserted. Once your photos were inserted, you could look them over, change their order, or delete one. This was a great feature, and you never had to leave the first page of the form.

With the new form, only the URL appears on the first page, and you must wait until you get to the next page to view your photos. Want to take a photo out? Back you go to the first page. That's where the problems began for me. Up popped a screen stating "No Shipping Payment Selected".

I backspaced again, which brought up the second screen again; back space again, up popped a screen stating, "No Location Selected." And it was suddenly the dance of backspacing. (And by the way, the fields were filled in.)

Finally, after having rearranged the photos the way I thought they would look best, here we go again. This time, eBay's photo service Ipix stated there was an error in uploading the photos. BACKSPACE...

Somewhere between 15 & 20 minutes later, I finally had ONE item listed!

It seems to me that every time we get a "new/improved" version of a form, it translates into "takes longer & more errors." For the occasional seller, it may not be bothersome, but to a serious lister/seller with over 1,100 positive feedbacks, it translates into frustration and time lost, which ultimately translates to dollars lost.

There's a wonderful line in a movie that says it all: "More isn't always better, sometimes it's just more."

The solution: Perfection before Print comes to mind.