It strikes me time and time again how few companies understand anything about simplicity.
I was looking to replace my wife‘s Nokia 6230i that decided it did not want to come home after a recent holiday. The Nokia 6230i is a simple block phone that does just the basic stuff, and Nokia don‘t do a bad job on the user interface. And don‘t mention “iPhone” to those of us who live in the “Lucky Country”.
A quick check of the Nokia Website reveals that there are an astounding 55 current Nokia models. 55! And Nokia‘s web site offers a way to exclude phones without certain features (eg Bluetooth), but no way to exclude phones with features (eg Dual Camera (which I had to look up in Google to learn)). There is also no way to sort by price or limit by price range making it nearly impossible to figure out what might be an appropriate replacement for the 6230i.
In the end I gave up in despair and ordered a used one from eBay.
Which brings me on the eBay. For buying something, eBay isn't too bad (or maybe I have just gotten used to it over the years). But for selling something it is mind boggling. I‘ve got an old computer I want to sell, and even aside from the horrendous hassle of having to package the computer up and figure out postage issues, just trying to understand getting started as a seller on eBay is a nightmare.
So instead I went to that paragon of simplicity, craigslist. Ok, clearly they need to find a web designer, but it took me all of five minutes to have my classified post, and I no longer have to worry about shipping. Well worth the lost potential revenue of a higher price on eBay. Although I then discovered that gumtree seems to have a larger user base than craigslist in Perth, so I posted there too (another couple minutes).
Now while craigslist and gumtree could certainly still improve the experience, putting up a basic “for sale” ad for a first time seller is much much simpler than trying to figure galleries and subtitles on eBay.
Posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007. Permalink. Post a Comment.
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