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Ebay Issues and Consumerism Something has changed with ebay/Firefox recently that prevents me from making offers on things. Firefox comes up with an error blaming ebay, something about embedded pages within the 'make an offer' box.
I clicked a 'leave feedback' button on ebay somewhere in the process but they're one of these entities whose Contact Us department doesn't appear to cater for "problems with our website", as if they can't possibly exist... [My solution: Use the ebay app on my phone... (for now, only to make an offer)] Browsing is still slow and bloaty since ebay started embedding all of the images for each item within the search results ages ago (something I've also tried to tell them about)... from what I can determine this benefits the users of the App who can swipe across each image in the search results to see more. instead of having to view the item proper, but for those of us on the proper website this 'feature' is not so obvious, and therefore, in my opinion useless and annoying.
An additional problem with all of the images being loaded in the background is that data usage goes up, and I have limited data with my internet service. Ho-hum; another reason not to blindly scroll on ebay. So I've had to install the ebay App yet again so that 1) I can now make offers, and 2) just now they are offering me £5 off if I spend £50 via the app. Once again I'll at least use the App (buying something in bulk that I'll use at some point) until I've used up this offer (it's probably the third time I've done this), but beyond having to use the App to make offers until someone fixes what someone has broken, I have no interest in doom-scrolling via the App. It is somewhat curious that I've re-entered my little compulsion-to-look-for-bargains routine... [see my Retro Tech Hoard] In other ebay news, I had to help a long-time client recently who unwittingly got a Chromebook as a replacement for her Windows laptop back at Christmas. She's a seller on ebay and has been struggling with the device ever since. This time when I helped her it turned out the main part of the problem was that the ebay App was installed and taking over whenever we clicked on Sell on the website; for a while I thought she had just moved over to some new website interface (you know, these 'features' they roll out to different users over time). The App, as they typically are, was all but useless, giving an air of simplicity while being seemingly unable to allow us to navigate to the photos of her items we'd just transferred from her camera to her pictures folder... Again, the solution was to ditch the App and return to using the website that she was familiar with. Another recent ebay gripe refers to something I mentioned in November 2025's rant, about how ebay were implementing a monthly payout system to their sellers, rather than paying out straight away. Well the Overton Window has shifted further and now they don't even do automatic payouts - they keep your money so it's there for you to spend on ebay, or until such a time that you remember to manually withdraw it (which I'd totally forgotten about). That'll be a nice little earner for them, sitting on everyone's money. Referring back to the desire for services to have their users dumbed down by passively and addictively doom scrolling and consuming, I have been planning to switch my internet service over to another when my current contract ends. I've been using a service that has limited data, which has been ok since I knew what I was getting myself in for and I'd hoped the restriction would help/force me to make better use of my time online (although I only had a rough idea how little data I could make-do with). I think it has helped but I've had to resort to using other people's Wi-Fi to either upload the few videos I made for on Rumble, or to download a bulk load of podcasts to listen to offline, like, once a month. A disappointing challenge was having enough data to take part in Einstein@home during the winter months - this could use a surprising amount of data every now and then. Well, one of the services I have been considering offers a "free streaming" deal [on Youtube (and the likes of Netflix which I don't watch)] on one of their more expensive packages. I contemplated this, thinking that, well "streaming can go both ways - perhaps I can upload my videos for free, as well as watching content, without eating into my data allowance... and maybe I can earn enough money on Youtube to cover the extra cost of the internet package...[LOL]" It turns out, in chatting with ChatGPT about this (since the website itself wasn't explicit) that by "streaming" they mean watching only, i.e. consuming, as in an all-you-can-eat buffet. Yeah, encouraging people in this behaviour is not commendable; why can't they encourage people to create?
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