IP: Why E-Commerce Still Doesn't "Work"

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

> From: "Jonathan S. Shapiro" <shap () eros-os org>
> To: <dave () farber net>
>
> Dave:
>
> I forwarded the earlier note to a friend, Mike Dash, who responded with 
> the following encounter that *he* had with the e-commerce world. He has 
> graciously agreed that it can be forwarded to IP if you wish.
>
> Mike writes:
>
> i recently tried to buy a car through imotors.com (used-car portal). it 
> was, in a word, mind-bogglingly incompetent. there are companies that 
> figure out how to use the web to make radical improvements to their 
> business. and there are those that just slap a web front end onto an 
> existing business model...
>
> 1) go to web site and fill in form describing desired car
> 2) receive imotors contract, which does not match desired car
> 3) phone imotors. "yes, we know it's not the same description but that's 
> ok. just sign the contract so we can go search for the car. the 
> description in the contract is not the one the buyers will use; they will 
> have the actual description."
> 4) hmm. ok... can i have a copy of the buyer's description?
> 5) "that will be on another computer. but if you *really* want it, i could 
> print it out and fax it to you."
> 6) receive fax of hand-written form telling buyers what car to look for.
> 7) receive calls about various candidate cars. they're not close enough to 
> what I want, so I reject them and ask them to keep looking.
> 8) after a week, receive phone message: "we bought your car!"
> 9) phone to find out what car they bought. "we don't have that info here 
> -- it's at our intake center. we should have the car's description here in 
> a few days."
> 10) phone 4 times in one week and talk to 3 people. finally get someone 
> who obtains a description of the car. it's not the one i want. actually, 
> it's one of the ones that I specifically said i did *not* want.
> 11) they discontinue processing the car and say they'll look some more.
> 12) after another week, repeat steps 8 and 9 (really!) plus an abbreviated 
> version of 10. finally, buy a car locally and tell imotors thanks just the 
> same.