As a seller, I've always had the impression that eBay is most interested in the buying experience being easy. That's why I was surprised just now to encounter an annoying situation during a purchase.
A seller had two different "quantity" listings with a total of seven items. I wanted to make an offer on all of them. First, I messaged with the seller and we agreed on a combined shipping price. He chose to adjust the per-item shipping so it would work out as we agreed. I submitted my offer and he accepted. The first (minor) problem was that I never received any email or eBay message saying that my offer was accepted. The items just appeared as "unpaid" with no other notification. I've seen this before with Best Offers, so I knew to expect it.
However, the really frustrating part was when I went to pay for the items. All it would allow me to do is "Request Total" or "Mark as Payment Sent". There was no option to simply pay! Since we had already agreed on the shipping charge, I didn't want to harass the seller with an invoice request that might imply I was asking for a further reduction. I just wanted to pay for the items, which should be the easiest thing to do on eBay!
Finally I figured out that if I visited the actual listing page for one of the items, there was a "Pay Now" button at the top of the page which took me to the normal payment screen. I have no idea why this button was not simply displayed on the Unpaid Items screen. I haven't made an offer on a quantity listing like this in awhile, so I'm not sure if it's normal or a new glitch. Anybody else seen this?
