My first proper post of this year is unfortunately another rant about the bizarre actions of a tech giant, this time eBay for their inexplicable decision to remove their mobile app's compatibility with older Android versions and woefully inadequate response to the resulting backlash. It all started when I did a factory reset on my phone. It's a Samsung Galaxy S2, which may be old but I've looked after it so it still works fine and perfectly suits my needs of reading emails, Facebook browsing, a few calls and texts, and the occasional photo. I deplore the wastefulness of modern society and can't stand to see perfectly functional products thrown away simply because they're old, so I can't justify replacing the old S2 to myself while it still works.
The reset installed Android Jelly Bean 4.1.2, the newest version of the operating system officially supported by this device. Everything was going well and all the apps I installed worked fine - until I tried to install the eBay app, only for the app store to refuse to download it as it is "not compatible with my device". Huh? The version I had before worked fine, going from version 4.0 to 4.1 isn't even a major upgrade and Android 4.1.2 was released only about five years ago so it's hardly an ancient obsolete operating system that no one uses anymore. Being unsupported but still usable is one thing but incompatible and totally unusable is quite another, so how come the eBay app is no longer compatible with my OS and why aren't eBay doing anything about it?
After a bit of research, it turns out that eBay released an update for their app at some point during 2017 and for reasons they have never explained decided to make it compatible only with Android versions 4.2 and above. Almost every other app developer, even the one-man bands writing apps in their parents' bedroom, has managed to release updates while retaining backwards compatibility with older operating systems, so I can't understand what is in the eBay app that prevents it from working with Android 4.1. Even if the new version is genuinely incompatible, there should be nothing to stop eBay continuing to make the older version available alongside it for those users with older devices, but no, the only version in the Play Store is this latest one and they have no intention of making any others available.
This is the sort of behaviour I might expect from a rookie developer who is making his first app and doesn't fully understand how it works, not from one of the world's largest IT companies staffed by thousands of 'experienced professionals'. Not only is it unprofessional but also damaging to eBay's own customer base as simple common sense indicates you need to make your product available to the widest possible audience. Instead, they have deliberately chosen for seemingly no good reason to discriminate against those who are unable or choose not to upgrade to a newer device, excluding and alienating a significant part of their user base as a result, which seems a very strange business decision. Are eBay really so arrogant that they don't care how many customers they upset as they believe they will always have enough?
Even if you were able to install and use the app in the past, you won't necessarily escape this problem. The most idiotic part of the whole saga is that the automatic updates will download and install the new version even if it is incompatible with that device, rendering the eBay app unusable for those who did have a working older version. I had escaped only because before the reset my S2 had a chronic lack of storage space that caused automatic updates to fail. Once a new version has been installed from the app store, it is very difficult to downgrade back to an older one and even if you do manage it, you will then have to turn off automatic updates for all apps so it doesn't update itself back to the broken version. Is it really too much to ask for an app to check compatibility before attempting to install an update?
Even worse than actually removing the app's compatibility with older devices is eBay's total disdain for the issue and don't-give-a-damn attitude. Their customer care ethos is basically non-existent and instead of simply acknowledging there is an issue they remain resolutely unapologetic and evasive when it comes to this subject. Even when explicitly asked why the app is incompatible they just avoid the question by fobbing off the asker with their suggested 'fix' and totally failing to explain their reasons. They claim all users were given plenty of advance warning up to six months beforehand, but I don't recall receiving any messages from eBay on this subject and a Google search hasn't found any announcements on their website. A little more transparency, some form of apology for the inconvenience caused and a willingness to investigate a proper solution is all it would take to appease these disgruntled customers, something that isn't in any way unreasonable.
There is a long thread on the eBay support forums of users with justifiable complaints about this change, but eBay's response is always the same: all they ever do is recommend upgrading your OS and if you can't do that use the web version instead. That really isn't a solution as the web version is much more cumbersome to use on mobile devices and doesn't provide the push notifications direct to the device that so many users rely on. This has been going on for more than six months now and eBay have not shown even the slightest inclination to do anything to properly resolve the issue - they have even marked the thread as 'solved' despite no acceptable resolution actually being made. What eBay are suggesting is at best a temporary workaround, so to propose this as the official permanent solution is an amateurish cop-out that beggars belief. The correct and simplest course of action is to re-release an older version so I can't understand why they refuse to either do this or explain why it isn't possible.
I continue to be appalled by the attitude of so many of these large tech companies and eBay are quite frankly the worst offenders of the lot. So many times they have made changes that just defy common sense without adequate justification, then completely ignored the backlash from their customers and refused to accept they have ever done anything wrong. Thanks to their contempt for those who use older mobile devices, I'm now stuck with using the inferior eBay website as the only alternatives are potentially ruining my phone by installing an unsupported newer operating system or buying a new phone that I don't really need for any other reason so I can't justify the expense.
They're only hurting themselves with this move as not everyone has a computer and older mobile devices like the Galaxy S2 are all that some people can afford. Platforms like eBay need to be accessible to everyone so making it more difficult to use on these devices means these customers are likely to simply give up and stop using it completely, resulting in a significant loss of custom to eBay. Try as I might, I just cannot understand eBay's way of thinking and it seems to be a prerequisite that to work in management there you must be completely devoid of any common sense.
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