LONG but worth reading real website feedback :
browser im using : firefox 3.6.13 on mac os x

Ok this might be the second time i have ordered 2.5″ drives and received 3.5″ drives, so I figure its overdue to put this request in here, for drives to be properly listed within the website.

As my moniker indicates (xxxxxxxxxx), stuff like this makes me feel allot older, because life is too short to tolerate mis-communication wasting both your companys time, and for me more importantly, wasting my time and money, obviously no-one likes that. these drives have probably now cost me £25.00 on top of what they should have because of this miscommunication by the ebuyer website. What with extra postage fees for a new urgent delivery of drives of the correct form factor, so i can get my work done for upcoming appointments, and on top of that the postal cost of sending things back insured and registered and restocking fees etc the rma process in general, youve just taken the price of the item I ordered, from a little cheaper than other sites, to vastly more expensive, so I am to say the least … not amused, so below is a description of the bugs for you to iron out with the website, so that there is no possibility of this occurence happening again, or at least reduced to a small possibility.

Website corrections/bugfixes cost money, at the hands of whoever is developing your website, but the possible time wasted with wrong deliverys, postage etc because of miscommunication like this, is an even worse all round cost, and waste of life not including the stress involved.

[B]ok the problem … try this out :
[/B]
go to components > hard drives internal > and select “2.5” sata hard drives” from the filter/criterion column on the left :

now once you clicked away from the deal page and are looking at page 1 ordered by price for 50 items.

when looking at this page, if you add in a second criteria like capacity “320gb”

it will then turn of the 2.5″ sata hard drives filter automatically ! without warning you, so you are then staring at possibly a mixture of drives both 2.5″ and 3.5″. this is dangerous and confusing … It should be possible, to select two filters in this area, ie 2.5″ and 320gb at the same time, this issue isnt solved by searching on words as not all 2.5″ hard drive product titles contain say ” 2.5″ ” in their title for instance these 2.5″ hard drives do not have 2.5″ in theyre title but are in the 2.5″ category :
quickfind codes : 166417, 164261 or badly labeled like this : 222207

[COLOR=”red”]SO RULES WHEN ENTERING HARD DRIVES INTO THE EBUYER DATABASE :[/COLOR]

It should not be possible when entering product in the database to put in a hard drive title that does not contain at least three of the following title elements, these should be selectable by force from menu items to prevent mis-entry.

RULE 1:
when putting new internal hard drives product in the ebuyer database, the form factor 2.5″ or 3.5″ must always be included in the title as this will make text searching easier.

RULE 2:
always put the speed of the drive as well in the title 7200rpm 5400rpm etc

RULE 3:
always put the capacity ie 320gb 250gb etc

the three rules above will at least mean if i do a textual search with the words.
“2.5 7200 320gb”, [B][COLOR=”red”]Well actually not quite[/COLOR][/B] because your search form seems to remove all dots and funny characters ? therefore 2.5″ or 2.5 both translate to just 25, this really is ridiculous as it means you cant search properly on hard drives ? is this a limit of PHP and mysql databases i presume your using ? or have you just barred these characters from all form searches ?

when searching with “2.5 7200 320gb” it should drill right down to the drives I need, as currently there is no way to clearly search like this using the criterion column on the left, as it just doesnt seem to accept multiple criteria ?! in this particular HD searching department ?

[B][COLOR=”red”]please note: [/COLOR][/B] if you do a search for the words “2.5” 320gb 7200″, the flaming search box will retranslate that as “25 320gb 7200″, and the first drive it comes up with when you do this is a 3.5″ drive quickfind code : 161104, please also note it comes with a 250gb 2.5″ drive why ? ive no idea … it also comes up with a load of 3.5″ drives as well ?, [COLOR=”red”]so to be honest if your going to change the users search criteria, without informing them youve done so, allot of this mis-ordering is going to happen ?[/COLOR] you cant just change ” 2.5″ ” to 25 and not tell the website user ? youve done this. As this means i have to spend half time when browsing your site making sure your site is telling me the truth , when it presents me with information or searches. you could bring up a dialog saying that the users search criteria has been altered because it contained unacceptable characters for instance ?

“please check your search criteria as the following characters are not allowed” or something like that so the user knows youve altered it, as coming back with a set of results will subconsciously feedback to the user, to a large extent their search was successful.

WEBSITE BUGFIX :

make it so that multiple filters in the columns on the left also works, ie being able to select a capacity say “320gb” and “2.5” sata hard drive” at the same time, as currently this does not work ? also note that the capacity criteria column once used, just seems to diss-appear entirely ? without informing you, any capacity selection is even applied or removeable and changeable ? for say a different capacity, this really is false hope as you promoting a sense of search refinement that appears not to be there ?

also searching by speed ie 7200rpm v 5400rpm is not available as a criterion/filter on the left, this criterion needs to be added to the left, brand is to some extent less important than speed in this particular case.

secondarily while were at it why not ad in cache level as a search filter/criteria, ie 16mb cache 32mb cache 8 cache as searchable criteria.

and generally make it so the filters work, because once you add more than one filter in, the filters you are using seem to dissappear very often ?

you get the idea of this message, there is some serious bugfixes to the site that would prevent such order errors from occuring, and make purchasing on your site much more enjoyable, as at the present i have to worry the site is going to present me with the wrong product, which im then going to end up ordering by mistake, this makes me very wary of your site, and makes me commit myself to some crazy double checking routine, which is unnecessary.

if you can think of more bugs with ebuyer comment them on the end here :