Why do retailers still make life hard for customers?

Seriously – I don’t understand why retailers STILL insist on having stupidly long or complicated forms that get in the way of people trying to buy something.

Here’s a good example.

This evening I was attempting to purchase something on  for my son for Christmas.  I found the item I wanted, went to the checkout, selected to pay via paypal (nice to have the option) and then ebuyer presented me with a long signup form.  I had to firstly spend a few minutes to fill in everything and wonder why on earth they need a memorable date for gods sake – it’s more secure than my bank!  Next I tried to submit and it told my my username was already taken (it took about 5 attemps to find a memorable one that wasn’t) and I didn’t read the password stuff correctly – not only did it ask for a combination of letters AND numbers but also asked for a combination of CAPS and non caps.

For the love of god guys – it does NOT need to be that secure and all you are doing is putting people off the checkout process and sending them to a competitor!