July 21, 2018 and it appears that Ebay is making it impossible to open up closed listings.
This appears to be deliberate. When clicking on a closed listing you may be directed to a similar item by the seller if the seller has relisted the item. Otherwise you may be redirected to a totally unrelated item by a completely different seller.
This practice of redirecting buyers to a listing that is different than the listing they are clicking on seems dubious if not illegal. It appears to me to be a form of bait & switch, where one item appears to be available for sale but the buyer is instead marketed a different item (usually more expensive). Yes, I know that this is strictly speaking probably not legally bait & switch, but it is unethical to redirect a person from the listing someone has clicked on to a completely different listing they did not click on. How many times, now that Ebay has implemented this misdirection, has a buyer accidentally purchased a different item than the item they thought they were buying (because an item was on their watch list but was closed, something the buyer didn´t notice)?
But there is a more sinister plot here by Ebay. Apparently, Ebay doesn´t want you to be able to see what items have sold for in the past. Now, it will be very difficult if not impossible to research prior sales and get detailed information on items sold in the past.
This feature, of researching prior sales, has been an invaluable tool for buyers to know what items have sold for in the past.
One wonders why Ebay would remove this valuable feature from buyers, the ability to review previous sales, sold or not sold.
This is not a good thing. One, I suspect is is illegal to redirect someone from one autction listing to a different auction listing, even redirecting from a closed auction listing. If it isn´t illegal, it is certainly unethical and sleazy. Two, it removes a critical feature to Ebay users of being able to research previous sales including viewing pictures, reading listing details, and of course, seeing what prices items have sold for. Three, Ebay is wasting the time of buyers redirecting them to totally irrelevant and unrelated items by totally different sellers than the closed item the buyer clicked on. Four, it is certainly going to result in problems for both buyers and sellers as buyers are going to accidentally purchase wrong items from the wrong sellers at the wrong price when the buyer doesn´t realize they have been redirected from a closed listing to someone else´s open listing, especially when clicking on a closed item they had been watching in their watch list. Five, buyers are going to end up paying more for items as they can´t research prior sales (good for Ebay, not so good for buyers). Six, you can´t determine if a specific item has been previously listed and sold and is now being relisted and resold at a higher price.
Why is Ebay doing this? Who knows. Ebay ocassionally does stupid things and sometimes they get enough negative feedback that they stop doing them. Other times, Ebay doesn´t care what it´s customers want (like forcing us to see international listings in search results as a default, instead of just USA search results listings like most of us USA customers want as the default search results setting. Who wants to see all the thousands of China listings for itmes you have to wait 60 days to receive?).
But taking away our ability to see closed listings over the last two months which has been a critical feature available on ebay for almost two decades - that is really bad for buyers. There is nothing good about this change for Ebay users. Complain. And complain loudly. Or you will lose you ability to see closed listings and research previous listings. sold or not sold.
