An Interesting Example of eBay Search at Work
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At 3:09pm today I had a buyer ask about this item. It is one of those obscure things I sell. It has been listed for about 8 months. Haven't had any questions on it.
The buyer asked if they bought it, whether there was a way they could pay me to send it Priority Mail. As I was responding to their message, at 3:14pm the order for the exact same item came through. I had to edit my message as I was in the process of letting them know I could edit the listing to include Priority Mail costs. Instead I let them know I could activiate my Priority Mail service listing, and they could buy that and I'd send their order Priority Mail.
I sent them the message, grabbed the item and a box to weigh it, then look up the zip code on the eBay calculator so I'd know what to charge. As I was doing this, I realized the address on the order was to Los Angeles. I looked back at the message to double-check they asked about Hawaii and they did. So I sent them another message to get clarification. They wrote back asking if someone else had purchased it. I looked and sure enough the user name was different.
I know there is a scam where someone who is trying to get an item in demand will message a seller right after someone else buys it, and trick the seller into cancelling the order so that the person messaging can buy it once it is relisted. For several reasons that's not what is going on here.
The only thing I can come up with is that when Buyer A asked the question, the algorithm pushed the item in search or maybe messaged others who had looked at it in the past? The timing is quite odd for something that isn't in demand and where there has been a lack of interest.
Feel free to share your thoughts, especially if you've had something like this happen.
nyr134
·4 months agoAnother possibility: some event or mention in the “outside” world has caused your item to become wanted. You don’t say what the item is, but perhaps it concerns a person who had just died or is otherwise in the news. Or maybe a so-called influencer has just talked up a particular product causing it to attract interest after all this idle time. Or maybe dad just told his 12 children I sure would love a hat like this for Father’s Day.
christworks
OP4 months agoIt's linked in my original post, but it's a vintage Radio Shack Duophone Voice Recorder. There certainly could be some old tech dad's who would like it, so maybe a Fathers Day gift which would explain why my Hawaii buyer wanted it shipped Priority.
toomuchstuffagain35
·4 months ago"You don’t say what the item is, but perhaps it concerns a person who had just died or is otherwise in the news."
This is true. I just sold a Kyle Busch Nascar diecast I've had listed for ages.
I've also noticed I'll sell something that's been sitting forever with no interest, only to sell the other 2 I had listed very shortly after that.
christworks
OP4 months ago@mattva haha. That would be funny.
Honestly, my first thought was that someone wanting it shipped to Hawaii ASAP was a studio producton rep. I've had studios buy vintage tech and other odd things in the past and they do normally ask to upgrade to Priority Mail so they can meet their production schedule. So then when I saw Los Angeles on the order, it re-enforced that idea that this was a studio rep. I suppose it is still possible you've got two reps on the same production (maybe one on site, and one back in LA) who are spending the weekend looking for things online they need in the next couple of weeks.
Either way I'm grateful for the sale. So far it is turning out to be a good weekend.
hartungcards
·4 months agoThis isn't a scam, this was due to an annual increase in system activity experienced during this period, which has caused processing delays.
mattva
·4 months agoI'm so hoping this is what happened.
a_c_green
·4 months agoAgreed; what you have going on here looks like just a coincidence of timing. Neither your prospective buyer nor your actual one may know anything about how long the item had been listed. I've had items sell just like this: one guy is dithering over nickels and dimes while another just swoops in and grabs it.
Well, the default search ordering is "Best Match," which of course eBay doesn't want to explain in too much detail because then everyone will be trying to game it, but sure, it could be that where there's some activity surrounding a certain listing, it might get a little bump in the black-box manipulation that is Best Match.
chapeau-noir
·4 months agoI suspect relevance has a certain amount of weight in Best Match's secret squirrel algorithms - it's almost universal in search - but if they told us what and how, they would have to kill us.
tobaccocardyahoo
·4 months agoI suffer from a tendency to overanalyze.
You may share this tendency.
I have more than 3x the number of listings that you have listed, and older listings seem to get action without any obvious convincing reason.
I am currently in a period when most of the items which are selling have been listed for a period of time which would make some other sellers destroy the value of the item to any seller by marking it down in the hopes of selling.
When I have higher sales levels I get more visits to my listings, including the older listings. This has been the best month in the past three months, my visits are up and conversion rate is up. Whether that affects any specific listing is anyone's guess.
chapeau-noir
·4 months agoThe way search (basic HBase) works is that interest/sales of one item will raise other items within that cohort ( however that cohort is defined) in search. For instance, I'll sell one mouse, then several others right after. I sold pants and then another pair of pants right after - I hadn't had sales in pants for a long, long time. So, I wonder if eBay also includes queries?
ETA: Fat fingeritis.