What’s with the eBay messages timestamps?
Summary: iamalwaysright is frustrated with eBay's messaging system, where message timestamps change to "1 min ago" once read, disrupting chronological order. inhawaii speculates about time zones, while participatrophy suggests testing different scenarios like marking messages as read before opening them. iamalwaysright conducted tests revealing that timestamps change differently for messages from eBay versus those from members. tobaccocardyahoo expresses dislike for eBay's messaging model change and is indifferent to the timestamp issue, viewing messages as temporary.
This is annoying the crap out of me. You know within the eBay messages inbox you see all the messages that you received in chronological order (according to the timestamp shown on the right of each message). How come when I click any unread message (including ones I received days ago) the timestamp on the message immediately changes to 1 minute <ago> once the message marks to being “read”?
This bothers me a lot because sometimes I want to see the chronological order of all he messages I get that is related to a certain listing or transaction. And when the timestamps on these messages change according to when I click to read them, it gets all messed up. I always have to end up cross referencing these messages with my gmail inbox that the duplicates get sent to.
Honestly, is this a glitch? Because what reason would there be for this to function as eBay intended? I checked my messages in my other accounts and they also behave the same way.
tobaccocardyahoo
·3 weeks agoI have loathed the Ebay messaging system ever since it was changed from being modeled on an email exchange to the text message model.
I have not warmed up to it, in the slightest. I can honestly say that I really am not concerned about this detail. I view these messages as ephemeral.
participatrophy
·3 weeks agoI can't get it to do that on any of my accounts. Maybe a glitch, maybe intentional. Hard to know with eBay sometimes. If you mark a read message as unread using the checkbox and then click the message title to open it, does it change the timestamp? I mostly only had unreads from eBay to test with. One unread from another user but it wasn't an initial message, if that matters. No updating timestamps for me. Maybe try marking as read before clicking to actually open it.
iamalwaysright
OP3 weeks ago · EditedThat's interesting, I never considered that. But since then I did some testing and discovered some confusing stuff that there's no way anyone would intentionally do this. Hoping someone else can come by and re-create my issues to confirm that this is happening to everyone. I've found out that messages "from ebay" behave differently from messages "from members".
For any message that comes in (obviously as unread), when you click on it to read, the original timestamp on that message changes to "1 min" ago. If you don't see it right away, you'll see it when you refresh the page. This disrupts the chronological order of the messages for times I need to look things up for reference. These messages will never go back to their original timestamp.
Messages From Ebay
If you initially mark them as read, their original timestamp will change to a new timestamp of "1 min" ago. Even if you initially mark it as unread (despite it already being that), their original timestamp will still change it to a new one of 1 min ago. You can keep doing this repeatedly to no end. I.E. A week from now you can scroll down and choose any "from ebay" message and change it's timestamp to 1 min ago simply by marking it as read/unread. Any time you click on an unread message to read it, it still changes to a new timestamp of 1 min ago regardless of how many times the timestamp had already changed. This doesn't change the sorting of ebay's messages so you'll see column of timestamps that look all over the place.
Messages From Members
If you initially mark them as read, their original timestamp will remain no matter what you do afterwards. If you didn't do this and changed the timestamp by clicking on it to read, that new timestamp will also never change regardless of what you do afterwards.
I wonder why ebay chose to separate ebay messages from member messages like that. The search field is crap and non-functional for ebay messages and never has been fixed. Now they pile this breakdown on top of that. Can anyone confirm that this is also happening on their account?
participatrophy
·3 days agoRefreshing the page did it for me. Same behavior, can confirm. At least with regard to messages from eBay. For messages from members, I didn't have any unread to test with, but otherwise same as you describe.
inhawaii
·3 weeks agoI notice the timestamps are MY TIME.
I can only assume the other person the timestamp are THEIR time.
Is timestamp one word or two?