eBay

akumajou_hunter · ‎06-08-2023

I would like to sort my search results by price + shipping ascending, and I would like listings containing multiple items to be sorted as though they had the *HIGHEST* price in that listing rather than the lowest price in that listing.

To demonstrate what I mean, here is a search result for "8 GB SODIMM" (that is a kind of memory for laptops) sorted by price and shipping, lowest first.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=8gb+sodimm+ddr3&_sop=15

Notice that some listings have a price like "$3.96 to $33.33" and they are sorted as though they cost $3.96. I would rather sort them as though they cost $33.33.

Is there any way to make ebay's search behave in the way I want it to? Alternatively, is there a way to filter out or hide listings containing multiple items? They are almost never what I want to buy so if they can't be correctly sorted I would rather not see them at all.

Thanks.

woodland_gnome · ‎06-08-2023

No. That is not in what can be customized by a user. We (I and others) tried to get eBay to count highest price for a listing with variations in the sort years ago (when the problem of sellers abusing the function for better search sorting first popped up) but they didn't want to do that (instead supposedly adopting a rule to limit the allowable range--don't know if they actually did that).

akumajou_hunter · ‎06-09-2023

That is unfortunate.

How about the alternative?

> Alternatively, is there a way to filter out or hide listings containing multiple items? They are almost never what I want to buy so if they can't be correctly sorted I would rather not see them at all.

The notion of grouping dissimilar items into a single search results is fundamentally misguided in my opinion.

woodland_gnome · ‎06-09-2023

There is a filter on the number of items available in Advanced Search about in the middle of the page at the bottom of the "Show results" section:

Multiple items from Min quantity to Max quantity

but when I've suggested that in the past people came back and said it didn't work to exclude the variations listings.

eburtonlab · ‎06-09-2023

There are two issues with using the Lowest First sort order; all the price variation listings that contain misleading low priced variations, and the fact that the results are "streamlined" or filtered.

Instead, try sorting by Highest First. Set a price range to filter out all the too-low results and the too-high results, and to get the results down to a manageable number. Then go to the last page of the results and start at the bottom of the search results, and scroll up.

Here is an example search using a price range and some additional filters:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=8gb+sodimm+ddr3&_sop=16&Capacity%2520per%2520Module=8%2520GB&Bu...

akumajou_hunter · ‎07-05-2023

@eburtonlabNot sure who marked your reply as helpful but it sure wasn't me. Narrowing the price range so as to eliminate all the grouped listings will eliminate them but it will also eliminate the lower priced non-grouped listings I actually want to see.

This picture may help you understand my problem.

eburtonlab · ‎07-05-2023

Not sure who marked your reply as helpful but it sure wasn't me.

You can click on the "Helpful" link to see exactly who that was, if you are interested.

While the original poster of the thread gets the option to choose a solution, anyone at all can rate a post as being "helpful", aside from the author of the post.

Narrowing the price range so as to eliminate all the grouped listings will eliminate them but it will also eliminate the lower priced non-grouped listings I actually want to see.

Then you have failed to set your range appropriately.

And narrowing the range will not eliminate all the grouped listings, just the ones that have no results that fall within the range of interest. Combining that with the "highest first" sort is a way around the drawbacks of the subject-to-gaming "lowest first" sort.

By using a range, you only eliminate the results that fall entirely outside your range. If you set your range with some care, only results you are not interested in are eliminated.

Set your lower bound too high, you may miss a low-priced option. Set it too low, you wind up having to wade through the low-priced variations that do not match your search criteria that you initially set out to avoid. Most likely there is a number you can use that is low enough to find all the items of interest, yet high enough to eliminate the vast majority of the low-cost variations that are only included to skew the results of the "lowest first" sort order.

If you are unable to pick a suitable lower-bound, your can forgo it entirely. Then you just have to sort by "highest first", go to the last page and keep scrolling up until you stop seeing valid results, and then go back down.

Not sure exactly what you are looking for, but here is another sample search:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=500gb+&_sacat=175669&LH_TitleDesc=0&_udlo=30&_odkw=50...

Note that there are price variation listings included, but that the lowest-price variations do not enter into the sort order calculation at all, unless they actually fall within the range of interest and they are the highest result in that portion of the sort.

I understand your issue, the limits of the search tools that eBay provides, and the ways that some sellers game the system by including low-cost variations in price range listings.

I am telling you how to get as close as possible to the results you want given the tools that eBay currently provides.