I guess eBay just wants to lose business by making it harder for buyers to find what they want

[lilycarver]

I have been a buyer of  rare movie related materials for almost 15 years. I actuallly used to sell back in the golden era when you could communicate with buyers and sellers and the place was not overun with **bleep** reproductions. First eBay does not segregate original material from reproductions  in their catagories so I have to go through 20 repo stills to find one original. I collect something very specialized . Glass Movie Slides but one seller fills up the listingsw with Mylar Banners which have NOTHING to do with glass slides. In the last 24 hours eBay has now made it harder to search for sold items which helps collectors of rare material check things out and I noticed more and more sellers have "stores" which DO NOT ALLOW ME to search by catogory ( I am not going through 400 photos just to find 2 listings for ones from the silent era. I know eBay treats sellers like dirt but they are SO clueless about buyers of anything not produced en mass they are driving us away.

[pburn]

---

@lilycarver wrote:

In the last 24 hours eBay has now made it harder to search for sold items . . .

---

I haven't run across this yet. How has eBay made it harder to search for sold items in the last 24 hours? 

[fashunu4eeuh]

Ebay has done some condensing of info and the way to actually see the Sold listing is not noticeable nor user friendly.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Can-no-longer-view-details-of-SOLD-items/m-p/28558227#M1220267

[pburn]

I thought the OP was talking about sold/completed listings in the "Advanced Search" screen no longer being available. I obviously don't use a sold/completed listing search in the same way the OP does--which I guess is a good thing, because now I don't miss it . . .

[berserkerplanet]

Huh?

I think it's the blue bar on sold search results with "The listing you’re looking for is no longer available. Check out this similar item we found for you." garbage. Looks like eBay wants everyone to look at other live items before getting to sold listings. A totally misguided marketing ploy that is just pissing everyone off.

I MAY have a partial workaround for it - which will of course involve either a Firefox addon (Redirector), or a clickable bookmarklet, but I think I see a possible URL manipulation method. (Have to churn through the links after I get the "See other Items" bookmarklet fixed)

[berserkerplanet]

Redirector Addon rule to work around the recent Sold listing changes:

Need to have Redirector addon installed in browser.
   https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/redirector

Latest version works with Firefox 42 and later (but I don't think with Firefox Quantum 57+). Appears to be available for Chrome and Opera too.

The following Redirector rule will cause links to sold listings on a search result page to redirect directly to the old view of the ended listing when clicked (bypassing having to click the "listing" link and then the "see original listing" link.)

Example URL:     https://www.ebay.com/itm/SHORTS/142813031180?hash=item214051eb0c:g:eUoAAOSwTrFaky9i
Include Pattern: (https:\/\/www\.ebay\.com\/itm\/[^\?]*)
Exclude Pattern: https:\/\/www\.ebay\.com\/itm\/[^\?]*\?.*(nordt=true|orig_cvip=true)
Redirect To:     $1?nordt=true&orig_cvip=true
Pattern Type:    Regular Expression
Unescape Matches:No

The example URL in the above is unimportant - used for testing the rule, and would have to be replaced with a valid search result URL to test the rules against if one chooses to do so.

The above screenshot is from older version 2.5 I use in Firefox 3.6.2.4 where I do most of my eBay work and code testing. Newer versions of Redirector no longer use a separate dialog like the above, but instead use a tab right in the browser (at least that's the case with v2.9.2 in FF31 which is the latest FF I've installed it in). Rules work the same in v2.9.2 in FF31, and should work the same in any version I believe (and newer versions have even more functionality from release notes I read)

Have not tested it extensively, but seems to be doing the trick for everything I've tried so far.

[berserkerplanet]

Addendum:
The above rule seems to work with complete listings I tried also.
Redirector v3.1.1 DOES work with Firefox 57+ according to addons.mozilla.org

[deepvein]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/itemnumber will show you the listing of any sold item number

[berserkerplanet]

It used to but no longer - at least for all sold or completed items.

An example URL from a sold item search:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mens-Tan-L-L-Bean-Sportif-Shorts-Size-42/362326048676?hash=item545c50bfa4:g...

Clicking that link takes you to a live listing for new shorts nothing like the target listing. Clicking the "listing" link in the blue banner at top of that takes you to the ended listing, and a further click on "See original listing" is required to get to the actual ended listing.

Manually massaging the link into: https://www.ebay.com/itm/362326048676 still takes you to the new shorts listing.

Changing it to https://www.ebay.com/itm/Mens-Tan-L-L-Bean-Sportif-Shorts-Size-42/362326048676 went to the ended listing, and then a click on "See original listing" to get to the final page.


The redirector approach I outlined above automates the whole thing as if nothing ever changed.

Starting to wonder what is going on. Look of search pages changed overnight, but the "The listing you’re looking for is no longer available. Check out this similar item we found for you." stuff here is still happening.

[mycarolinavintage]

After reading the responses you have received, I think I am missing something here. Aren't you looking for these special items to buy?

...............................................................................

"Today I will shed the burden of judgement."

Deepak Chopra

[ed8108]

---

@lilycarver wrote:

I know eBay treats sellers like dirt but they are SO clueless about buyers of anything not produced en mass they are driving us away.

---

Yes, ebay is certainly driving away manny more good sellers and buyers by their purpordely site improvements and current policies. 

The ebay of the past will likely almost entirely disappear.

[dugoldstuff]

This reminds me of a section of the book I am reading, Shattered, on the "doomed" campaign of Hillary Clinton. The authors are actually pro-Clinton. But they hit the nail on the head at one part: Hillary was a policy wonk. She thought her job in the campaign was to convince people that what she thought was good for them is what they should want. Bernie and Trump, on the other hand, read the mood of the electorate.

[castlemagicmemories]

I noticed yesterday that I could not search under completed listings for a seller's store; indeed, I couldn't even search for specific items in the seller's store.

This makes search non productive. 

Going through whole categories in a seller's store, or the whole store, probably won't happen.

[southern*sweet*tea]

nvm, I can't read

[scalemotorcars]

The more I read about this the less it looks like eBay is actually going to fix it. This is the new eBay. If you don't like it shop somewhere else. 

You know what a lot of buyers (and sellers) are going to say. "OK I will..."