How to EXCLUDE listings for multiple items

[hypo978]

I saw there was a long pre-existing thread for this shut down a year ago, thought I'd resurrect it.

I want to buy a red double duvet cover.

That's all. It doesn't need to be at all fancy. I know I can buy one in Argos for £13 and avoid Ebay entirely.

If I search on Ebay, filter on buy it now, sort by lowest price + P&P, filter on UK and 'Click and Collect', there are still thousands of results and they're nearly all, quietly, listings with variations where there'll be a pillow case for a £5 or something to bring down the price that's shown on the search results screen.

Any idea how to just find the cheapest of what I actually want?

Don't really want to talk about the morals of Ebay doing this, or whether it's 'illegal'. Just - how to avoid it.

[guybemis]

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@hypo978 wrote:

I saw there was a long pre-existing thread for this shut down a year ago, thought I'd resurrect it.

I want to buy a red double duvet cover.

That's all. It doesn't need to be at all fancy. I know I can buy one in Argos for £13 and avoid Ebay entirely.

If I search on Ebay, filter on buy it now, sort by lowest price + P&P, filter on UK and 'Click and Collect', there are still thousands of results and they're nearly all, quietly, listings with variations where there'll be a pillow case for a £5 or something to bring down the price that's shown on the search results screen.

Any idea how to just find the cheapest of what I actually want?

Don't really want to talk about the morals of Ebay doing this, or whether it's 'illegal'. Just - how to avoid it.

---

If eBay doesn't care to fix this problem, it's probably best to buy it on another site. Either that or go through each listing and click on each menu to see the actualy price. Those are the only two options I can think of.

[mudshark61369]

@hypo978,

The only way I know of to avoid those listings is to not shop by Price: Lowest first alone.   If you set a starting price point in the left hand column on the first results page for a little less than what you have found as the actual price for duvets in the multi variation listings you will avoid most of those listings and might still save a little money. 

[eburtonlab]

@hypo978

There are a few simple techniques -- such as setting a price floor or limiting your search to your country only -- that may help, but they don't work in every case. Or you could try something as simple as scrolling through all items in a search and just skipping over all those that have a price variation.

eBay could eliminate this problem overnight by making one simple adjustment: sort price variation listings by counting only the most expensive variation. Then there is no incentive to include a 99 cent usb cord in your phone listings, since it won't affect the sort order.

Until that happens there are other techniques that may require more effort, but that may be worth using if you do a lot of searching.

One hack for Chrome users involves searching search results for a string ( " to " -- space, t, o, space) that occurs in variations, and then using that to highlight those listings at the scroll bar to more easily spot non-variation listings:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Electronics/How-to-get-around-Search-results-manipulation/m-p/28976921...

Some greasyfork scripts (untried by me), plus a picture of that Chrome highlight technique in this thread:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/Listings-with-price-ranges/m-p/27165374/highlight/true#...

Some complaints and suggestions in this thread, including a possible script (I haven't tried it) at the end:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Bidding-Buying/SEARCH-MANIPULATION-Fake-prices/td-p/28016655

And one unique solution to eliminate variation listing from search results on a case-by-case basis (by pasting a string into a debugger console):

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Bidding-Buying/SOLVED-How-to-filter-out-Bait-and-Switch-multiple-item-...

[speed_racer]

If you want to avoid the fraudulent variations, don't search for Buy-it-now. Search for auction items. There are no variations in auctions. Variations is one of the stupidest if not the stupidest idea eBay ever had.

[berserkerplanet]

I whipped this up a couple of weeks ago and then forgot about it. I think it pretty much works. A bookmarklet to hide price variation listings in search results.

Usage:

Perform the search as you normally would then click the bookmarklet. Has to be re-invoked if page is reloaded, next page of results is navigated to, or a  new search is performed as it is just a post-search filter routine.

The search result will be replaced with a one line clickable link to the removed result.

Description: Bookmarklet based filter to remove eBay search results that have Ranged Prices. Works on both SCH and DSC search pages and list or grid view searches.

javaXscript:(function(){
var%20loc=document.location.href.match(/^https?:\/\/www\.ebay\.(com|ca|co\.uk|com\.au|in|de|at|fr|
it|nl|es|ch|ie|ph|pl|be|com\.hk|com\.my|com\.sg)\/(dsc|sch)\/i\.html/i);if(loc==null)return;
if(loc[0].match(/dsc/i)!=null){var%20trg=document.body.querySelectorAll('li[id^="item"].sresult');
if(trg.length==0)return;var%20els='li[id^="item"].sresult%20span>span[class*="prRange"]';
var%20gps='[class$="vtitle"]%20a.vip';}else{
var%20trg=document.body.querySelectorAll('li[id^="srp-river-results-listing"].s-item');
if(trg.length==0)return;
var%20els='li[id^="srp-river-results-listing"]%20span.s-item__price>span.DEFAULT';
var%20gps='div.s-item__info>a.s-item__link';}var%20j=1;for(k=0;k<trg.length;k++)
if(trg[k].querySelector(els)!=null){
var%20url=trg[k].querySelector(gps).href;trg[k].innerHTML='<a%20href="'+url+'"style="float:right;
color:green;padding:5px;">[%20Removed%20Ranged%20Price%20result%20'+(j++)+'%20]</a>';}return;})();

As per usual, create a new bookmark, copy and paste the above code in the location field, remove the X from javaXscript at the beggining of the code, name the bookmarklet eBayPRfilter (or whatever you want), and good to go.

It seemed to work when I minimally tested it.

[eburtonlab]

@berserkerplanet

Nice! I like it!

That one is now in my toolbar.

Thanks, berserkerplanet!

[berserkerplanet]

Cool. Let me know if it breaks or otherwise doesn't work. (the dsc/sch/grid/list stuff got messy but I think I covered all the possibilities, or at least the ones I found)

The replacement text can be infinitely customized to suit. I usually prefer really small fonts for those replacements, but didn't include that in the bookmarklet for simplicity and universality. Vrinda is a great font for those purposes but no sure if it is a default font or one of the numerous ones I've added.

To implement, near the end of the code change     color:green;     to    color:green;font-family:Vrinda;

or whatever font color you like and whatever font you prefer and have on your machine.

To smush the height of the replacement lines down a bit , change  padding: 5px;    to    padding:0px 5px;

[eburtonlab]

@berserkerplanet

Looks good to me -- here's what I see with the basic setup that you provided.

Before:

 After:

[berserkerplanet]

That example certainly looks a lot easier to visually scan.

Quite similar to what my SellerSnubber GreaseMonkey script does - it keys on seller names instead of ranged price attributes, and search results look similar.

Difference is that it automatically runs at end of page load for any sch or dsc search pages. I suppose the Ranged Price code could be rolled into the script to deal with both issues, but probably won't bother since a) I don't really care about ranged prices results - don't run into them often for the searches I do and b) nobody else would use the script, so meh.

[no_zero369]

Oops wrong thread!  My bad! 

[gnd31]

Using CHrome and found I could create a bookmark but no field named location.

Can someone post step by step to install this app.

Thanks!

[eburtonlab]

@gnd31 

Using Chrome on a PC, create a bookmark, then right click on the icon and choose edit. berserkerplanet's code goes in the URL field (remember to remove that 'X'). You should be all set.

[gnd31]

Did exactly that

Doesn't work!

[eburtonlab]

@gnd31 

I just tried it in Chrome, and it worked for me. Make sure you are copying and pasting all of berserkerplanet's code into that URL field (minus that 'X' in 'javaXscript'). Then open up a search that has price variation listings visible; click on the bookmarklet, and the variation listings on that page should be removed. If you reload the page (or go to another page) you will need to click that bookmarklet again -- it's a one time remover only.