eBay

dejavudolly · ‎06-13-2022

Why were eBay's SEARCH Categories destroyed? The DOLL Category is completely messed up. Been a consistent eBay buyer since 2008 and always found what I was looking for. Ebay searches are now completely dysfunctional. What computer programmer puts the Doll Category under "Collectibles & Art" ??? It's like I'm no longer searching on an English speaking Website. I was Ebay's biggest fan - NOT ANY MORE, sad.

eburtonlab · ‎06-13-2022

What are you looking for that you cannot find?

I must admit, I do not spend much time browsing by category. I usually search by keyword. If necessary, I narrow my results to a specific category, then use the filters available in that category to narrow further.

Using keyword, category and filter options seems to be working to find what I am looking for with a minimum amount of time spent going through extraneous items I have no interest in. And I do not spend any time wondering why a subcategory is located under one category instead of another category.

Yes, it is annoying when eBay changes things around and things are not where they were before. I assume that eBay does that from time to time because eBay expects to make more money under the new system rather than the old system, despite the disruption of the change.

I also get annoyed when the supermarket moves things around to different aisles, but I generally can still find things eventually even if they are not where I expect them to be at first. I don't spend much time wondering why the supermarket did what it did, I assume it has a reason or it would not have done what it did.

melda58 · ‎06-13-2022

There is absolutely a category "Dolls and Bears". There is no "Dolls" subcategory under Collectibles and Art on my screen. So I'm not sure what you are referring to.

Rita

sonomabarn67 · ‎06-13-2022

"I also get annoyed when the supermarket moves things around to different aisles"

Yes, like Trader Joe's. And then they insist on walking you to the item like you are in kindergarten and have not mastered language or simple directional skills yet. 🙄

completepuzzle · ‎06-13-2022

argon38 · ‎06-14-2022

@eburtonlab wrote:
I also get annoyed when the supermarket moves things around to different aisles, but I generally can still find things eventually even if they are not where I expect them to be at first. I don't spend much time wondering why the supermarket did what it did, I assume it has a reason or it would not have done what it did.

I feel the difference is that the supermarket is moving its own stock around, whereas eBay is moving other people's stuff. And those other people are the ones paying for the shelf space.

eburtonlab · ‎06-14-2022

I feel the difference is that the supermarket is moving its own stock around, whereas eBay is moving other people's stuff. And those other people are the ones paying for the shelf space.

In this analogy, that would be a valid reason for sellers to be upset with eBay for moving the equivalent of shelves and signage. And certainly I can understand a seller being upset with having to go through the trouble to provide new item-specifics for many listings (multiple times, in some cases) when eBay reorganizes a category, particularly when the transition is not handled smoothly (to say the least).

But that is a little different than a buyer asserting that search categories have been "destroyed", and that searches are "completely dysfunctional". I can certainly think of some searches that are harder to accomplish under the new system than they were previously, but also many searches that are easier now. If there is a search that is difficult now, perhaps someone can suggest an another way to accomplish the same goal or get a similar result. Some might even consider it a challenge.

Not all changes are beneficial to each user, and eBay can certainly do things that make it harder for a user to accomplish some task or to find some item. Presumably eBay thinks the changes are a net positive even if not everyone agrees; eBay may ultimately be wrong about that, but eBay has an incentive to match up buyers and sellers, and eBay has a lot of data about how such match-ups work (or don't work).

The shelves have been rearranged, and the signage is different, but all the same items are still on the shelves, somewhere. And unlike the supermarket, I can press a button to rearrange the shelves myself, and make the items out of reach on the top shelf reappear on the bottom shelf instead.

argon38 · ‎06-14-2022

@eburtonlab wrote:
And unlike the supermarket, I can press a button to rearrange the shelves myself, and make the items out of reach on the top shelf reappear on the bottom shelf instead.

Yes, but you're an eBay wizard! (It's true, although you're too modest to accept it). I'm just struck by the sheer number of recent posts from people who feel disoriented by various changes, and don't necessarily have the time or patience to look for workarounds. Something is wrong if so many people are feeling frustrated. No doubt the changes are desirable from eBay's standpoint, but the implementation does seem to me to have been poorly handled.

maxine*j · ‎06-14-2022

@argon38 wrote:
... I'm just struck by the sheer number of recent posts from people who feel disoriented by various changes, and don't necessarily have the time or patience to look for workarounds. Something is wrong if so many people are feeling frustrated. No doubt the changes are desirable from eBay's standpoint, but the implementation does seem to me to have been poorly handled.

It's just that eBay members have a place to complain about what actually happens everywhere they go, so to speak.

My banks, credit card companies, utility companies, medical providers, favorite on-line shopping sites, and you-name-it, all change their websites every whipstitch. All the info is still there, but instead of using a green button on the right to see my "X, I now have to find the yellow button on the left to click to see it. It was once three clicks to navigate to "Z" but now it's five. What was once a prominent feature has now been relegated to a puny icon. Dancing rats and exploding hats have taken the place of the menu for "Y," so I have to hunt around for it amid the droppings and debris.

I could go on, but everyone knews exactly what I mean. But none of those places provide a public forum for my gripes about changes that annoy me. Only eBay does that.

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eburtonlab · ‎06-14-2022

I'm just struck by the sheer number of recent posts from people who feel disoriented by various changes, and don't necessarily have the time or patience to look for workarounds.

No doubt there are other frustrated people that do not post at all; perhaps some others were frustrated by the old system and never posted about it here. The folks that have complaints about the current changes are represented here because they are already posting here, and they are motivated by their current frustration.

If one has the patience to find one's way to the community pages and air grievances, one can probably find some advice and suggestions, whether it is sought after or not.

Something is wrong if so many people are feeling frustrated.

Often the answer to frustration has less to do with wizardry and more to do with cultivating a willingness to try something different than what you are accustomed to doing. Sometimes that means asking questions and considering answers from an unexpected source. Or looking at a problem from a different perspective. Or experimenting by changing one factor at a time and observing the results.

Do that enough and people will start calling you a wizard. And possibly a few other names along the way as well.

maxine*j · ‎06-15-2022

Another factor, I think:

Many, if not most, people are now using smart-phones and tablets and the like. All they know how to do is touch a screen or icon. They are passive. They are not what I would call computer users. I left-click, right-click, pull down menus, look for navigation tools, and in other ways explore to see what I can do, or to figure out how to do what I've decided I want or must do. When I got my first infernal computin' machine 41 years ago, it functioned only if one were curious and active, did some programming, engaged the brain. Now, people have only to touch a little picture and engage their emotions.

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argon38 · ‎06-15-2022

@maxine*j wrote:
Many, if not most, people are now using smart-phones and tablets and the like. All they know how to do is touch a screen or icon. They are passive. They are not what I would call computer users. I left-click, right-click, pull down menus, look for navigation tools, and in other ways explore to see what I can do, or to figure out how to do what I've decided I want or must do.

If I recall, though, one of the complaints regarding the category changes - leaving aside bizarre nonsense like "topographical" vs "non-topographical" postcards - came from dedicated long-term buyers, frustrated that their carefully crafted saved searches had been rendered useless. So I don't think it's entirely a question of lack of initiative in using the site. OP has been a consistent buyer since 2008, and is now finding the search experience more frustrating than before. I hesitate to believe that it's entirely his or her fault.

maxine*j · ‎06-15-2022

@argon38 wrote:
@maxine*j wrote:
Many, if not most, people are now using smart-phones and tablets and the like. All they know how to do is touch a screen or icon. They are passive. They are not what I would call computer users. I left-click, right-click, pull down menus, look for navigation tools, and in other ways explore to see what I can do, or to figure out how to do what I've decided I want or must do.
If I recall, though, one of the complaints regarding the category changes - leaving aside bizarre nonsense like "topographical" vs "non-topographical" postcards - came from dedicated long-term buyers, frustrated that their carefully crafted saved searches had been rendered useless. So I don't think it's entirely a question of lack of initiative in using the site. OP has been a consistent buyer since 2008, and is now finding the search experience more frustrating than before. I hesitate to believe that it's entirely his or her fault.

I'm not finding fault with any individual. I thought it would be obvious that I was speaking generally, as I had previously and in response to others' general comments. But, as always, thank you for the correction

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argon38 · ‎06-15-2022

@maxine*j wrote:
But, as always, thank you for the correction

What correction? You have to let me express a respectful independent view every now and again. 😀

Anyway, I didn't mean you were finding fault with the OP. I was using the OP as an example of how even experienced buyers seem to be having problems with eBay search that they didn't have before. So some fault may lie with the search tool itself.

eburtonlab · ‎06-15-2022

If I recall, though, one of the complaints regarding the category changes - leaving aside bizarre nonsense like "topographical" vs "non-topographical" postcards - came from dedicated long-term buyers, frustrated that their carefully crafted saved searches had been rendered useless.

I am certainly sympathetic to users that have saved searches that no longer work due to category changes, though the recent changes are minimal compared to past changes that eBay has made, including when wildcard searches were done away with and the search syntax was changed completely. Overnight, hundreds of my bookmarked searches simply failed to return any results at all.

Though I do miss wildcard searches, I can't blame eBay for changing the clunky old search syntax. If you wanted to search for any three of the Three Stooges by name back then you had to have a search like this:

three stooges @2 larry moe curly shemp joe

Where the "@2" meant "any three" of the following keywords. So if you wanted just any one out of five, you would use "@0". Why N-1? I'm sure it made sense to a programmer at the time.

But that digression aside, many of the current complaints do not seem to be regarding old saved searches that no longer work correctly (though there are some of those). The complaints are that the search process is broken and that new searches are impossible.

eBay's poor implementation of the category changes has contributed to this. In some cases, the category pages were not updated to reflect the changes, and contained links to categories that were since removed, often leading users to dead ends.

But lots of folks were complaining not that searching was difficult or counterintuitive, or that they were stuck or that links were broken, but were actually insisting that it was literally impossible to search for certain things. There were many posts about how it was impossible to search for a certain scale or gauge of model train without getting every other scale at the same time, about how eBay has made it impossible to search for a certain type of doll without getting every other unwanted type of doll showing up in the results.

If a significant segment of the eBay-using folks are convinced that searching is impossible, that is a problem for eBay even if they are actually mistaken in that belief, because they simply may not bother trying to search a different way. And for every one that posts here, there are probably a hundred that do not post or may not even know about the community pages at all.

I cannot do much to convince folks that are not reading here that such searches are not impossible, but perhaps I can persuade at least some of the folks that are reading here. First by showing that such searches are indeed possible by providing working examples, and second by convincing them that I am not, in fact, a wizard, and that they do not need to be wizards or possess arcane knowledge to perform such searches themselves.