Thanks for the tag and heads up. I honestly had no idea this was going on until you tagged me. I hadn't had a chance to check my listings if they are affected but if the posts here are correct I'm sure I'm being affected too. To clarify, the Thumbnail of the Gallery Pic shown in search results is showing the correct photo as intended. But when you click into the listing from the search results, the page loads as intended showing the correct Gallery Pic for a split second then changes to a random photo in your listing, correct?
I recall something like this happened before once (maybe twice, can't remember). But those times I recall it also affected what's showing in the thumbnail Gallery Pic was also loading the wrong photo in the search results. I can't remember if it was also doing that in the Storefront page too or not.
A few things I noticed about this just now. Let's use a listing from @mcdougle4248 as an example, https://www.ebay.com/itm/205106150909
When I click her listing from search results, the listing always consistently changes the photo with the Red Bull. The photo changing is actually a by product of (more importantly) the variation automatically choosing "Red Bull #2" for you. Typically when you go into a variation listing, no variations are chosen for you and you are at at the "Select" level of each dropdown menu. It is now not the case. Please also note that the URL link I provided to the listing has been altered by me. The original URL link from the search field for this listing is currently https://www.ebay.com/itm/205106150909?itmmeta=01JD86DPMWMBM9BER0A6NYMV4W&hash=item2fc1477dfd%3Ag%3As...
All those excess characters points you directly to that Red Bull #2 variation. That's why I chopped all that extra URL off to get to the "Parent or root level" of the listing where no choice is selected. I've used those specific variation URLs in the past when buyers complain to me that my listing is broken and they can't or don't know how to choose the size/color. I just give them the exact variation URL and say "click on this." So all ebay needs to do is change their URL hyperlink to the parent level of the listing and chop off all those extra variations characters in the search results pages.
Anyway, I'm going out on a limb here and saying that the "automatic variation choice" is an intended process, but it's possible it's not implementing correctly. I'm aware I could be dead wrong here. The logic behind this is similar to the logic back then of why they are doing this.
Using @mcdougle4248 's listing as an example again, you can see many types of variations in her listing. If a buyer searches "Cowboy boot Christmas Ornament Red", ebay wants to point the buyer as closest as possible to the item/variation they might want. So ebay will intentionally "help" the buyer bypass all the other variations and push them straight to the "Red Bull #2" since they used "Red" in their search field. If the buyer searched "Cowboy boot Christmas Ornament Bear" it's likely ebay will push them directly to the "Coca Cola Bear" variation. Ebay is trying to lead the horse as close to the water as possible. Ebay did this before with our listings, I would search for "Black Shirt" and my listing with 20 different colored shirts would pop up but ebay would ONLY show the black shirt photo in place of my Gallery Pic and auto choose the Black Shirt for you. But as I said, it's likely this implementation is broken and thus the randomness.
kyle@ebay This might explain my surge of one type of complaint/returns I've been getting. Buyers have been complaining that I "sent the wrong color/variation". But when I check and after communication we see that it turns out they BOUGHT the wrong color/variation that they originally intended. Perhaps they saw a Black Shirt in photo of my listing in their search results but then it changed to Green when they clicked into my listing and just bought it thinking they got Black (but they actually bought Green).
This issue definitely needs to be addressed ASAP. We all already have an uphill battle this holiday season with returns and customer service. Please don't be a part of ebay adding more work to our pile. Thanks.
