I wanted to see if anyone could answer this from an old thread here:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Report-eBay-Technical-Issues/Images-for-items-not-showing-up-in-search...
Instead of ignoring the "Main Image" outright for listings with variations can't a bit field just be added and a checkbox on the upload images page maybe to always return the Main Image instead of most popular?
