This is my rant as there has been many problems with the search feature for some time. I’ve made many help requests to technical support and pointed out issues to them where things, just did not work, that I have given up.
I have been a member since 1997 when eBay was only in the US. I’m also in IT/software development who has a reputation of having a very good memory (not photographic but it’s up there).
When I first became a member, the search was great. Back then I could do wildcard searches, search all categories, etc. Somewhere in the mid 2000’s it changed and has been going downhill since! A lot of the features I see added to the screen are for pure show and zero function. In some case the functionality has been removed. I understand that things change, but I expect for the better.
My first example of how things were better is when I was looking for a car battery to fit one of my farming machines. It takes all the possible combinations of a NS40 battery in which there are 7 possible version (NS40Z MF, NS40ZL MF, NS40ZLB MF, NS40ZLS MF, NS40ZS MF, NS40ZLSX MF, NS40ZLX MF).
I used to be able to enter in the search field “NS40*” to search for everything beginning with NS40. I can’t do that anymore as it was removed over 15 years ago! The outcry back then from the community was large but the community was much smaller in size and eBay was not as large (there where alternative auction sites).
Today, to do this I need to explicitly search for every model and the combination that can be entered. Because people don’t list the same that takes the 7 items to 21 (NS40Z MF also includes NS40ZMF and NS40Z-MF). Doing this you end up with a search that eBay cannot process.
One search feature I really miss is the ability to search across all categories within 100 kilometres of my post/zip code for all used items with no bids and under $500. Yes, this was possible 20 years ago and it allowed me to find many of the items I collect.
Another issue I have seen is that I can get different results depending on how I search (from email, from ebay home page, from advance search). In all cases it is the same search criteria. I’ve contacted technical support several times trying to give them the details to reproduce, but contacting them direct also seems to be a hard thing to do. I gave up on chasing this and am unsure if it still exists.
Today I get a screen where I have no access to any search tools what so ever! This screen is filtered by monitor screen size, condition and location (within 100km of my post code/zip). I did get the results, but lost access to all the filters so I had no way of changing them. Also note how much white space there is (far left/right sides). There are 13 items that I believe if the page took up the available space, all items would appear on 1 page not 2. It seems that the page was design for mobile use only!
All these latest issues seem to stem from the changes to “filter buttons”, which are terrible to use. They keep on resetting themselves when you want to make a change and I find it hard to see what filters I have active.
As I mentioned at the start, this is my rant. I have given up on supplying details to technical support as they don’t seem to listen. Buggs still exist, more bugs are been introduced and features remove. ☹️
