Completed items search no longer working 99% of the time. How am I supposed to know an items value?

[theofficefan4life]

Am I the only one who's noticed that for the longest time now, if you do a search for "completed" listings to see what a particular item sold for, eBay won't display the results? But yet if you look at the active listings, there will be plenty of the item you searched for! I am sure that like most resellers we DEPEND on the completed listing values to gauge an items worth! EBAY PLEASE FIX THIS!!!!!!!!!

[jason_incognito]

not only it's worth, but it's likelyhood to sell.

[theofficefan4life]

Exactly. 

[18704d]

Completeds have always worked for me.. even recently.

What exact problems have you encountered?

Thanks,

Lynn

[futuretomorrow]

@theofficefan4life

You may need to restart your browser or clear your cache. Maybe even go as far as trying another browser and/or restart your computer. Where are you located? I'd hate to think eBay has adjusted this using geolocation data / ip addresses as ridiculous as that may seem and some people are still affected but I simply cannot put anything past a company where employees don't even know what a phishing email looks like nor do they know their own eBay addresses that eBay sends various communications from to buyers and sellers.

If you're in North America, please continue reading...

eBay backpedalled on this weeks ago after many people alerted them of it's real impact (ebay doesn't think these things through) and that the "suggested items" they were serving were often not only the wrong model but in many cases not even the same brand. In my use case "model" and "brand" is referring to footwear.

Let's recap:

1. I just tested this repeatedly in Google Chrome, BRAVE, Mozilla Firefox and Opera for Mac and I'm using macOS Sierra 10.12.6. It works exactly the way it did before and I cannot replicate what you're seeing on your end.

2. Given the number of times I've tested this before and now after seeing your post I've also failed to replicate the "no longer working 99% of the time" claim. It works for me every single time I use "completed listings". 

3. Every sold item that I could clearly see the sold price for let me drill all the way down to "see original listing" and when I clicked on that link that's exactly what I saw, the original listing.

I'd follow the advice I gave at the start of my comment and then call eBay if that doesn't resolve it to find out why this is working for me and possibly others.

[theofficefan4life]

There have been multiple occasions where if I do a completed listings search there will be 0 results, but if I look at the current listings there might be 20 of the same item actively listed. It's beyond coincidental that all of a sudden 20 people have the same item currently listed but for the past however long eBay keeps completed listing records there wasn't a single item listed. This doesn't happen all the time with every item. I'm exaggerating when I say 99% of the time, but it's definitely happening a lot more lately, at least for me. Like a lot of people on ebay I rely on completed listings so I know whether I can make a profit or not, let alone if a given item is even in demand.

[theofficefan4life]

Thanks for taking the time to give a lengthy response. I use my android for the majority of the the time to do completed searches. But I also routinely use my CCleaner app to clear my Chrome cache and still have the same problem. I intenionally have GPS location turned off on my phone because I don't like the idea of Google tracking me everywhere I go, (even though they still probably do), but I wonder of having location disabled is part of the problem then?

[theofficefan4life]

So just so I understand your solution correctly, it should just be a matter of installing a different browser and routinely clear the cache? Because I do have a laptop in addition to my android but I use my phone the majority of the time for searches.

[futuretomorrow]

@theofficefan4life

I just reinstalled the eBay app on an iPhone 5s running 11.2.6 in BRAVE for mobile and it works the same for me as it does on my laptop which is where I tested it before. You shouldn't need to use your laptop for this specifically and it should work across all device types but I am wondering now if your location settings being turned off is the problem?

Are you using the eBay app or a browser? It seems like the browser so what happens when you use the eBay app?

I'd use BRAVE by the way if you're worried about Google tracking you. It's my main browser on all my devices for exactly the reason you mentioned. Brave and Duckduckgo are blessings from the gods, trust me.

Try another browser, try with location settings turned on, then try the app if you haven't already and if neither of those work I'd call eBay to see if they can walk you though further steps I don't have the ability of fully testing here from home. It would also be odd that I do eBay's job for them though I genuinely like trying to help people solve a few problems if I can but this might require deeper testing to fully isolate the cause of the problem.

[futuretomorrow]

@theofficefan4life

Out of curiosity did you make changes to the distance or location settings in eBay? If so, I can see where it's maybe trying to serve you completed listings but based on those changes you're getting zero results because maybe the item you're searching for doesn't have that many completed listings to display based on said changes.

To test this, try searching for something you know there's thousands of listings for like "adidas nmd", "nike presto" etc. It's the only other thing I could think of after my last comment. 

[theofficefan4life]

Never heard of Brave, I will definitely look into it. I only use ebay on my phones Chrome browser. I cant stand the user interface of ebays app. I absolutely hate it. So I always use Chrome. But I will look into Brave, thanks for the tips!

[gracieallen01]

What with the current 'race to the bottom' in pricing on ebay, why would you want to use their data to guesstimate the worth/value of something?  That would only tell you the amount for what something MAY have sold.

You want a more realistic guess of 'value', do an Internet image and text search - it's called research.  Even Kovel's or Schroders is more in line with the 'value' of something (they are books, too).

[futuretomorrow]

@theofficefan4life

No worries. BRAVE was created by Brendan Eich and Brandon Bondy. Eich was the inventor of Javascript so BRAVE was immediately big news in tech circles when it was announced. You may like what you discover. Good luck. I hope you find a solution soon. 

[hioctane62]

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@gracieallen01 wrote:

What with the current 'race to the bottom' in pricing on ebay, why would you want to use their data to guesstimate the worth/value of something?  That would only tell you the amount for what something MAY have sold.

You want a more realistic guess of 'value', do an Internet image and text search - it's called research.  Even Kovel's or Schroders is more in line with the 'value' of something (they are books, too).

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The value at Kovel's and the value on ebay are two very different things. We all know that people don't come here looking for high end auction house prices. If you are going to sell something on ebay, you'd want to see prices that are being realized ON ebay.

[gracieallen01]

Silly me.  Here I thought he was looking for the 'value' of something.    Of course, anyone can sell anything they want for whatever price they want - no matter what something is worth.  It happens online all the time.

Sometimes I think that ebay would rather people paid buyers to take their goods.