Does eBay Sales Data Transparency Go Too Far?

[kosmosattik]

After six years of selling on eBay off and on, today was the first time I had the inclination to drill down through a feedback page into somebody else's sales.  That was in exploring an issue in another thread.  It struck me that eBay is unduly and excessively opening one's kimono.  Shouldn't the feedback page be sufficient?

If you went to a flea market or a mom-and-pop brick and mortar and asked them to open their sales books so you can see if they sold the same product to someone else for less, what do you think the response would be?  Try that next time you go to go to car dealer, LOL.  There could be good reasons which are nobody else's business.

This isn't of particular concern to me since I don't often have more than one of a kind to sell but it does come up from time to time.  I can see where this might be an issue for sellers that frequently do auctions or best offers on identical items.

[lamber9347]

Your analogy is unfortunately apples to oranges. This is online selling platform and not the same as a random flea market vendor or a B&M store. 

Anyone who sells online knows that previous sales will remain visible for a limited time, that's how online selling works....

[coolections]

I look at it as a good thing for sellers. They can see what others have sold for and list appropriately to actually get a sale. If only the complainers about no sales would do that instead of just randomly picking a price that no one would agree to pay.

[kosmosattik]

@coolections

I'm talking about drilling down into one seller's list of sales.  Getting a handle on the what the market will bear is best done by searching for things like what you want to sell and checking off "sold" under "advanced".  

[kosmosattik]

@lamber9347

I'm aware of the apples and oranges difference otherwise I would not have raised the issue.  The question is why it is not apples to apples.

Whether on-line or walking into a store, the business relationship is the same--somebody has something to sell and somebody might want to buy it.  The only notable differences are 1) the quasi-anonymity of the on-line transaction, and that goes away as soon as the seller prints a label and the buyer gets your return name and address and 2) the buyer is working off pictures and descriptions rather than inspecting the physical item.  Regardless, how does any of that justify opening somebody's sales book?

Even looking at just that one guy's sales records to explore an issue in this forum I had the uneasy feeling of looking at stuff that was none of my business. 

[downunder-61]

So long as no one can see the ''cost price'' of my item, I could care less what they can see. But that's just me

[richard1rst]

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@kosmosattik wrote:

@coolections

I'm talking about drilling down into one seller's list of sales.  Getting a handle on the what the market will bear is best done by searching for things like what you want to sell and checking off "sold" under "advanced".  

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Well, if you mean the Sold items list you can get be aware that eBay does not list every sale for any particular seller.. If I sell several of the same items at the same price eBay will only show one of the sales, not all of them. So you would have no way of knowing how many I sold and, by extension, what my total sales figures are.

The intent of the list is to show WHAT the items are selling for (price) as a guide to other sellers to help them pick a market appropriate price. It is not intended to show how many have sold.

It is possible to have your feedback page not show what item the sale was for and, by extension, what the dollar value of the sale was.

Likewise everyone here knows that not everyone leaves feedback so the list derived from that page is at best incomplete.

And as others have noted you knew, or should have known this, going in. So if it bothers you well - stop selling.

[kosmosattik]

@richard1rst 

I had several points to make in response, but I'll be selective for a reason I'll describe.

"And as others have noted you knew, or should have known this, going in.  So if it bothers you well - stop selling."

I have serious doubts "others" even understand what function I was talking about.  Scoping out prior sales in order to price an item makes sense.  I do it.  Everybody does it.  But pricing based on the sales of one particular seller makes no sense.  As for your observation, I was not talking about your 570 feedbacks in the last 6 months.  I was talking about drilling down into your 844 sales in the last 90 days.  I'm aware that feedbacks can be privatized.

The above quoted statement is absurd on its face.  If you cast your mind back to the first day you were on eBay you knew next to nothing going in.  And with eBay's constant beta tests slam-bammed into production it is a constant learning curve, often to the worse.

Here's an example.  A function was eliminated from this forum very recently.  Do you know what it is?  I'll tell you.  It used to be if you fumble-fingered off a post page mid-typing, then backed up to it. you could reload what you had typed.   Not today.   I'm rapidly losing interest with this subject as a consequence.  Thus my selective response.

"So if it bothers you well - stop selling."

It doesn't bother me as much as a lot of other things in eBay.  I will say this:  If I were starting from scratch I would take one of a couple of other platforms for a spin.  At your provocation I did a quick survey.  Some, which shall go nameless, have much lower fees for a "hobby seller" such as myself and they're traffic numbers have risen to pretty decent levels.  Why not switch now?  I just sell personal items and collectibles that have been hanging around, some for decades, that we no longer want or need.  My higher ticket "inventory" is depleted--I'm more or less in clearance mode.  It really is a hobby now--like writing this post I suppose.  Going through aggravation of somebody else's learning curve isn't worth it for a few bucks.  If you have not done a survey of alternatives recently it might be worth your while.

[richard1rst]

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f you cast your mind back to the first day you were on eBay you knew next to nothing going in.

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Actually having been a business owner for decades before joining eBay I did do a significant amount of due diligence going in. And I always had the option of walking away if it didn't go as planned - just as you have. Something about Knowing the things you can not change.

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As for your observation, I was not talking about your 570 feedbacks in the last 6 months. I was talking about drilling down into your 844 sales in the last 90 days

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Which actually proves my point about the publicly available information being incomplete. I have had well over 1000 sales in the last 90 days (No I will not tell you exactly how many).  Oh, 575 feedbacks, plus 10 removals or revisions.