eBay

vintageemporium280 · ‎06-29-2017

Since many, most or all of us are finding that buyers must now clickon a link to get the full item description (that we work so hard to make interesting and complete,) my question is, who thought this was a good idea and does anyone really benefit?

The sellers are getting screwed by unnecessary returns, the buyers are frustrated by having to leave the main item page, and ultimately, eBay loses money, sellers and buyers. Why?

Ebay, are you listening? **Tap, tap** Is this thing on?

kavi1030 · ‎07-03-2017

@kavi1030 wrote:
The question is WHY do they want to have a button to find the full description? Does this help Ebay save Space on the website?
Sellers PAY for their store and or fees. The seller should be the one to design it.

This would be a very good question for this weeks WED Chat with Ebay Blues. I will try to be there.

vintageemporium280 · ‎07-03-2017

Got an email from eBay asking why I haven't picked any of the replies as a final solution.

I will not be marking this as solved until someone from corporate gives an answers as to why they are doing this against everyone's wishes, buyers and sellers alike.

tenbiksewingembroideryitems · ‎07-03-2017

I agree, it is SO frustrating!!

It opens in another tab, then you have tons of tabs opening and don't know which is which.

I suspect we will lose this battle as all others.

victorjunkman55 · ‎07-03-2017

Should you ask eBay why this is, They will give you the standard **bleep** line, "Because sellers wanted it...." When it fact sellers have little to say about anything around here. Good Luck to you.

Anonymous · ‎07-03-2017

Was just wondering, I fixed it on my Listing But How are the Buyers and shoppers seeing this? Do they have to clean their cache as well?

kavi1030 · ‎07-04-2017

@Anonymous wrote:
Was just wondering, I fixed it on my Listing But How are the Buyers and shoppers seeing this? Do they have to clean their cache as well?

I have not cleaned my cache for a couple days now. I looked at a couple items of yours and I see the description just fine. No description button to click.

marbles_by_r3 · ‎07-06-2017

There is one major software issue with cache cleanining and this *unfortunate* problem, however. I've been working with Apple support on trying to clear Safari's cache on a new 2017 iPad running the latest iOS, and it will not clear some persistent cookies, including eBay. They are aware of the issue and MAY fix it in iOS 11, now in beta, which just got released for field testing. We'll see. But there may be many, many mobile devices out there - especially newer iPhones and iPads, my daughter's was the same way, clogged with unerasable data - that have this same issue. Switching to another browser is one possible solution, but old habits...

Meanwhile it sure would be nice if eBay would just restore full item descriptions, wouldn't it?

timemachine777 · ‎07-06-2017

@vintageemporium280 wrote:
Since many, most or all of us are finding that buyers must now clickon a link to get the full item description (that we work so hard to make interesting and complete,) my question is, who thought this was a good idea and does anyone really benefit?

The sellers are getting screwed by unnecessary returns, the buyers are frustrated by having to leave the main item page, and ultimately, eBay loses money, sellers and buyers. Why?

Ebay, are you listening? **Tap, tap** Is this thing on?

eBay still benefits because they get to keep the FVF fees from an SNAD claim.

timemachine777 · ‎07-06-2017

@miraclebuyandsell wrote:
Being forced to open a separate page to "See Full Item Description" is a unnecessary inconvenience for both buyers AND sellers. Why was this unwanted change instituted? Ebay: one step forward, two steps back.

eBay wants to make sure that what buyers are seeing on mobile devices, buyers are also seeing on Laptops, and desktops. They are trying to make everything compatible across the board. They said this test will be active for several weeks. What exactly they want to achieve, only they really know.

timemachine777 · ‎07-06-2017

@vintageemporium280 wrote:
Since many, most or all of us are finding that buyers must now clickon a link to get the full item description (that we work so hard to make interesting and complete,) my question is, who thought this was a good idea and does anyone really benefit?

The sellers are getting screwed by unnecessary returns, the buyers are frustrated by having to leave the main item page, and ultimately, eBay loses money, sellers and buyers. Why?

Ebay, are you listening? **Tap, tap** Is this thing on?

I will say this. A lot, and I mean a lot of buyer's on this board this past couple of weeks are really PO'd about the hassle it's creating for them.

Also the sellers are PO'd also, about all the possible SNAD claims that they might get along with the defects to their selling accounts.

*eponymous* · ‎07-06-2017

eBay announced everything about it nearly 2 years ago. eBay will take part of the description enterd by the seller - the first 800 characters - and that is what will appear in the truncated (mobile) version (and all you need to do to restore the normal view on a desktop/laptop is clear your cookies - this is a browser issue, not an eBay lack of thought issue) on mobile devices.

Sellers will be forced to either have whatever they enter as the first 800 characters, such as "this teapot belonged to my granmother, who immigrated to the United States from Ireland", or the seller can be concise and use the available characters to actually describe their items, e.g. "solid copper teapot w/lid, watertight solder joints, 10" dia., approx. 100 yr old, no brand".

Mobile platforms are both the now - and the future.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage. ~ Anais Nin

timemachine777 · ‎07-06-2017

@*eponymous* wrote:
eBay announced everything about it nearly 2 years ago. eBay will take part of the description enterd by the seller - the first 800 characters - and that is what will appear in the truncated (mobile) version (and all you need to do to restore the normal view on a desktop/laptop is clear your cookies - this is a browser issue, not an eBay lack of thought issue) on mobile devices.

Sellers will be forced to either have whatever they enter as the first 800 characters, such as "this teapot belonged to my granmother, who immigrated to the United States from Ireland", or the seller can be concise and use the available characters to actually describe their items, e.g. "solid copper teapot w/lid, watertight solder joints, 10" dia., approx. 100 yr old, no brand".

Mobile platforms are both the now - and the future.

Is this what your talking about?

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinformation/news/sprupd16/view-item.html

View Item description summaries for better mobile viewing

The new View Item description for mobile features a clean and consistent item description summary. eBay derives a brief, 250-character, text-only description summary from your full item description. This provides relevant listing information that allows shoppers to make fast, informed buying decisions.

For the summary, we determine which content in your full item description is most relevant by identifying keywords that shoppers use to search for your items. If your full item description uses basic HTML, CSS or text-only descriptions, and is no more than 800 characters, we will display the full description when buyers view your item description on their mobile devices.

Because the new View Item description summary is automatically generated by eBay, no action is required from you. If you want to highlight information that isn’t captured in our auto-generated summaries, you can choose the specific listing information you want to show using more advanced HTML options. This functionality is ideal for items that have unique characteristics, such as arts, antiques and collectibles.

BTW...If I remember right, the character count includes the line between each row of text.

ivorywire559 · ‎07-06-2017

It's gotten so easy to do things like buy on eBay on a mobile that it's an easy decision to make. Much of the sales on eBay are from mobile devices, and it would be a mistake to ignore where a lot of the business for this site is coming from. Consistency across devices is desired too. This is why phones and laptops and desktops and tablets begin to have similar specs and software begins to merge. We aren't even nearly finished yet. This process just takes time.

Still, some ideas are just plain bad and unecessary. This is one of them. This is why 100+ year old companies that were once worth billions go out of business. There's always someone influencial with bad ideas in a company. Doesn't take much to ruin everything. We don't like this, so it should be fixed immediately. Maybe companies that don't listen to their customers deserve to fail.

gramophone-georg · ‎07-06-2017

@country-road-collectibles wrote:
My listing's descriptions were being hidden too, but only on google chrome, not when I used mozilla firefox. So I cleared my chrome browswer's history, cache, etc. Now the description is back to normal for me. Try clearing your history and see if that helps.

I can count the exact amount of times I have needed to do this in order to make things work right on Amazon, Etsy, Target, Shop Goodwill, and my own little startup shoestring site combined on less than one finger.

The '90s are over.

Chaos is NOT an "industry standard".

gramophone-georg · ‎07-06-2017

@vintageemporium280 wrote:
Since many, most or all of us are finding that buyers must now clickon a link to get the full item description (that we work so hard to make interesting and complete,) my question is, who thought this was a good idea and does anyone really benefit?

The sellers are getting screwed by unnecessary returns, the buyers are frustrated by having to leave the main item page, and ultimately, eBay loses money, sellers and buyers. Why?

Ebay, are you listening? **Tap, tap** Is this thing on?

I'll take "who doesn't pay eBay any money" for $500, Trebek.

Chaos is NOT an "industry standard".