Low to high sorting - why doesn't it sort??

[bluestskiestradingpost]

As a seller, we keep an eye on the competition when selling our items.   So we do a low to hight sort to see how we stand with other prices.  There are times we lower our prices on items when needed to compete with other sellers.  So I sort low to high, I see small parts, then a seller with the same thing (at a higher price) shows up, then our lower price item is at the bottom when it should show up first.  What is going on with the sorting?? 

Tom

[dhbookds]

items should show up in order of price + shipping..........  assuming all items are equal.......  if you aren't seeing that, can you give a link to the search that doesn't show it correctly?

[southern*sweet*tea]

Were any of the higher priced items promoted listings?

[bluestskiestradingpost]

Even when someone shows free shipping at a higher cost, our lower price item is still below. I read something about Ebay's new "good until cancelled" thing and thought I saw something about price issues, but I still don't quite understand what they are doing.
The item I was just sorting was an 800 lb meat grinder with no mention of price (we will ship it by LTL freight). The competition that has a higher price offers only local pickup, but his shows up before our lower price. I know that buyers probably won't scroll far down the list and see ours, I know people have a short attention span.

[ebuycdn]

It's because your shipping cost isn't specified. In lowest first sort order, eBay sorts all listings where the total cost is known first, then below those it begins to sort listings with unspecified shipping cost.

The other seller's listing is specified as $0 shipping with local pick up as the shipping method, so since total cost is known it gets sorted higher than your listing where the total is not known.

[bluestskiestradingpost]

Ok.  Since our freight is a variable that will be more than $0 I can see that a Free pickup is even less than a variable price - even if they do request a local pickup.  I always put the less expensive shipping method first,  and give options.  It's just annoying when the first one comes up higher (USPS vs. FedEx) for example for a heavy item crossing the country.  Then someone complains shipping is too high, but they don't look at our other options where there is a lower method.