05-15-2024 01:54 PM - edited 05-15-2024 02:23 PM
EDIT: Volunteers, please make sure your buyer communication preference IS the default setting (check-marked) to receive notifications of price reductions. Thank you @nobody*s_perfect for pointing this out.
Given eBay's changes to seller-initiated offers (auto-pay requirements for buyers, not sure if that's still rolling out or what, also more recently the unpopular practice of sending offers to people who merely looked at listings) ... and given the fact that if the buyer is NOT made to auto-pay, they have the ole option of keeping the item hostage, invisible to everyone else while not paying for 4 days and even failing to pay at all ..... I have gone back to thinking about something I've wondered about a lot in the past, and got mixed answers about it in the past, here in the Community. Yes that was all one sentence. OKAY, I'm talking about whether or not "interested" people receive a notification if the seller merely revises the listing to lower the item's price.
Wouldn't that be great?
So let's see where that stands as of now, May 2024. I have this green frog brooch currently overpriced so that some innocent buyer won't come along and ruin everything by buying it, lol. @dhbookds is already watching it. What would be great is if I could get more watchers AND some mere-lookers, to see what happens if I just lower the item price.
So let's do it like this. The "joining up" volunteer period will extend until 3 pm. Central time, tomorrow (Thursday). Please either put the listing on 'watch' OR just click on the listing and look at it.... either once or twice (please go ahead and scroll slowly down to the bottom of the listing, to give the software a sense that you really looked). If you choose to look twice, probably a good idea to close out of eBay completely after the first look, then get back in and find the listing the second time in your 'recently viewed's, and repeat the slow-scroll.
Then come back to this thread and post a reply, saying either "watched," "looked once" or "looked twice". It would be best if we have a good sampling variety of these variables, so maybe scroll through replies to see which of those hasn't been done as many as the others, then do that one.
Ugh, I hope that made sense, lemmie know if it didn't.
THEN tomorrow at 3 PM or shortly thereafter, I will revise the item's price down. I'll make a note of how many watchers it says the listing has, as well as how many "interested buyers" the popup window says the offer would go to IF I were doing it that way. I will then immediately post here that I did the revision.
Then the rest of the day/night, as each of you realizes you did or didn't get a notification, please come back and post that observation, and we'll tally up the numbers.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/126482944261
05-15-2024 02:51 PM
@gurlcat wrote:Very good info, thank you. It's true I can't be accused of brevity. 😆
Given the length of my post, I assumed most would see that and just nope-out without reading.
Yeah, that's what I was gonna do. And I don't typically post replies without reading an OP. But I went for it anyway after skimming a few lines. The SIO to viewers topic has come up a lot lately so I took a shot. Can't hit the bullseye every time.
And, hey, even without reading the OP all it took was your one reply to say it's about price drops not SIO and I got the message without reading it. 😂
05-15-2024 02:54 PM
@gurlcat wrote:Okay so far we have some wonderful watcher s and twice-lookers. I don't think I saw any once-lookers yet, and we definitely need those, because that's a complaint I have seen often "Why is eBay bugging me about a listing I only looked at ONCE?!"
@gurlcat I'm your huckleberry. 😉 Looked once, communication preference to receive notifications turned on.
05-15-2024 02:55 PM
Always fun to run a test.....
05-15-2024 02:55 PM
I looked at it first, then went back in and added it to my Watch list.
hope that helps your experiment.
05-15-2024 02:57 PM
05-15-2024 03:12 PM
05-15-2024 03:25 PM
Looked once
05-15-2024 03:39 PM
@wastingtime101 wrote:It would be kinda funny if, thanks to the flurry of activity @gurlcat has generated from "interested buyers," the item shoots to the top of search and someone buys it for $50 tonight because they just have to have it.
That very thing occurred to me a moment ago, "Did I inflate the price ENOUGH?"
But it has 0% promotion and with the search phrase 'museum frog brooch' there are several identical ones for sale, all cheaper than mine. Mine IS at the top of 'Best Match' though, lol. But I think that's partly because it's a new listing (just listed it last night).
05-15-2024 03:48 PM - edited 05-15-2024 03:51 PM
@wastingtime101 wrote:It would be kinda funny if, thanks to the flurry of activity @gurlcat has generated from "interested buyers," the item shoots to the top of search and someone buys it for $50 tonight because they just have to have it.
That is true - I sort of expected to see a keepaway price of $500 or so - not just $49.95. That is barely higher than a number of cheaper listings for the same thing that Ebay has thoughtfully placed across the middle of the OPs listing. 🙄
One other thought - I think we should note what our own communication preference is - but maybe not necessarily everyone all have it switched on - because what we really want to test here is whether we get that notification when it is wanted AND whether we get that notification when it is NOT wanted. We know that Ebay has messed around with switch settings in the past so I think it is not unreasonable to see if they will also ignore the switch settings altogether.
The price reduction notification setting is here:
https://commspreferences.ebay.com/commsprefs
Click the Edit link for Buyer > Buying Activity
Once we get the word that the price change has happened we can report back on whether we got that notification AND whether we were expecting it in the first place.
05-15-2024 03:54 PM
Yeah I forgot until Nobody'sPerfect reminded me that there's a way to opt out of receiving these. She replied about that only minutes after I made the post and I did edit it (right at the top) to reflect that. But now that the train's in motion, probably the best thing would be to bring it up again tomorrow when I state that I did the revision, asking each result-giver to also check their preferences to see what their setting was.
05-15-2024 03:56 PM
Watching it...
05-15-2024 04:03 PM
One is promoted at $37.99+6.00
Other one is $44.99+4.99 not promoted.
I had no idea there would be 2 other sellers selling it. LOL.
05-15-2024 04:12 PM - edited 05-15-2024 04:13 PM
Not sure what search terms you used but non-jewelry-specialists don't know what the MMA stands for, so if you search 'MMA frog brooch' there are actually 6 other listings of this exact design. Mine is the most expensive and the cheapest is $23.99 + $4.50
05-15-2024 04:17 PM
No searches...when I clicked on your item only others on sale pop up....guess only promoted ones?
One of them I saw 4 times as similar items on sale.
Didn't realize there would be so many sellers selling it. LOL.
05-15-2024 05:06 PM
Looked once