mam98031 • Volunteer Community Member • Buyer/Seller since 1999
@gurlcat wrote:Illegal immigrants cannot receive Social Security, SNAP, public housing or any other public assistance. Stop spouting that nonsense.
Actually you might be a little surprised to find out that in some states, if an illegal immigrant files for state assistance, the state worker can not ask them whether they are legal or illegal. So for some state benefits they very well may be able to get the help.
@sakic92710 wrote:But did you know they can vote? 🤣🤣🤣
Just so no one takes this post the wrong way. This is sarcasm!
@zamo-zuan wrote:
@linus.hux72fe wrote:To anyone who cares to reply:
I've seen over and over the statement made up thread in regards to various points many posters make about "throttling"-that of it being against the financial interests of eBay.
I'm a bit confused about that argument.
To me, that argument is only true if the seller claiming to be throttled is the only seller of the item claiming to be "throttled". Then it would be a financial loss for eBay as no one would be able to purchase, assuming there were buyers hoping to purchase.
However, if there are other sellers of said item, assuming the price is relatively the same, where is the financial cost for eBay of "throttling"? Since the prospective purchasers will simply purchase from sellers not being "throttled". Therefore no loss for eBay.
Posing this question does not mean I believe or disbelieve the theory of "throttling". It simply means I don't follow one of the commonly stated reasons posed for eBay not "throttling" and am wondering if I'm missing a logical point?
As to the difference between "throttling" and hiding a listing from search results, I may be wrong but I seem to remember many years ago eBay stating somewhere a goal of theirs is to spread out sales among sellers, or something to that effect. Is that not a form of "throttling", if indeed I'm remembering correctly? That's assuming, of course, that there are no other egregious policy issues for limiting visibility.
Third question: I'm not clear that the people claiming to be "throttled" at various times are stating ALL their listings are absent from search. I, often, read the posts as saying they have a "popular" item that they have few to no views on and other same items are selling even when priced higher. Am I reading their meaning incorrectly?
Thank you
When people say "Why would eBay throttle and hurt their own income?" it shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how throttling works in the eyes of eBay. There's a few different points that will have to all be taken together for a thorough understanding.
eBay's profit doesn't get affected as long as THEY get a sale, the question here is about the SELLERS, not eBay.
Regarding "limits" eBay has admit to these in the past, and since then has basically just stayed quiet/not put anything in writing. Some people on here argue that they 'do not have limits', but based on their own word, they do.
This is something large sellers can see immediately, as they have a large sample set of sales. If you're getting 100+ orders a day, trends are immediately noticeable. You have 4 months at, for example, $10,000 in sales a day. Suddenly eBay does a major update, and your income has dropped to $6,000 a day overnight. This is unnatural. This is NOT the economy, this is NOT buyer behavior.
Furthermore, the fact you can go months without fluctations in sales patterns is enough to show that eBay throttles. Because "real" traffic is random. You have good days, you have bad days. If you track your websites statistics and SEO, Google trends, etc, you can see this in action. Real traffic is very volatile.
EBay doesn't work like that. It's more similar to a sine curve on eBay. If your sales/31 days average is $100,000, you have a slow day dropping you to $95k? The next day will suddenly be a big day, bringing you back up to $100,000. But then a repeat customer buys an expensive bundle. Now you're at $115,000, suddenly sales STOP, your visibility falls off a cliff, and you have the slowest day in months.
This is the behavior that larger sellers have seen since 2017.
Then you have to factor in ads. You'll find that REGARDLESS of how the sales work as I mentioned above, eBay will CONSISTENTLY keep the ad spending high. Shouldn't higher investment in promotions mean MORE visibility and MORE sales? News flash, we literally DOUBLED our promotions, and it did NOT lead to an increase in sales. If you're hitting your "ceiling" of sales, the extra traffic does NOTHING. This isn't something that is possible without throttling.
Many top sellers also network with the other top sellers, especially since the tariffs began/etc, as we all face stock shortages from time to time. We also network with smaller sellers, who buy from us locally to sell at their own stores, etc. This is where throttling becomes obvious. As a larger store, we would often have our sales earlier in the day. Suddenly, once we get close to our ceiling number? Sales start trickling in. At the same time, those smaller sellers begin to get sales. Now those sellers can NOT in truth compete with our listings, they offer higher prices, slower shipping, etc. But now they're the ones getting sales, not us.
You can view this behavior if you search in your category at different times of the day. Mornings will show sellers that have higher amounts of sales in the specific category. Later in the day, the top search results are names that do not have a strong presence in the category.
This leads to "spreading the wealth" in a sense, but more problematically, leads to a slow decline to all of those in put in the most effort and are leading the category. You might think this benefits smaller sellers? But it doesn't really do that either, as they are still dependent on the top sellers "reaching their ceiling" before they get sales. The 'volatility' I mentioned of traffic? That is felt most by the smaller sellers. Even though that ceiling for the large sellers is dropping, they see less fluctuation.
For those who say no one has ever proven throttling, that is misleading to say. What type of evidence would satisfy those claims? Is it not enough that sellers have shown their sales numbers consistently getting cut off at the same number each day? Is it not enough to recognize the known curves and patterns of throttling by experts in the industry? You can speak to anyone specialized in SEO/marketing/etc. These types of algorithms are not exclusive to eBay. They are easily recognizable. And there's no way possible that sellers would have a CONSISTENT sales/31 days number for months at a time without throttling. There's two sides to every coin. eBay couldn't possibly help give you a certain amount of orders a day, without slowing other sellers down at that time of the day. And then when you look at how their promotion systems work by design, it's a form of controlled throttling.
What form of 'evidence' would be sufficient UNLESS it is eBay admitting itself? Well good news on that front. eBay had ADMIT to these limits in the past. Why is proof of how these algorithms work even necessary when eBay has ADMIT to limiting their sellers? (AKA throttling).
We can count through that list and find a number of limits that would be IMPOSSIBLE without throttling. "Velocity limits" are throttling. "Hot item limits" are throttling. "Silent limits" is HIDDEN THROTTLING. URC limits (which an ebay supervisor had admit to me in 2018 and I posted about on this very forum in my first major posts) are real and they call "risk codes", and are throttling. Plus eBay openly says "Ensuring sellers can manage their sales" as one of their reasons. That is not possible without throttling.
It really boggles my mind that people are still claiming throttling doesn't happen, or defending it with illogical claims like "why would ebay harm their own sales?" when these things have been discussed time and time again for years.
Pretty sure that sums it up.
The quickest way to double your sales is to double your seller account.
