Why are these sellers allowed?

[dragoncav]

I have been an avid ebayer for over 20 years, and have noticed more and more popping up.

What I am talking about is these sellers that click bait you to their sell page.

An example of what I mean is, say your looking for a new mouse for your PC or Laptop. After you refine your search parameters, scrolled through a couple pages of ones you really ddn't like, you come across one you do like and the price is less than any other's you have seen thus far...  So you click the posting, and go to choose your color option from the drop down menu, only to find out that when you do that the price changes to around all the other options you had seen in your search, and the price that you saw in search that conviinced you to open the post, is for a totally different item.

I really dislike these misleading time wasting click bat sellers, and it's frustrating that we are seeing more and more of them popping up.

[ittybitnot]

I really dislike these misleading time wasting click bat sellers, and it's frustrating that we are seeing more and more of them popping up.

Basically, some sellers are just "special". 

[mczombies]

I couldn't agree more--I absolutely HATE them too. It is nearly impossible to actually FIND the lowest price anymore,  which buyers absolutely LOVE. So again we see eBay sabotaging another good thing. Good for sellers and good for buyers "shopping experience." But obviously these awful and annoying listings are good for someone.

Please notice that most of these click-bait listings are from foreign sellers--who are given special privileges, and allowed to break rules all day long. And just so no one gets on my case about this statement--in this pitiful PC world in which we are forced to hold our tongues and pretend that everything, that might possibly offend anyone or any group of people, is just hunky dokey--I am not criticizing the people, I am criticising the special treatment that is given to them by eBay.

[plumbingspecials]

It's NOT misleading. It's called VARIATIONS and many sites do this.

The price you initially see is for the basic model or color. When you UPGRADE to a special feature (in your example, would be a color) it raises the price.

Sellers are allowed to do this because it's NORMAL for any retailer or manufacturer to charge extra for an upgraded version of a model.

For instance, in faucetry, Crome is the basic finish. Anyting OTHER THAN chrome would be an upgrade, so we can add on to the price.

This is not click-bait. Click bait is when you go to a website that inundates you with a ton of ads from other websites. Sellers would not be allowed to do such a thing on ebay. 

[ed8108]

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@dragoncav wrote:

I really dislike these misleading time wasting click bat sellers, and it's frustrating that we are seeing more and more of them popping up.

_____________________________

These sellers and the practices they utilize to gain an advantage for themselves,

help foster buyer mistrust of all sellers and ebay.

Click bait to a different item needs to be addressed by ebay.

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[the_fancy_fox]

The problem here is eBay’s  lousy programming. If a variation Is out of stock it should NOT even come up in search. Only those items that are available should be shown and further, only similar items such as size or color variations should be allowed. 

i wasted a lot of time when I was looking for a 9’x12’ rug. Many sellers had a little 1’x2’ rug as a variation which was of course, out of stock but clogged my search up so badly that I gave up and bought it elsewheres.

One seller even had a 2”x2” square of carpet “sample” as a variation. Found another that had a .99 hair brush as a variation in rugs. It’s just another form of search manipulation by some sellers.

[resalerackrebel]

I usually always choose "USA Only" as a search parameter. It cuts out foreign sellers who use variation listings to boost themselves in search by offering .99 cent items only to click & find that item is either conveniently out-of-stock, or doesn't even relate to the rest of the items in the listing.

However, lately, I've come across listings based in  "China, Usa".  SMH

[annasunicorns]

As a buyer, its discouraging. I can sometimes filter down enough to deal with it, like a minimum price point. However, other sites have the same issue, its not unique, and if ebay did find a way to deal with it while still allowing product variations it would be a competeative edge shopper experience wise.

Me, I will just go without if its too hard to find a decent price. There are lots of luxuries we are used to having all the time, its kind of fun to see how long you can go without one or two.

[zamo-zuan]

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@mczombies wrote:

I couldn't agree more--I absolutely HATE them too. It is nearly impossible to actually FIND the lowest price anymore,  which buyers absolutely LOVE. So again we see eBay sabotaging another good thing. Good for sellers and good for buyers "shopping experience." But obviously these awful and annoying listings are good for someone.

Please notice that most of these click-bait listings are from foreign sellers--who are given special privileges, and allowed to break rules all day long. And just so no one gets on my case about this statement--in this pitiful PC world in which we are forced to hold our tongues and pretend that everything, that might possibly offend anyone or any group of people, is just hunky dokey--I am not criticizing the people, I am criticising the special treatment that is given to them by eBay.

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I do think it's very counter-productive that it is becoming harder and harder to find cheapest prices. They have stated they want to compete with Amazon, eBay's primary advantage against Amazon was prices. They are giving away the biggest advantage they had, all in efforts to be more like Amazon... but considering eBay is fulfilled by merchant, it will never match Amazon's offerings.

EBay truly needs to focus on their strengths that Amazon did not have. Give buyers AND sellers a reason to come here ahead of Amazon.

[couldabeenworse]

For instance, in faucetry, Crome is the basic finish. Anyting OTHER THAN chrome would be an upgrade, so we can add on to the price.

What makes even that misleading is that search results for a "brass faucet" show only the chrome price of a variation listing to some of us, or a range of prices starting with the chrome price.  If searching by price, that listing will get better placement than one actually selling a brass faucet at a lower price.

But I think what the OP is complaining about is when the seller includes a replacement washer or similar cheap item to skew the search results and drag buyers to a listing they would otherwise ignore.  Either practice  makes searching by price a waste of time. 

If eBay had a search option to Exclude Variation Listings, I would use it.

[goodluckselling]

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@plumbingspecials wrote:

It's NOT misleading. It's called VARIATIONS and many sites do this.

The price you initially see is for the basic model or color. When you UPGRADE to a special feature (in your example, would be a color) it raises the price.

Sellers are allowed to do this because it's NORMAL for any retailer or manufacturer to charge extra for an upgraded version of a model.

For instance, in faucetry, Crome is the basic finish. Anyting OTHER THAN chrome would be an upgrade, so we can add on to the price.

This is not click-bait. Click bait is when you go to a website that inundates you with a ton of ads from other websites. Sellers would not be allowed to do such a thing on ebay. 

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What the OP described is not a valid Variation listings.  You are not allowed to set up a listing with like items for example a mouse, and a mouse pad and a wrist rest all in the same listings and then separate them in variations.  Variations is about colors, sizes, fits certain models of the same item.  Although it would still be valid to use different prices, it is not valid to use entirely different products in the same variation listing.

OP you just need to report it and hope it is noticed and changed.

Good Luck Selling!

[cheap_wholesale_and_tech_2018]

no, Whhat they mean since no one is explaining correctly, basicly if an item cost 5.00 and has 4 colors, red blue green and black, well to make it so the cost appears 1.00 instead of 5.00 to get you to click it, there will be a 5th item of just something stupid like a twist tie.. and for chinese sellers, it wont say 1.00-5.00 like it does for us, it will just say 1.00

[threshold.sales.group]

Op +1, agree 100%.

I was shopping last week on the site and the category I was browsing was so spammed by bogus variation listings that I just gave up. Some sku's (and categories) are now basically unshoppable on ebay because of this.  

[luckythewinner]

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@plumbingspecials wrote:

It's NOT misleading. It's called VARIATIONS and many sites do this.

The price you initially see is for the basic model or color.  

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It is misleading, and there is often no option that is the "basic model or color". No matter what option you choose, the price goes up.

Check out 401590807305 for example.

This is a "wireless bluetooth backlit keyboard" with prices starting $1.49. But the only item available for $1.49 is a **bleep** foam  mousepad. All the wireless keyboards are $24.99.

[ted_200]

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@dragoncav wrote:

I have been an avid ebayer for over 20 years, and have noticed more and more popping up.

What I am talking about is these sellers that click bait you to their sell page.

An example of what I mean is, say your looking for a new mouse for your PC or Laptop. After you refine your search parameters, scrolled through a couple pages of ones you really ddn't like, you come across one you do like and the price is less than any other's you have seen thus far...  So you click the posting, and go to choose your color option from the drop down menu, only to find out that when you do that the price changes to around all the other options you had seen in your search, and the price that you saw in search that conviinced you to open the post, is for a totally different item.

I really dislike these misleading time wasting click bat sellers, and it's frustrating that we are seeing more and more of them popping up.

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It's basically a bait & switch situation, one that is facilitated by eBay's multi-variation listing tool. 

The reason more of them are popping up is that eBay won't enforce the rules for use of multi-variation listings, and sellers are prone to using the tools available to them to drive traffic to their listings.  If half the sellers of a computer mouse are doing this, it's unlikely the other half will get many eyeballs on their listing if they don't join the party. 

In many categories and for many items now, it is simply impossible to do any price comparisons for items without endlessly opening up a huge pile of listings to see what the price for the item you want ACTUALLY is.  It's a disaster, there have been countless complaints, and to date those complaints are falling on deaf ears at eBay. 

This situation is worst on items that tend to be sold by large numbers of Chinese sellers.