eBay

amricons · ‎06-14-2021

eBay search has a lot of issues. For example if you type in Yoda bust you get about 1500+ results of which the most all are not a Yoda bust. Best guess thee might be far less than 50 listed, but try to look at them, good luck. This condition seems to be happening across the board . We have had to stop buying because quick searches for specific items produce horrible results as even items not from the category end up in search. Not long ago, a simple word search might produce 3-40 results which a buyer , like in our case can look at. Most searches before the changes produced less than 10 when you look at collectibles for instance. Now you get search results without any focus. I know we do not have hours to comb the list. From buying a couple of items daily we have not bought anything in 2 weeks. We wonder how other buyers are reacting to this. In any case, we talked to eBay today about this and actually had a CS go thru some of the search results to see in real time the issues. Try it, Yoda bust had at last search 1551 listing, 99% which had relevance.

eburtonlab · ‎06-15-2021

No, I don't use SAFARI but MOZILLA FIREFOX

It might still be worth trying another browser as a test, to see if the problem goes away in another browser. If so, deleting cache and eBay cookies in the original browser might help; otherwise, try disabling ad-ons and extensions -- sometimes something like an ad blocker might cause problems with menus or filter options.

I use Firefox as well, and have not encountered any problems with Item location filters becoming unresponsive in the way you describe, so I do not think the problem is that eBay no longer works with Firefox, or anything like that. Likely there is something you can do to fix it.

collectfest · ‎06-15-2021

@eburtonlab wrote:
my latest issue is mini dice.
search under collectibles just word dice comes up 123,152 items. Enter dice -die drops to 17,437. Die has no relevance to this buyer.

"mini dice" in Collectibles:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/1/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22mini+dice%22

Alternatively, a slightly more general search for "mini" dice:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22mini%22+dice&_sacat=1&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=%22mini...

Or for non-mini "dice" -- should be roughly equivalent to your dice -die search, though yours will exclude more results (those that contain die) :

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_nkw=%22dice%22&_sacat=1&LH_TitleDesc=0&_odkw=+dice&_osaca...

Thanks for the attempt to help but not working for me. Really mean that, I appreciate the links.

To be honest, narrowing the field down is not what this buyer wants.

I think that is part of eBays problem. They're intentions may be good but DO NOT listen CLOSLY.

Here is a VERY CLEAR example. There is a antique show I set up at. Rule is no item can be displayed thats made after a certain date. They ENFORCE it. Seen dealers shut down and leave because they do not follow the rules. The result is a line of SERIOUS buyers waiting to get into the show.

Granted this is for a narrow category of vintage items. Having said that, I COULD EASILY FIND THEM here on eBay sine 1999 and NOW I cannot.

I would hope eBay wants THE RIGHT BUYERS not just buyers.

As to the supposed "smaller" vintage categories: Some are HUGE money makes with high ticket items.

having said that I know this is the way eBay wants to proceed. Not much I can do change their ways of resolving problems. It seems at times they feel those who discuss the issue are their adversaries that they need to silence. In fact the venting offer insight.

These search engines can be made to facilitate the changes they have to make to compete with entities such as Amazon without the total destruction of the vintage categories.

Again, thanks for the search ideas, I will keep trying to be creative. Shame we have to do that. I doubt the casual collector will choose to learn these creative informative ways you suggest to find items.

collectfest · ‎06-15-2021

can you tell me why the response I made to you did not post in public but shows in you add tags. My post are public. Very confused. Shows in my profile I posted buy not showing. Thanks

eburtonlab · ‎06-15-2021

I can currently see two responses to my post from you: posts 17 and 18 in this thread. It is possible that you were looking at a cached version of the page and did not see your latest post; sometimes after I post it displays immediately, but other times I see a message at the top of the page that says "Success! Click here to see your post" or something similar, before a new post is actually displayed.

eBay is not really interested in policing categories or ensuring that only vintage items are listed in certain places. Sellers write their own titles and descriptions, and choose what categories to list in. eBay sometimes changes categories around, and eBay alters the way that searches work (or how other aspects of the site work) with no advanced notice. That does not happen often, but it does happen. Buyers and sellers work around it.

But for all its faults (and there are certainly many), eBay is still a very good site to find many items that cannot be found elsewhere. eBay tries hard to serve different constituencies of buyers and sellers. The average person can download the app, enter some keywords and be presented with search results that correspond to what the user is looking for, without having to have specialized knowledge about how eBay searches work.

More demanding users can benefit from learning a bit of the nuts and bolts of how searches actually work; a small amount of time spent learning how searches work (and why some fail) can save a lot of time pouring over unwanted results, or save sellers from listing items in the "wrong" category.

Not sure what "adversaries that they need to silence" refers to. There are plenty of posts critical of eBay to varying degrees all over boards. Board moderators may move some threads around more than I would like, but it is rare for a post to disappear entirely unless it violates community guidelines. Typically moderators will notify you if one of your posts runs afoul of any rules to let you know.

Currently a search for ebay-sucks turns up 7,000 results on the discussion boards; not much of an indication of critics being silenced.

amricons · ‎07-07-2021

Thanks, will try your suggestion but it is not generally known and we have been on here for over 20 years. I was going to suggest that users take a monment to call eBay. We have had the strangest things happen in for example " item specifics". Power Ranger Mighty Morphin etc has a suggestion from eBay that we use Morphine. All our "factory sealed" items has the eBay suggestion Name: Seal and of course they have eliminated "new". Collectors love vintage new factory sealed items of all kinds but eBay with their changes has made it extremely difficult for them and you get max money for those type of collectibles. eBay is trying to turn everything into tomato soup or commoditize unique items. One of a kind is one of kind. They are looking to get a large mix of items come up in search so maybe buyers just buy something. Mass listings for the masses as they just want volume. Certain items are uniqure and require both unique sellers as well as unique buyers. One size does not fit all. Collectibles and many other items are unique not common.