eBay's fatal flaw

[jason_incognito]

For all the effort eBay is putting into a catalog, it is all dependent on people doing things right and putting items in the right place with the right title, keywords etc.

I have a very rare, very hard to find piece in a popular china pattern. Replacements is out of stock after having sold both of theirs in the last year for over $1,000 each.

I'm asking $699 and I'm willing for it take some time to sell. I may or may not need to drop the price. When I bought this piece I had stalked eBay for years and I've seen a couple. Mine is cheaper than any I have seen sell on eBay.

I did some searches to find my one of a kind item.....

For "Johann Haviland blue garland tureen" there are 19 listed. ONE of them is actually a blue garland tureen. There is another tureen listed, but it is not blue garland even though it is listed that way.  18 people are using the wrong keyword for this item, mucking everything up.

17 of them are not the tureen even though they are listed that way. 

Today I am the second listing. Saturday I was the 11th..... 

For a search of blue garland..... Saturday I was on page 3, with 200 items per page...... behind listings that have been relisted and relisted.....

This site is just not buyer friendly to get in, get the item and get out. You gotta search and search to find the item. This same scenario plays out hundreds of thousands of times every day. What if there were 2 others like mine. How do you find them to compare and chose which one to buy?

With the catalog they might get the same pieces all on one listing, but they would lump my tureen with the 18 others that aren't the tureen, and then likely pick a different one for the buyer to be presented and they would never even know mine is there. 

eBay is only as good as the information that gets inputted by the sellers, and most sellers don't know what they're doing.

[pburn]

So, you're saying the listings that are actually vegetable bowls should not have "soup tureen" in the title?  Isn't that quite a bit to expect? 

[kaelykat]

Yours comes up second for me if I do the search as Best Match. Normally I use lowest to highest and it's 19th there.

If you are seeing others that are not really blue garland report them.

I'm a buyer here, and I completely agree that the search function has become worse than useless. I often get frustrated and just go elsewhere due to not being able to find what I want.

[jason_incognito]

It's not even that it's reportable. It's an error. And then the error becomes the norm.

the same happens alot with "wine" glasses. For so many any glass with a stem is a "wine" glass, but the manufacturer often made many different shapes and gave them names. They could be all purpose goblets, water glasses, wine glasses, balloon goblets..... In Waterford's vintage line there's something like 19 different glasses. 

I don't think that those sellers are doing anything nefarious, It's just that their actions are totally messing up people's ability to find the item they want and do it quickly and effortlessly. Unless someone that knows the nuances does the listings this is what you get. 

It's a big part of why replacements is thriving. They do the listings, and get the distinctions that matter.

[lindyslucky]

Don't know what this is.

We have specifically looked for an item.

A Jenn aire drop in downdraft gas oven.

Can search for that, pages of nothing.

But, if I look at what others have looked at, I can see they are there.

Why doesn't a specific search work?