eBay

sumsum70 · ‎08-13-2023

I have been gradually buying less and less on eBay over the past year or so. The new extra step of clicking "description" so that the page can be covered with stupid sponsored and similar ads where the description used to be is the last straw. I won't buy anything else on eBay again. Yes, I sell here, but at this point, I don't care if anyone buys from me or not. Frankly, I hope enough other people are as fed up with the ads and extra steps to see a listing that nobody buys from me. Nothing is ever going to change for the better here until the morons at the top fail, hopefully sooner rather than later.

iamalwaysright · ‎08-14-2023

@sumsum70 Wow that design tooooooootally "vacuums" (I can't say the other word here). I hope this test absolutely fails. I think ebay hired Amazon and Etsy stockholders as their listing page designers.

atlasesattic · ‎08-14-2023

I just started a surprise free gift with all my orders, plus I do promoted listings, the gifts can be unique pens, Sports cards, Handmade bracelets.. etc... trying to do something different to get some sales.

hurryagain · ‎08-14-2023

@ryanrobyn wrote:
just makes lots of extra work for sellers who already took time to add photos and specific details. Buyers (eBay) are asking for all the details the seller already put in the listing. I have 4 Ebay sites but buy on Amazon.

eBay made the sellers do all of that nonsense work... I remember when sellers were really upset over that mess... having to redo all of their listings 😕

iamalwaysright · ‎08-14-2023

@ryanrobyn wrote:
just makes lots of extra work for sellers who already took time to add photos and specific details. Buyers are asking for all the details the seller already put in the listing.

Or buyers will just be uninformed and mistakenly buy the wrong thing because they didn't see the description and will file a SNAD return that the seller is going to lose out on.

Many buyers won't go thru the hassle of asking questions regardless if it's already in the description or not. They'd rather just buy it right away and return it as SNAD if they need to.

stainlessenginecovers · ‎08-14-2023

I though all you had to do was 'scroll' down past those ads to get the written description part. No clicking required.

If there is clicking required, it was when using a phone (to click the 'Description' and/or 'see more' (of the Description))- and ALWAYS has been, even WAY before Promotions was invented.

inhawaii · ‎08-14-2023

I can understand you not liking it.

None of us do.

But to say you will not buy anything here because of a extra click is a bit extreme.

To each his own.

Quincy Theme Song - Glen A. Lasrson & Stu Phillips

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-14-2023

This is on a pc. There is a screenshot in post 11 that shows the view some people are seeing. Where the payments/shipping tab used to be, there is now a 'description' link.

evelyb30 · ‎08-14-2023

@stainlessenginecovers wrote:
I though all you had to do was 'scroll' down past those ads to get the written description part. No clicking required.

If there is clicking required, it was when using a phone (to click the 'Description' and/or 'see more' (of the Description))- and ALWAYS has been, even WAY before Promotions was invented.

Hence one good reason I never EVER shop on my phone and why older sellers used to absolutely loathe phone buyers. They were forever asking questions about things clearly spelled out in the description ... except that eBay kept them from easily seeing the Description. eBay then created the forced item specifics, which are often also either unseen or roundly ignored by the buyers.

(what they did to the search and the anatomically not recommended things it did to sellers in some categories is another matter. )

She who dies with the most toys still dies; when's the estate sale?

sumsum70 · ‎08-14-2023

You can say it is extreme, but to put up with it and keep buying here is basically to endorse it.

When I click something and have to see an entire page of sponsored garbage and have to click another link to see the description, eBay has gone beyond too far. As a seller, it is insulting and shows eBay's complete lack of respect for sellers.

coolections · ‎08-14-2023

Sorry a simple click caused you to stop buying on Ebay. You will be missed.

siamjane8 · ‎08-16-2023

@dhbookds ebay has stated that they no longer "duplicate" organic listings and PL in the same search and that the algorithm will choose one or the other in order to show the buyer. So if you do a search and then click on an item and are shown "similar promoted" items- then they were withheld from organic to be shown as a Promoted Listing.

This makes some sense in that if you remember that in the early days of PL ebay would show you both in regular search to make it fair to seller.... that made for a bad search experience because two identical listings were shown- making it redundant. They quickly fixed that by ebay "choosing" which one to show- and you can guess which one they 95% of the time....the PL!!

This has now snowballed into the buyers first search being completely lousy, with few relevant items because ebay is choosing to withhold those listings to show in PL carousels and whatnot. This is turning away buyers as they "think" what they are searching for is not available on ebay. Ebay is choosing the short term easy Promoted listing fee money grab instead of building up a sold customer base for the future- remember- every customer that is frustrated by the search is a lost customer that is less likely to even return. It is 10x easier and cheaper to retain a customer than it is to get a new one and word of mouth advertising is the absolute best.

Ebay cant have its cake and eat it too! they are choosing to undermine sellers and ebay itself- You must pick one- make the best search and buying experience and naturally grow OR monetize the search with pay to play, pitting sellers against one another unfairly while raising the costs to buyers and lowering profit to sellers, and then show mostly those listings that bring in the highest fee regardless of relevancy.

dhbookds · ‎08-16-2023

@siamjane8 I know they "said" they wouldn't show both organic and PL in the same search and think that was true for a while..........but for the last year or two I've seen both shown......not necessarily all the time, but most of the time. Note the lst & 3rd item........same item...3rd is sponsored.

That said, I thought it was interesting that I had to do about 7 searches of various things before a "sponsored" came up........

iamalwaysright · ‎08-17-2023

I can confirm that I'm seeing the same stupid description tab design when I view listings on my tablet. It's doesn't do that when I'm on my desktop.

carlmarxx · ‎08-17-2023

Yea ! It is on the phone only . Same here when I view listings on the laptop and desk top.

valueaddedresource · ‎08-17-2023

@dhbookds wrote:
@siamjane8 I know they "said" they wouldn't show both organic and PL in the same search and think that was true for a while..........but for the last year or two I've seen both shown......not necessarily all the time, but most of the time. Note the lst & 3rd item........same item...3rd is sponsored.

That said, I thought it was interesting that I had to do about 7 searches of various things before a "sponsored" came up........

@dhbookds out of curiosity, what sort option were you using here?

When I've looked into this in the past, I found that default Best Match didn't display both organic and PL of the same item, but if you chose any of the other sort options it did - despite what eBay says.

If that has changed, and they are also doing it Best Match now too, that could be very interesting indeed.