Where's my Search Bar?

[hartungcards]

So yesterday, I noticed that the geniuses in the eBay tech department rolled out a "new and improved" version of my items for sale, and everyone else's I would assume.  It seemed to work ok, which was a little surprising considering their track record.

As of today, the search bar has vanished on my own listings, although it was there yesterday.  I still see it on some other seller's listings, but it's gone to eBay technical heaven on mine.  This is at the least  annoying, and at the most, a major hindrance to finding something in my own inventory.  Oh did I mention it's a serious problem for both me and anyone trying to find something in particular to buy in my inventory?

Thanks again eBay, for your hopeless technical incompetence and for making life more difficuct for sellers and buyers alike.

[wastingtime101]

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@extreme-cpu wrote:

I have 800 listings and I don't make eBay enough money to warrant having a search function any longer so buyers can search to buy multiple items from me?

So  you're saying eBay wants me to subscribe to a store to do so?  Not really feasible since I sell 1 of each item, I don't have multiple of each, not regular inventory.

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With 800 listings you would save a lot of money on insertion fees by subscribing to a store. I'd suggest Basic level store with that number of listings.

You don't need multiples of any item to have a store @extreme-cpu.

[dglocke]

Not alone in missing this easy listing search, I guess. I've been trying a bunch of private and business sellers to see if it was specific to one or the other - up until a few days ago, if I viewed all of a sellers listings there was always a search box at the top of the page but below the site-wide search. Now, it's completely missing.

Below image shows (roughly) where the search box used to be. It was exceptionally useful, as I'd find an item listed by a seller and want to quickly search for similar or specific items from them (as an example, I was looking at a seller for watchmakers oils earlier and wanted to see if any of the sellers also carried other specific tools I was after).

[wastingtime101]

It appears to be a design change. The only things you can do now as a shopper are (1) use the search filters on the left to narrow down results or (2) use the advanced search page with your search terms, restricting results to that seller's ID. (1) is more feasible while (2) most buyers won't bother with.

[dglocke]

Sadly (1) is not a viable solution, as it is categories and not a specific search and as you rightly said (2) most won't bother with (it was ridiculously easy to just "View all items" for a seller and then search for a specific item, using the standard search modifiers like -excluding etc).

[pgandlabs]

As a buyer who has to constantly refresh their watchlist because sellers keep relisting things manually without ebay picking it up as a relist, the ability to automatically filter by seller from a "seller's other items" search was extremely useful, and now I have to use advanced search? I'm hoping this is just an oversight and CS gave you bad info, but if not: ebay, please stop trying to "fix" your search, because it was NEVER broken. I'm glad you're finally giving up on the stupid "grid layout"; please give up on this too and go back to how it was before.

[the_old_treasure_ship]

I have a shopper who is not able to search my eBay listings from my page after clicking on see seller's other items. This is awful because I also use the search to see what I have on eBay to add more variety. Now I can't even search my own items. I don't have a store but I should at least be able to serve the customers that come to my eBay page. My customers are getting confused. Is this a temporary technical glitch? Anyone else getting frustrated trying to search their listing like they used to be able to do?

[wastingtime101]

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@the_old_treasure_ship wrote:

 I also use the search to see what I have on eBay to add more variety. Now I can't even search my own items.

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There is no shortcut for customers, but on the upside, with less than 200 listings a buyer can view all your stuff on one page. They can use advanced search although it's more steps and far from ideal.

As a seller you have a couple options to search your own listings including using advanced search, or by going to your active listings page and using the search there: https://www.ebay.com/sh/lst/active

[barrell-of-monkeys]

Yeah this is **bleep**.  I haven't sold on eBay in years, but I do still buy heavily from eBay sellers.  When I purchase an item from a seller (or am thinking about buying from a seller), I generally search through their listings to see if they currently have anything else that I might be interested in.  If they have 100 items or less listed, browsing through one or two pages of items isn't much of a big deal.  But when they have 100's, 1000's or 10,000's items listed, the search bar is an absolute necessity.

There is no (or was no) difference between seller's who have stores, and seller's who do not.  The sub-search bar which is specific to the seller's items (and only the seller's) items, was available for every seller when you drilled down on "See Other Items".

I rarely even drill down "Visit Store", I generally always opt for "See Other Items".

eBay is it's own worst enemy, constantly tearing down and beating up the smaller seller's with unique and interesting items, and bending over backwards to accommodate the generic seller with items you can find just about everywhere. 

[the_old_treasure_ship]

Thanks for your response, but there's really no upside to this. It is not ok to lose the search feature on a seller's listing page. I agree with you, however, in that  sellers may have to reduce their listings down to 25 or 50 items, so that their buyers won't get tricked out of their listings page while trying to search the seller's other items. 

[wastingtime101]

Thanks very much to @pjcdn2005 for the tip on this one.

devon@ebay posted the below info on the Canada forum - would be great if we could get confirmation if the same ticket number is valid for sellers on .com reporting to CS? And if we could add this to the pinned tech post please? Thanks in advance!

There have been multiple reports of members running into this same issue. There is a sitewide ticket that has been open to have this resolved. If there are any members that are running into this they can reach out to customer support and have their account added to the ticket. You will just let them know that you are running into ALERT 14287. 

[pjcdn2005]

@wastingtime101 

Question..I’ve always wondered why they ask us to report a problem that appears to be affecting everyone on the site.  Can they not tell it is site wide? Or is it more of a ‘the more people that report the faster it gets  fixed’ reason?   

[wastingtime101]

Takes (unknown) percent of users reporting account-specific tickets before those will be merged and escalated to a site-wide ticket. When it turns into a site-wide ticket, priority is dictated in part by how many people are affected. More people reporting raises priority on the fix list.

[devon@ebay]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

Thanks very much to @pjcdn2005 for the tip on this one.

devon@ebay posted the below info on the Canada forum - would be great if we could get confirmation if the same ticket number is valid for sellers on .com reporting to CS? And if we could add this to the pinned tech post please? Thanks in advance!

There have been multiple reports of members running into this same issue. There is a sitewide ticket that has been open to have this resolved. If there are any members that are running into this they can reach out to customer support and have their account added to the ticket. You will just let them know that you are running into ALERT 14287. 

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Hey @wastingtime101! I will have the tech board updated here shortly to reflect the new ALERT numbers! 

[wastingtime101]

I'm confused devon@ebay because the item on the tech board with ALERT 14287 appears to be completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

This thread (and at least a dozen others I've seen) are about eBay removing the seller-specific search option for non-store accounts. Yet the info posted on the pinned thread says:

Member unable to find the item using keyword in search (January 18, 2023)
Reference ID: ALERT14287

Provide Member ID:

Provide Item number:

Can you check to see if there's either:

a) a ticket that relates to the issue being discussed in this thread or 

b) check with the appropriate eBay team to find out if this is an intentional design change or a glitch?

Thanks in advance for whatever info you can find out.

FYI @pjcdn2005  @dhbookds 

[devon@ebay]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

I'm confused devon@ebay because the item on the tech board with ALERT 14287 appears to be completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

This thread (and at least a dozen others I've seen) are about eBay removing the seller-specific search option for non-store accounts. Yet the info posted on the pinned thread says:

Member unable to find the item using keyword in search (January 18, 2023)
Reference ID: ALERT14287

Provide Member ID:

Provide Item number:

Can you check to see if there's either:

a) a ticket that relates to the issue being discussed in this thread or 

b) check with the appropriate eBay team to find out if this is an intentional design change or a glitch?

Thanks in advance for whatever info you can find out.

FYI @pjcdn2005  @dhbookds 

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@wastingtime101 I went through all of our reported sitewide tickets and posted the newest ones that have been reported. There has not been any open for the search bar issue and I have opened a ticket on my end for this. I recommend all members that are running into this to reach out to customer support to have a ticket created for their account. The more tickets that are created for this issue, the higher the priority it will become and will have a sitewide ticket I can share with everyone here.