Stupid New Ebay Feature: Get A Recommendation, Not The Lot You Just Lost

I am also experiencing this effect, some of my "watched" items disappear after they close, others do not. I find it annoying to not see "Other listings" but the "Store" option. I find the Store formats less friendly.

I am also experiencing difficulty with my saved searches. Out of the 50 or so I typically have active, I now get results from only 10 or 15 via email, while the others are not being run at all, but will show new listings if I execute them manually. Are others observing the same thing?

It's obvious their software development team does not have any "collectors" or users on staff.

Annoying indeed!

Here's a good one. I currently have four nice used albums listed all closing this weekend. I wasn't sure what to ask for them so placed them on auction listing. When listing I was careful to be sure to delete options such as Buy it Now and Make offer. None of that stuff appeared on the listings when I double checked.

Now today I get low ball offers on two of them. Turns out all now have a 'Make Offer' on them! I declined both then had to go in and edit them out but couldn't on one of them. Nice. Could ebay be doing this on auction listings with no bids close to closing?

If you are a seller, ebay's attitude is that you're their employee. If you observe their advertising, ebay would have you believe they are the ones who own and sell the merchandise. Few people would tolerate such mistreatment from their "employer" at their workplace.

In the UK there is growing discussion of "silent limits" on ebay, where ebay seems to have been caught purposely limiting the number of viewers who see your listing.

Often when I browse, settings revert to default "best match" or include international sellers, despite my efforts to search another way... Often I see the same item inserted, page after page.

As a collector of postal history I've been quite bemused by the 'here's something similar' routine. Simply no such thing.

I believe that ebay is a PALE shadow of what was once a brilliant website/platform. They've fallen for style over substance as has so much of the internet.

Australian buyers (and seller's worldwide I'd presume) will be contending with GST issues from the 1st of next month too.

What a mess.......

While I agree that for stamp collectors ebay has declined, ebay has been doing what it needed to do to satisfy it's shareholders.


So far no one has sucessfully established a business model which supports the listing of hundreds of thousands of inexpensive items like stamps. SG/BidStart is a good example.

ebay is moving to become an eCommerce company, they no longer want to be an online auction company. They have communciated this vision in every Annual report for years. They want to only sell new, commodity items and compete with Amazon.

As stamp collectors this might suck but it is what it is, ebay is a public company with a charter to be profitable. And that is exactly what they are doing.
Don

Morning Don and all,

As an old peanut farmer said when he won the Presidency, "Its the money stupid." Philately as a business follows the same rules as every other commodity. But, there could be a silver lining to this storm?

Can someone or someone's develop a successful web platform like the good old ebay of twenty years ago specifically for philately? Could it provide an ecumenically viable service for collectors and dealers solving this existing dichotomy of profitability vs functionality?

It gets worse. On ebay.de, clicking on a recently close listing opens some other listing with the message:

"Das gesuchte Angebot ist nicht mehr verfügbar. Sehen Sie sich diesen ähnlichen Artikel an, den wir für Sie gefunden haben."

which when translated by Google reads as

"The requested offer is no longer available. Look at this similar article we found for you."

I guess no one at ebay has read "The Elements of Friendly Software Design" by Paul Heckel. When I saw a different item after clicking on a specific item from a search page, I immediately assumed that the ebay web site was fundamentally broken. It is hard to believe that anything this stupid was intentional.

The bottom line is that sold items can no longer be viewed. Of course, in the world according to ebay, all items are fungible and will be listed in multiple quantities. In effect, buyers and sellers of unique items are "locked out" from looking at past listings.

Did it ever occur to anyone at ebay that condition and correct identification could be the most important factor in determining price relative to other listings with the same catalog number in the Stamps Category?

I hope this isn't happening on the ebay US site.

cfrphoto click on the word "Angebot" (offer) - it's a clickable link that will take you to the closed listing. The same thing is happening on the US site.

Thanks! I finally was able to locate the link, hidden in plain sight. Still, when the requested listing opens, clicking the link to see the original listing doesn't always seem to work. I wonder if the developers tested anything. The ads stuffed between the top of the listing and the body of the listing seem to take over, sometimes obfuscating the original listing.

Could ebay be held responsible for their "recommendations"? Some are pathetic, some are laughable, but some are toxic.

I am trying to sell some non philatelic items. I noted a multi band radio just like I have and managed to pull up the original listing, and clicked on the 'sell similar'. Guess what happened? Yep, it won't bring it up, made a 'suggestion' of a current item. Apparently their hot shot programmers forgot about the sell similar option. So that is now kaput.

Solution to this problem: I placed the lot number of the item I did not win in the search box of the advanced search and checked the completed lots option. Yep, it came up and I was able to view the lot details and bid information.

Another solution which is fairly quick and easy is to look at your "recently viewed items". If you have looked at many items recently, this may not work.