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Ebay Sort changes. Am I the only one?
notwilight
Posts: 12,864 ✭✭✭
I see lots of threads about ebay wildcard search. Am I the only one who is experiencing the new ebay sort "improvements". They've had the "best match" for a long time so you would have to use the drop down menu to resort the search results. Now the drop down menu has eliminated many options including the most popular "price + shipping, lowest first". Your only price based sort is "highest price" so you have to sort by highest price and then page through to the end.
As a seller, I guess this is good. It makes it harder for buyers to find items that are priced lower. The only thing I can think of is that this is ebay's way of raising prices. Ebay has become harder and harder to sell popular items on because each seller wants to price his item slightly lower than the next guy. Hypothetically lets say silver eagles that have a cost to the seller of $100 counting all the grading costs, shipping costs, and ebay/paypal fees. So trying to make 10% a seller prices them at $110. Next seller undercuts him at $109. it gets down to $102 and the sellers realize they aren't making enough money to pay the rent and they just want out. List at $100 to break even. Guys now want out badly and will sell at a loss. $97 . This makes other sellers mad and they will sell at an even bigger loss to "get even with the bozo selling for $97". Next thing you know a popular product is selling for 15% below wholesale cost.
Now in that scenario, the only one making money is ebay/paypal. So ebay has been slow to worry about it. But with more and more sellers bailing on ebay, I'm thinking this is how they are trying to address it.
I believe this is phase 2 of the "only one listing per item" policy a couple of months ago.
But making it harder to find the best priced items seems just artificial and plain stupid to me. Treating the symptom rather than the problem.
--Jerry
As a seller, I guess this is good. It makes it harder for buyers to find items that are priced lower. The only thing I can think of is that this is ebay's way of raising prices. Ebay has become harder and harder to sell popular items on because each seller wants to price his item slightly lower than the next guy. Hypothetically lets say silver eagles that have a cost to the seller of $100 counting all the grading costs, shipping costs, and ebay/paypal fees. So trying to make 10% a seller prices them at $110. Next seller undercuts him at $109. it gets down to $102 and the sellers realize they aren't making enough money to pay the rent and they just want out. List at $100 to break even. Guys now want out badly and will sell at a loss. $97 . This makes other sellers mad and they will sell at an even bigger loss to "get even with the bozo selling for $97". Next thing you know a popular product is selling for 15% below wholesale cost.
Now in that scenario, the only one making money is ebay/paypal. So ebay has been slow to worry about it. But with more and more sellers bailing on ebay, I'm thinking this is how they are trying to address it.
I believe this is phase 2 of the "only one listing per item" policy a couple of months ago.
But making it harder to find the best priced items seems just artificial and plain stupid to me. Treating the symptom rather than the problem.
--Jerry
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