The farce of reporting a listing
Summary: moonlight-rhapsody shared their frustration with misleading listings on an online marketplace, where a product offered at a low price was actually a worthless item labeled 'Don’t buy.' Despite reporting this, they received a response indicating no policy violation. jonatjonatjonat and others agreed, noting such manipulation is widespread. suelel1968 recounted a similar issue with different content types and suggested starting a thread for bizarre search results. theelench and department28 discussed similar tactics in other listings, and a participant highlighted ongoing issues with sellers circumventing rules, implying that the platform doesn't adequately address these problems.
I did a search for a 4-port hub. One listing offered hubs from £0.99 - £3.30. When you clicked through, there were 5 variations to choose from. Four of them were types of hub, each £3.30.
The fifth item, which was £0.99, was described as “Hook only (Don’t buy)”. I kid you not, it actually said “Don’t buy”. If ever there was a clearer case of search manipulation, this must be it, I thought. So I reported it. I had a pretty quick reply, saying AI "didn’t find the listing to be in violation of our policy”.
Honestly, is it any wonder that users like me have lost all respect for ebay these days - and I used to be one of its strongest advocates.
c_of_e84
·1 month agoThe classic one is £0.99 is for a business card or the written off car all parts available at £0.99, 99p is for one wheel nut, all to circumnavigate the seller selling outside of ebay, ebay wont do anything about it been going on for years
department28
·1 month agoThese days, I just assume the 99p item will be something silly, and start searching at the lowest, individually priced item. We've probably all wasted too much time looking at these 99p - £xx items, hoping for a bargain, only to find it's a fabric swatch or one piece of paper etc. This sort of thing 'shouldn't be allowed', but presumably eBay could do something about it if it wanted to... The AI thingy is obviously too busy fussing over pickle forks to be bothered with search manipulation, dodgy private sellers & boobs...
theelench
·1 month agoSame sort of Spamming happens in glass ads., it's seemed to increase over the years. A typical ad. might read "Art Deco Uranium Glass Vase -- Bagley, Sowerby, Walther"
Some sellers might be genuinely confused or not know who made it. But not those that go on to correctly I.D it in the description. I also find it hard to believe when the vase is reasonably easy to find on ebay and there are plenty of correctly I.D'ed similar items.
The sellers are just spamming popular collectable names to appear in more sets of results.
c_of_e84
·1 month agoI love Uranium Glass, about ten years ago I had an oil lamp base listed and got hundreds of offers from buyers in Iran.
cobwebcottage
·1 month agoTry this one. AI says there is nothing wrong with it.
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moonlight-rhapsody
OP1 month agoUnbelievable. Since this seems to be the first and only item they've ever listed, I suppose it's possible that they're not aware of the rules. But there's no excuse whatsoever for AI saying it's fine.
suelel1968
·1 month agoI tried reporting some boobs once.... i used exacrly the wording of what ebay says is unacceptable for boob pictures, but AI and ebay humans just didn't think there was an issue. It doesn't bother me much, but I didn't search for baps, so being show them was a little surprising. But you know all about the search issues!
Perhaps it's time for a new thread for weirdest thing that comes up on a search.
moonlight-rhapsody
OP1 month ago"Perhaps it's time for a new thread for weirdest thing that comes up on a search."
The same thing crossed my mind a couple of weeks ago when I got some particularly stupid results.
suelel1968
·1 month agoDo it!
moonlight-rhapsody
OP1 month agoI think I've created enough controversial threads recently 🤣
jonatjonatjonat
·1 month agoThere are hundreds if not thousands of listings like that.
Which says it all.
That’s even worse because they clearly don’t even stock the listing that is 99p so it’s nothing more than search manipulation.
There’s no defending it. The only logical solution is every single seller does it. Of course a post opening suggestion search manipulation on this forum is actually likely to be removed.
But do it. Every single seller. Put a 99p Hook do not buy variation on your listing.