topic Re: Fiddling while Rome burns in Seller Central

Fiddling while Rome burns

moonlight-rhapsody — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 16:42:09 GMT

I've just had yet another pop-up box telling me that "Unsold" will now be called "Inactive". I wonder if that fiddlesome micro-change was decided by the same person who thought "Sold" wasn't clear enough so they changed it to "Orders". Is somebody actually paid to come up with these micro-changes, or is it a school student on work experience? More scarily still, do they have a committee to discuss these fiddlesome changes?

Obviously it's a micro issue in the scheme of things, but I can't help thinking that you couldn't get any clearer than "Sold" and "Unsold", so of course ebay have to "fix" something that wasn't broken. Again.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

suelel1968 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 17:17:51 GMT

"Rearranging deckchairs on the Titanic...." there must be more.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

department28 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 18:43:45 GMT

It's like they're not happy unless they can come up with a pointless little tweak every other week, requiring a pesky pop-up box announcement... 🙄

A business seller might think in terms of 'orders', but I never think of my occasional sold items as 'orders'. And 'inactive' sounds weird, like the listing has become dormant, or can't be used for some reason.

What next? 'Embryo listings' instead of 'Drafts'...?

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

suelel1968 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 19:23:03 GMT

@department28 would you like to make an "optimal proposal" on my listings? I promise to send a "nice try" response.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

subminman — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 20:11:13 GMT

There is probably a development team that never actually use ebay that are expected to come up with ideas, doesn't matter if they are needed or wanted. They are pushed into production with very little testing especially not on all the platforms users will use.

It is what it is.

Ex IT developer in the Corporate World.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

forapersona1 — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 21:04:29 GMT

There was a thread recently about the lack of feedback, and I will reply to feedback if I receive it or otherwise do a bulk feedback for buyers who don't leave any usually once a month.

I've noticed recently that I couldn't do this as my sold page used to have a column for feedback received and feedback sent which has now been replaced by a column headed feedback, with nothing but empty space next to each listing sold. I was lucky to get some feedback and a green circle with a green cross. I tried to leave feedback for those buyers but couldn't find a way to do it.

It was quite by chance that when moving the mouse arrow across the blank space I happened to see a box for feedback come up. It appears now if you want to leave feedback you have to scroll the mouse arrow over the blank space until the feedback button appears.

There must be a department at ebay that comes up with this garbage to try and justify their jobs, who work in concert with the department for making things more difficult for users on the site.

I wonder if at some time years into the future, some bright spark in either of those departments will look back at how ebay worked in the beginning and pass that off as a new idea.

The first rule in engineering is if it isn't broke, don't fix it. The second rule id if you break it, you fix it. Perhaps all the genius's at ebay could bear this in mind.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

fribblecollectables — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 08:33:55 GMT

I’ve genuinely never seen anyone on these boards ask for “Sold” to become “Orders” or “Unsold” to become “Inactive”.

Not once.

Yet what we do keep asking for — endlessly — is stuff that actually matters: search results that bring back what the buyer asked for, delivery estimates that are accurate and consistent, and some proper weeding-out of “private” sellers shifting tens of thousands of brand-new items.

But sure… let’s keep polishing the wording on buttons and popping up little announcements about it. Someone’s got to justify a week’s wage, I suppose.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

hugothecockapoo — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 09:52:18 GMT

Hi i truly believe that ebay are using the government's no10 development /advisory team to improve the running of ebay..😠

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

moonlight-rhapsody — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 10:02:24 GMT

@ fribblecollectables

👏👏👏

It's as if they haven't got the nous or the competence to do the complex, important stuff, so they tinker around the edges with quick & easy tweaks to justify their existence.

Since making private selling free, whilst at the same time increasing the fees on business sellers, it's easy to see why there has become such a problem, and it will probably get worse rather than better. I don't believe that ebay will ever fix this problem, or any of the other major issues with the site. They lack either the will or the know-how, or both.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

department28 — Wed, 11 Feb 2026 16:19:00 GMT

'I’ve genuinely never seen anyone on these boards ask for “Sold” to become “Orders” or “Unsold” to become “Inactive”. Not once.

Exactly. Longstanding issues remain unfixed, while they fiddle about adding rounded edges to boxes, or moving something from the left over to the right, or seeing if they can add a few more clicks to detain you from getting to view recent feedback on the Classic page... 😖

I am struggling to think of any change, large or small, over the last few years, that has made me say, 'ooh, that's better!' 🤔

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

the_book_seekers — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 01:01:09 GMT

I've long thought there has been a fixation with beautifying the site over and above the practicality of use. Over the last couple of weeks the number of glitches have been on the increase, normally a sign that something is going on in the back ground again.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

theelench — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 09:52:00 GMT

"The first rule of engineering is if it isn't broke, don't fix it. The second rule is if you break it, you fix it. Perhaps all the geniuses at ebay could bear this in mind."

What geniuses ?

Another saying that's equally true is "It takes a genius to make something simple, but any fool can make something more complicated."

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

theelench — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 11:18:23 GMT

I think that mixed in with the totally pointless changes like rounding box edges there are others that help ebay achieve its insatiable appetite for data on everyone who uses the site.

How many of us who use the boards are aware that everything we do is counted and measured ? The number of posts, solutions marked as accepted in answer to their question, or accepted by someone else in answer to theirs. Kudos given and received and the number of new topics launched. Ebay publishes those numbers for over 400 contributors to the SC board, but probably records them for many more infrequent contributors. But why bother just to produce a 'Most helpful authors' board?

Because if they can do that for a minor part of ebay, imagine how much more they can glean by recording other activities when listing, buying and selling. Every time they think of a way to improve what they can extract from users it might well look like change for changes sake, but in some way it helps ebay's understanding of its users and in all probability can be monetised to benefit ebay in some way. Data is valuable.

Just as ebay gathers data about its users, others gather and publish data about ebay. How much foot-fall per day. How many visitors bounce in and out in seconds. How many visits result in a sale, or don't. How long is the average visit and how many clicks are made while here and many more stats. that I can't even think of. Seconds count and are valuable.

To make ebay look bigger, better, more successful and raise it in sector Ranking Tables, it's in ebays interest to lengthen time spent here, by introducing acres of space between buttons, hiding drop-downs etc. Changing something from a one click on one page action into a multi-page maze requiring multiple clicks, shuffling left and right (the Selling pages) is for ebay's benefit, not sellers.

Every second that a user is confused, wastes time going round in circles or clicking between multiple screens where there used to be one, is good for ebay. Simplicity, efficiency and being user friendly count for nothing when time wasting, complications and confusion raise ebay's profile in the rankings and the share price is influenced by ebays place in them.

Isn't that why the 'improvements' come so thick, fast and seemingly pointlessly ?

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

lucy_farmer — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 12:26:42 GMT

'But why bother just to produce a 'Most helpful authors' board?'

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I've always been puzzled about the fact that there *is* a 'Most Helpful" and a 'Most Solutions' board.

I know the reasons why such things exist.

Game-ification.

The pyschology divisiont (all one of him, a part-time psychology under-graduate) of the advertising dept have read that 'game-ifying' something with points, top-of-table etc is a way to keep users on site, and coming back for more, in order to improve their scores.

BUT.....

Why do ebay want to keep people on the boards?

They've gradually been making it more and more difficult to even find the boards, and the idea of ebay being some sort of 'community' has been slowly brushed under the rug over the last 15 years or so.

ebay would love to just be an automated shopping mall.

Why did they decide to game-ify things to try and keep people hanging around?

Perhaps, once A I can actually get correct answers to questions, the board's plug will finally get pulled...🙁

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

theelench — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:10:58 GMT

Well, just my guess but as of this morning CS has a leader board of 414 people.

Ranging from those who spend hours a day posting, to those who only made a comment or two and perhaps gave/received kudos.

Even from those 414 ebay can analyse, in greater depth, what type of user responds to which threads or authors a new one. Which topics get any response either for or against. How many are 'for' or 'against'. How many of each get Kudos from other repliers and from others who don't reply. I'm sure that qualified data analysts (or A.I) can think of even more info. they can glean, from the leader board and the boards in general.

I've always thought that the Community Team takes more from the boards back to ebay management than it's, so often, inconclusive input. I agree that if A.I proves to be as 'magical' as we are led to believe it will be, the Team's jobs are going to be redundant and yes, the boards could easily go the same way.

But to do that A.I needs the data to sift through, so again hoovering up more data on users becomes more important. I remember a quote from an amazon exec. (probably many years ago from context), that "amazon is a data gathering machine that just happens to sell books". It sometimes looks as though ebay is so intent on data gathering that it's forgotten the part about "selling" anything and all we're here for is to provide them with as much raw data as they can get.

It might even give some credence to theories that our universe is a simulation in an A.I Mind and if it's running more than one simulation, then perhaps we really are in a multiverse ?

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

suelel1968 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 13:49:15 GMT

Hi @theelench i aree with the what you have said "Even from those 414 ebay can analyse, in greater depth, what type of user responds to which threads or authors a new one. Which topics get any response either for or against. How many are 'for' or 'against'. How many of each get Kudos from other repliers and from others who don't reply. I'm sure that qualified data analysts (or A.I) can think of even more info. they can glean, from the leader board and the boards in general."

But whatever they glean does not get translated into actions. Actions are created by people who don't buy or sell on eBay I'm sure. If they listened to the 414, things would be different. If Copilot analysed the 414 he would say something along the lines of. "Ebay probably consider the sample size too small and the UK market as peripheral to main operations too consider what is said on the forum."

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

moonlight-rhapsody — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:00:59 GMT

"But whatever they glean does not get translated into actions."

Indeed. But if they don’t take any action as a result of what they glean (which they obviously don’t), it begs the question, why analyse in the first place. And if all they wanted was the data, they could gather that behind the scenes, without publishing it. So I suspect publishing the stats, profiles, rankings etc is more to do with trying to manipulate user behaviour in order to keep people coming back, just as the gaming industry does.

Apart from data, I expect ebay recognise that the forum serves a very useful purpose in a number of ways. For a start, people can come here and get an answer to a specific problem, which could mean the difference between buying something (thereby adding to ebay’s coffers), or walking away. So ebay doesn’t have to bother with zillions of pesky people asking questions, they get the forum to do it free of charge. There is even a benefit to allowing people to complain on here - it keeps it in-house instead of pushing people on to other forums and social media outlets where dissatisfaction can be spread far and wide. Moreover, I expect most of us regularly click on a poster’s listing, particularly if you intend to reply as it could shed light on the poster’s problem. All those clicks on the product listings are priceless.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

theelench — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:33:03 GMT

I think they publish some of the data for the reason you say -- to keep people coming back and to keep the data coming.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

the_book_seekers — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 15:48:42 GMT

"Ebay probably consider the sample size too small and the UK market as peripheral to main operations too consider what is said on the forum."

I recently read a stat which said 31% of ebay sellers are in the US followed by the UK at 29% so we're not that peripheral.

Re: Fiddling while Rome burns

suelel1968 — Thu, 12 Feb 2026 17:42:14 GMT

@the_book_seekers you may be right, but we are peripheral to revenue and profit. A million sellers selling nothing......