My account and items are intermittently invisible…

[gunslingerx81]

…Unless I pay the minimum £3 a day as campaign, then I get hundreds of vies and watchers. Any item not using this gets around seven views a week. This has changed from around 15-20 views a day, without the extra £3 a day 200% visibility campaign.

I have had lots of people looking up my account and items, at various times throughout the last week, (the good people of Reddit helped me with this) and sometimes they can access my account, feedback, and all items, and other times they can see an item, but my name and feedback number is greyed out and they are unable to access my account and see my other items; still other times my items are invisible and don’t even show up in a search for that item - which seems to me like rather than not being promoted, they’re being hidden to highlight the items from buyers who ARE paying the £3 minimum a day promotion fee -meaning I, my feedback, and my items are, at times, completely invisible.

I’ve spoken to customer service; I was on the phone with them for two hours on Friday and spoke to three different people, who said there was something wrong with my account but couldn’t find it. An engineer was supposed to check my account yesterday and they were supposed to contact me this morning, but they didn’t.

It may seem like I’m jumping the gun here, but I, like many others if the threads on here and google/reddit are anything to go by, have seen my views drop by 95% and my sales go from 5-6 sales a week to two in the last three and a half weeks. If one or the other happened in isolation, I could chalk it up to something I’m doing, but that they both dropped at the same time so drastically, with me having changed nothing and having really good feedback, lists that possibly and makes me wonder if it’s not a fault and is in fact related to the new ‘pay to sell’ structure.

Every time there’s one of these threads about sudden drastic lack of Salem’s, there’s always some people who say it’s that you’re overpricing your items, not accepting offers, selling things that people don’t want, or that it happens sometimes and the OP is complaining way too early and for no reason. It is none of those things. 
If you can find my account, have a look for the first few, and for the last one, the fact that there are multiple people having the same problem, all at the same time, and in the same way, in many different areas of goods, means that argument has no validity.

Has anyone else had the same or similar problems, and would anyone be willing to try opting in to the £3 a day 200% visibility promotion at the bottom of the create listing page, just to see if that makes a difference, please? Also if anyone would consider signing out of their account or using an unsigned in computer or whatever to search their items and account and see if they’re also being made invisible a lot of the time, or if the algorithm is not showing their items in a general search of an item you know you have up for sale?

I know it’s a lot to ask but I feel that with the more data we can collect, the more accurate we’ll be able to be in any diagnosis of a fault or systemic prejudice, and the more accurate the information we can provide to eBay once we know more.

Of course, it could be just my account, and it might not be affecting you at all, in which case apologies for the unnecessary investigation request and sorry for the long read. 

Either way, thank you so much for taking the time to read this, I know it’s really long and I really appreciate your help in any way possible.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Maybe it's to do with the fact that a very quick look shows that your items are priced 4+ times higher than other on Ebay?

[gunslingerx81]

What are you talking about? You mean the single, perfect card that is spotless that I have the grading report for and that is attached to the item? The unique one?

yoy really did give it an incredibly quick look.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

Actually no, I looked at 4 different ones.  All of which, are available for vastly cheaper prices.

But in short, you are complaining about nothing.  You literally have only 29 listings and there are thousands of those cards on the site.  You really can't see why your not selling?

Aside from which, you have barely been on Ebay for 4 months, so how on earth can you know what you should be expecting in terms of view etc.

Unless you have other accounts anyway.

I don't advertise anything, yet I get loads of views.

[action_man]

Trust yourself. You can intuitively tell what is going on. You'll get a lot of people come along to try to shout you down or make snidey comments. The best thing to do is to have a look at their feedback and see if they are worthy of taking any notice of. Also, they might not have an understanding of collector's markets and why some things are much more expensive than other items which appear to be the same on the surface. Although, in most cases, it's just that they love to cut someone down and steamroller and pile on. Your post is wide open for them. But don't let those sort of people get to you. Unfortunately there are some dirty tricks going on. I don't know why eBay just don't just be honest and say they don't want private sellers.

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I tell you what, why don't you just have a go at me directly, instead of the snide comments?

[gunslingerx81]

If you’ve found items that are four times cheaper than the ones I have, then there is a reason for it. You sell clothes. With cards, there are different types, grades, qualities, grading companies, all with many differences that can affect value.

 
I try my best to not only keep my prices competitive, but to also give my buyers the best deal I possibly can, send free cards with their order, I go above and beyond to make sure people have a very good experience when they buy from me. My feedback is not just perfect, it has some really nice reviews people have kindly given me. 

I did say there would be someone saying what you are, and I hope I’ve explained to your satisfaction, although I doubt it. 

[gunslingerx81]

Thank you so much for your kind comment, I really appreciate the solidarity and the comment that has no purpose except to be unpleasant and sneering. I noticed what you mentioned, too, but I always want to give people the benefit of the doubt, no matter how rude they are, and can get the odd bad review, and he obviously sells a lot of items. Point taken, though and thanks for the heads up about the poorly worded and possibly conceived post.

Just thanks, really. It means a lot 👍

[gunslingerx81]

You’re complaining about OTHER people making snide comments? Man you have no self awareness at all.

[action_man]

You're welcome. When someone takes the time to make a really long post outlining what is going wrong for them, the last thing you want is for mean spriits to come along and stick the boot in. You just have to tune them out. I hope you get things sorted out. But there seems to be a lot of issues going on with private sellers. I honestly think eBay wants us all gone. Trustpilot is full of people saying the same thing.

[gunslingerx81]

Well thank you, you don’t know how much it means that you took the time to read my long post and reply AND help.

To be fair to eBay, they did spend a good two hours on the phone with me trying to find out what was going on, and I could tell it was genuinely frustrating them that they couldn’t find what was wrong, so I personally felt that they do care from that call. 

But it’s just really sad; I love using eBay, it’s so easy and all the people in the card community are so nice and friendly, and people like you who go out of their way to help people make it even sadder to think that it’s just become unworkable. I’d hate to think they DO want us private sellers gone, but you know more than me and it seems like you’ve read quite a lot about the problems that have arisen recently.

I hope you haven’t had any problems yourself and that it continues to be a viable and successful way to sell for you. Good luck for your future endeavours, mate, and thank you again 🙏

[therenewalworkshopltd]

If you’ve found items that are four times cheaper than the ones I have, then there is a reason for it. You sell clothes. With cards, there are different types, grades, qualities, grading companies, all with many differences that can affect value.

Yet, your not selling them.......

For the record, nothing I said was snide, unpleasant or sneering.
You just don't like it.

You have posted in other threads and others have said exactly the same things to you, yet you can't see that.

[action_man]

Well, I used to love eBay. I would have given it a solid 10 out of 10 as a platform. But now, I would give it a big fat zero. I was selling mostly low priced items and with the new changes it's just not possible, so I ended all my listings over 2 months ago. I could see the writing on the wall then. I then decided to view the forum and other places to see what people said about the changes and it has turned out as I suspected. As you say, it is really sad. I was hardly making any money at all, but I enjoyed the fact that my old CDs were finding new homes and there was something really nice about hearing how much people appreciated what I was doing. To have that then swept aside by eBay in such a way is really horrible.

There are big businesses on here who sell CDs for around £3 including delivery. It cost me £1.90 to send one out. So that left me very little after fees. I used to have to wait for the 70% off listing fee days. Now they've slapped this Buyer's Protection Fee on, it has meant I have had to reduce my prices by 75p + 4%, otherwise nobody would buy anything. That would leave me with about 20p. So that is pointless. On top of that, I wouldn't get anywhere now without promoting, because they hide your listings if you're not promoting. So, I would be paying people to take my CDs.

I sold the odd vinyl record and one or two higher priced items, but on the whole I only have cheaper items to sell. Effectively eBay have made it now impossible to sell.

The good new is though that since I stopped spending time trying to make things sell on here, something unrelated has come up as a hug eopportunity for me. So, as one door closes another one opens. I wouldn't have got that if I had my head in the eBay screen.

So, it;s actually worked out for the best for me. Although I'm still annoyed how eBay went about it.

[gunslingerx81]

You have the same mindset , man, it’s so lovely when people are genuinely happy with something you’ve done for them or provided for them, and it is really sad that the ability to do that for people is being limited or stopped altogether.

Im gutted for you that it went that way, and I have a friend who was priced out of selling in the same exact way as you, and it really affected him badly that, well, exactly what you described.

I agree with you about the way things are being handled, though, due to the lack of transparency there’s people like the unpleasant weirdo who keeps commenting - incorrectly - on things they clearly have no idea about.

If eBay just came out and said how they operate, it’d be much easier and you’d spend less time worrying about what you’re doing wrong, obsessing over prices, descriptions, free postage, keeping your feedback perfect etc, when all I really want is to make a bit of money and make other people happy. 

Anyway, I am off for the evening. Again, thanks so much for chatting; all your insight and advice and solidarity has helped immensely, so thank you. If there’s ever anything you need help with that you think I might be able to help with, I mean it.

Take care of yourself and I hope your new opportunity continues to be satisfying and lucrative and rewarding 👍