As you know I also list elsewhere and the same happens to new listings on there as well. The minute it goes live it will have one view for sure, sometimes two. I don't get Watchers on there, only on ebay.
So I think you're mistaken about ebay employees, my guess would be it's bots. checking listings for 'restricted' items or factors within the listing that are against the law or site policies. (ebay employees have better things to do, like thinking about new ways to annoy sellers🙂)
The Watchers on ebay are annoying but par for the course these days. Why worry about them? In a way they show that your items are good but in all probability they don't even know that they're your listings. They're mostly re-sellers looking for 'bargains' and all they've done is Saved Searches for items of interest, filtered by Newly Listed.
They can probably set-up Notifications / Alerts from ebay whenever a new item is listed so they can hope to see new items first and if the seller is very green and foolish enough to take ebays pricing advice, bag a bargain. (Ebay seems to think that virtually everything I list should be priced at 99p.)
If there's nothing to grab strait away, then they skim down the new listings, looking at the main photos and adding anything interesting to their Watch List, hoping for a an offer low enough to make their margin worth the effort of pressing the buy button. Until they see that, they probably have no idea who the seller is, or even the details of what the item is.
Last week I listed a Uranium Flower Frog, very likely made by Bagley in the 30s as an auction, views, a few Watchers - no bids. Yesterday I re-listed it with the start price as its BIN price. Just checked, 16 views and 2 Watchers in about 24 hours.
But I guarantee that it won't sell to either of them, or any of the others that will join the queue over the next few days. It won't sell at all until someone looking for a frog for their vase is shown it (if ebays allows that to happen). They will know what diameter they're looking for, or take the trouble to go measure their vase. The Waiters won't be bothered and have no vase to measure.
These re-sellers have always been on ebay hunting for bargains to re-sell. Not so long ago there were enough buyers to give them some competition. With so few buyers, they stick out like a sore thumb and what they're up to is obvious, but they're not worth getting frustrated or annoyed about, they're just part of the scenery on ebay these days.
I suggest that to avoid raising your blood pressure unnecessarily, do what I do. Launch your listing, check it thoroughly to make sure 'offers' or 'ISP' boxes haven't been re-ticked, go away and forget about it until you get the 'Sold' or 'Time to Relist' message. 🙂
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