Realistic suggestions that would / could improve Ebay UK

[british-ceramics-and-paintings]

I will get the ball rolling:

Change the default search to UK only, if people want to search worldwide they can select that as an option, I don't think it should be the default.

As an example I just searched impressionist painting 

The search gave me over 100,000 results which is way too many to deal with. I changed the search to UK only and the results dropped to under 6,000 which is more than adequate.

I imagine the vast majority of UK buyers buy from UK sellers so why are the searches dominated by overseas listings ?  It is one of the many things that is killing the UK platform.

I believe it would be an easy change to make and literally everyone would benefit.

[newvintiques]

Yes, I've been a buyer only for the past few years and the search clunkiness has pushed me over to Amazon sometimes, which I hate having to do. If I need something urgently it's too hard to find it on ebay.

And the worldwide default is also offputting. I know where the UK only filter is, but how many new buyers don't scroll that far and get turned off by the whole number of listings, from all over the world.

[y8z04]

1. Dark Mode - How is this not even a thing  by 2025! Your not the new kids on the block just finding your feet here.  I would guess half your user base would welcome it. Instead, you keep messing around with (and messing up)  layouts & functions.  Every change you have made for as long as I can remember has been another step backwards. 

2. Messages and Notifications  - What on earth is going on with these...  They didnt need collide at all..  Its awful!! 

3.  Search Filters - These have been broken for a while now.  Your website cant remember both "Sort by" & "Catagory" these days. 

This is the trouble with having a monopoly on the market.  With no proper competition, you have no need to improve.  I would guess that atleast half of the functions that ran fluidily when you started up this business now dont work. 

[sml192]

Dark Mode is available on the eBay app and has been for sometime - My eBay > Settings > Appearance. 

[the-ephemera-company]

Biggest change to help me would be to make the featured store have way higher items allowed than 1500 for £93. In the States the Featured store is $75 for 10,000 items!

When you sell in collectables you need 1000s of items available to sell to to have a chance of selling enough each month to make a living but the next level up from the 1500 featured shop is an Anchor shop for £525 a month for unlimited listings a month.

That's insane. Even the highest store level in the States is only $349 a month. 

It should be £75 a month for 10,000 in my opinion. They get 15% in fees anyway for everything you sell.

On a featured shop I can only take about £500 a month and they take approx. £75 in fees plus £93 for the shop so that's a total of £168 in fees. That's about 35% of your sales they take in fees a month.

Its just terrible for collectables sellers in stamps, postcards etc. were you need a huge inventory to always have something turnover.

[insidethe93]

eBay should vastly improve its Customer Services department - make it easy to contact (no umpteen click-throughs to find the link), have staff be more knowledgeable (probably by management briefing the staff properly and in a timely way) and (judging by complaints on the discussion boards) be more honest and less muddled.

I've only contacted them three or four times. The first time, during my first week on eBay, they were  great, which encouraged me to persevere with the short but steep eBay learning curve. The other times less so, and one absolutely not as they weren't interested and couldn't get rid of me quickly enough.

That's why, mainly for practical reasons, and mainly since eBay's changes from Feb, I buy higher value items elsewhere. For instance, last week I bought via "A"nother platform from a seller who also has a presence on eBay. With the order being £299.70 (not an uncommon price level for me for a single order) I reckoned this time, even though I'd successfully bought from them before, that if there was a problem to the extent of needing CS then I'd prefer it not to be eBay's CS.

I'm probably not the only one who buys elsewhere due to the rep (or even from personal experience of) eBay's CS. There may be sellers too who, after bad experiences with eBay's CS e.g. in trying to cope with SD, decide to leave eBay. Basically, a poor CS department loses customers, but a good one keeps them. 

[therenewalworkshopltd]

I agree that CS needs to be improved.

But two things.

Firstly, your talking about buying, which is a completely different experience to selling when contacting support.

And this can be said of pretty much any of the marketplaces.

However, try getting help from the big one, Amxxon for business issues!  It's nigh on impossible to get a correct answer from them.  99% of the time you get fobbed off with what they think you want to hear and it's virtually impossible to get anything actually done.  Ebay support in this regard is actually better, at least in my experience.  You still get the ones who don't want to deal with it, but far less.  Especially if you get the Irish call centre, rather than one half way around the world.

[insidethe93]

Ah thanks for the info, a surprise to me.