What has RUINED eBay for you and how would you improve it?

[jpa61]

I believe that eBay has been RUINED by the current management/Developers, I have been on eBay for over twenty years, I used to buy every month but now the risk just seems too high.

The first thing that MUST be fixed is to respect customers choices in settings, that means a tick box that says NO to certain countries and NO MEANS NO, so when I say NO Chinese suppliers, I means none, not those that are based in China but use UK fulfilment and quotes UK city in location.  It is quite simple, if it says "registered in China since xxxx date" when you drill down on the supplier then that is the field I want used to remove suppliers from my listings.

Next, I want to be able to remove (and ban) all suppliers that use pricing that is designed to "game" the eBay search (Google has a lifetime ban if you try to game their listings so why not eBay).  What is "gaming" well search for a product, sort by price and you will see at the top a bunch of listings that say 99p to £27, when you open the listing you find that they have stuck in some useless washer or piece of fabric that costs 99p and the true price is £27 or maybe £18.  If people can't be honest then they do not deserve my business.  The issues here are it creates more clutter and wastes users time.

Next is screen design, it looks as if it has been designed for an iPad with minimal content and a requirement to press a button or perform an action to see what you need to make a decision.  This does not translate well to a laptop regardless of screen size or settings.

Part of the design issue is so much injected content within the sales page, I have had to use adblock software to block whole sections of the eBay listing page like

"similar items",

" customers also bought",

"Similar Items from eBay shops",

"you may also like",

"consider these items",

"Frequently bought together",

"explore related sponsored items",

"consider these items AGAIN",

"Find more Sponsored items"

"Sponsored Items from Popular Sellers"

"Similar customers also bought"

"Find more sponsored items AGAIN"

In fact this goes on and on and on, but I only scrolled so much because I could not find the delivery box that we used to have, it had a tab and said counties they shipped too and additional terms (no term can override the CSR see below).

Next is eBay hiding negative feedback, it includes only positive feedback rather than the latest good, the latest neutral and the latest negative feedback, worse still you really have to work through about 5 hurdles to see negative feedback.  1. Click on percentage in listing, 2. scroll 3. Click See all Feedback 4. Switch back to classic view 5. Scroll 6. click on the number of negative feedback for 12 months. 7 Scroll .  SEVEN steps to get what you should get when you click on 1, actually to be fair when you click on the percentage in 1 you should go straight to 6 but it should scroll down for you to the where the feedback is displayed.

While on Design on mobile the app is unusable, you can't even see the description without pressing a button to see what they call full description and now we have descriptions being written by AI so we can't even make a decision based on who we are dealing with and what they promise. 

I will NEVER make an eBay offer again because you make me PAY before, this has RUINED the whole experience of making an offer,  in no other business do you pay upfront to make an offer and it is a huge waste of my time.

Finally, there seems to be a disconnect between eBay understanding that they are subject to UK law, be this the Consumer RIghts Act 2015 (CSR) for consumers or the Sale of Goods Act 1979 which still applies to businesses.

The CSR says that a product or service must be

Be fit for purpose

Last for a reasonable period of Time

Be of reasonable Quality

Be as Described

It also says that Risk lies with the Supplier until there is proof of delivery to the buyers hands, so for a courier that means a door open and as consumer lawyer Dean Dunham said on Sunday 8th September, if a different item is in the box then it is up to the Supplier to PROVE the item paid for was in the box.  (we have recently seen 3 cases where Amazon has packed other items from Washing powder to babies bottles in place of computer parts, in these cases there was no  sign of tamper which suggests the issue is at the Amazon warehouse.  I have never seen this issue with eBay (yet) but I have had products never arrive or product quality truly awful and description not only failing the "as described" aspect but it being impossible description.

eBay relies on community policing which is fine except that it does more and more to make it impossible to police suppliers.  I should be able to have a tick box in the listings to "remove and police" later, then when I press "apply" button these should disappear from my results and go to a screen where I report them later.  I am talking about

Mass Duplicate listings, identical listings from shops owned by same company but named differently, FAKE products - I means a battery cell with fake specs that are actually impossible or a USB Storage device with FAKE storage capacity in the form factor described or that used compression and overwrite your data. 

Listing a FAKE product should result in an instant lifetime ban, not just for the company, but for the individual directors and the payment methods they use (bank account, credit card or debit card).

If eBay mirrors the Consumer Rights Act 2015 in its rules to the sellers, then it shows a commitment to be a safe place to buy.  Also note that the CSR says that Consumers should not be inconvenienced.

Currently if I want to buy a second hand product I can't efficiently see and review the offerings because of all the scammers.  Maybe we need a further tick box in our settings to remove all business suppliers.  That would go some way to making eBay safer.

Also, I would like ALL boxes with character limits to have such limits removed and all boxes that only offer fixed choices (like reporting a seller) to have an "Other" option that produces a box with unlimited text.  All reports to eBay should kick off an email to confirm what has been reported including any text typed and emails showing the stages of that procedure as they are reached along with the determination.

Please reply with your own issues and improvement suggestions.

[elaine1066]

What a great post.  I wonder if anyone on ebay will actually take anything on board.

I have been a member since 2001, buying and occasional selling of things I no longer want/need.

Everything was fine up until this year.  I purchase designer items and the sheer amount of fraudulent listings is incredible.  I used to report them and nothing would happen.  This year alone I have made five purchases on ebay that were supposed to be authenticate.  The first one never made it past certificate of authenticity so I got a refund.  The second one was not what was listed when it arrived as was the third, so again, refunded.  The fourth one could not deliver for whatever reason so I was refunded and then yesterday I bought an item and paid for it only for the seller to tell me there was a problem with his ebay account and can I pay on Depop.  I politely informed him that is not allowed and breaks ebay policies.  I got a refund but that will take 3-5 working days.

I reported the seller and the ebay advisor I was speaking to was so rude.  I think he was actually annoyed I had reported the seller but I dont want it to happen to someone else.  I told him that if I don't get the refund I would be looking to pursue that through the bank at which point he got pretty mad and said that if I do that I will not be getting my refund through ebay.  He was very adamant that the timescale for refund was because they needed to investigate the seller.  Investigate ahead - the messages are all there to see, I have done nothing wrong.

I just cannot keep going with the amount of scamming, fraud and how unresponsive ebay is about it all.  I appreciate it's a business but come on, good customer service makes a big difference.  My hubby said I should report the ebay advisor but I don't see the point.  I am now looking at deleting my account as I just cannot be bothered with the stress and hassle of having to get refunds, sending back items that don't resemble what I bought or things never arrive in the first place.  

The UK seems to be a very different place to what it used to be and ebay has now joined in.  I am thinking of going back to etsy but wondering if it will be out of the fat pan into the fire!!

It remains to be seen if the seller will be punished but for now the seller will be heading to the long blocked list that only seems to have happened this year and it's only August!!

[vintagevilarosa]

I have been both a buyer and a seller and this evening I put a bid of 14.99 on a listing when the auction ended I was not the winner the winner won at 14.41 I dont understand how that is even possible. Yes I get it the buyer protection that buyers always had before we now have to pay for but how do you know how much that buyer protection is going to be and why bother bidding because you cant win if you dont know how much you have to pay on top of the bid you have put in to cover this tax they have now decided I need...perhaps someone can come along and tell me how my bid of 14.99 didnt win and someone at 14.41 did win!

[vintagevilarosa]

That is exactly what my husband a programmer who built banking systems has said...if they would just ask the sellers and the buyers what their issues are then the programmers would find out and we wouldnt get all these bugs and *bleep* changes all of the time. I have noticed that you cant do nearest item anymore you could until recently but now its disappeared.  Who runs a company with programmers that are so bad!

[department28]

'...perhaps someone can come along and tell me how my bid of 14.99 didnt win and someone at 14.41 did win!'

I think the other bidder would have actually bid £15.50. The £14.41 is the price before the BPF is added on. For some weird reason, when the bidding is over, the prices in bid history are shown without the BPF... 

It makes bidding very confusing - you just want to concentrate on the auction, not be thinking about fees added on, before, during, or afterwards...!

[gr1me]

I have to agree with elaine1066,  

As a buyer, there are too many crooks selling on Ebay now, and Ebay is doing nothing about it, so from now on I'll always look elsewhere first for anything I want to buy, and, only if, as a last resort, I can only find it on Ebay, I 'll check it's real private seller, not businesses, nor businesses pretending to be private sellers.

It's a real shame, the vast majority of sellers I've encountered over the last 19 years have been great, But I left my first ever negative feedback a few weeks ago, and yesterday my second, and Ebay are telling me the sellers are not breaking the rules by failing to  supply the goods paid for?

Preview

Please, Genuine sellers list your items elsewhere (as well as or instead of Ebay),  I no longer trust Ebay as a marketplace.

[ian192837]

Many good points. I would want the AI generated list to be removed and all items in the search to be displayed. I avoid eBay as much as possible now unless I don't have a choice. I use Alliexpress if it's going to be fake or take a week or 2 to get here I might as well not pay the eBay platform premium. eBay wake up you are going away from what made eBay great 5 years ago.

[pegr-834437]

The main one for me is the changing things that are working perfectly fine to a new process that either results in more clicks needed or that is just doesn't work. Take for example the dpd label if you sell a pair of trainers via authentication, it used to be 1 click and the label would appear, its now 3 to get it printed. There are many things the back team can be working on that are actually broken but instead they spend time 'updating' features that are working fine.

Another would be for eBay to use their powers and not just punish everyone, we all know there are thousands of businesses on private accounts, instead of eBay saying right we are not a court of law we do not have to be 100% sure lets use probability and anyone who looks like a business we will force them to upgrade. Yes there may be a few hundred accounts that are selling 5000 stamps or 3000 tea pots who have to pay to sell but surely thats better than hundreds of thousands of accounts selling with a bpf and millions of customers being forced to pay bpf when it gives you no extra protection than your bank and mbg already does. 

Simple delivery can be improved but as a lot of people sing the praises of vinted who use a similar system it cant all be that bad.

Promoted listing is a joke too, you are now forced to pay to sell basically, instead of great accounts who ship out fast, list accurately and sell genuine good items being near the top of a search (this needs fixing too) we are shown *bleep*py products most likely cheap knock offs shipped from China as they can give ebay a bigger piece of the pie.

If they were sensible and acted on their own policies they could easily have free to sell (genuinely free) for private accounts selling unwanted items around their homes, a fee structure for businesses that promoted good business practices (for free) so that it encouraged you to ship faster, take better photos and a more in-depth description of the item. Also the business account fee structure needs improving, its actually not encouraging people to list more, there needs to be a lot more stages so the jumps are not as big. Also maybe some sort of across the board fee price, I dont understand why some categories are 7% and others are 13%, stick it at 10% (or any figure) and have the accounts doing well that match the search phase to be at the top.

Its really not simple, listen to your customers and do better than the competition, sadly eBay as they have got so big have ignored customers worries and its now resulted in a wild west where you have no idea if you are being forced to pay a fee that is basically fraud or if your item is coming from China or Swindon.

Final part of this rant, and back to the first point, the new report system is worse than the old one and the main thing people wish to report is not even an option, whomever decided that was an improvement basically needs sacking.

[monster_hugs]

It’s become pretty clear that ebay is thrashing around against lots of online competition that it didn’t face 20-30 years ago. No longer any interest in auctions or sniping etc., it’s all about Buy It Now. My guess is, they’re busy re-engineering the lot to make it a simple shopping mall like Tea-Moo. Hence Royal Mail and Evri are being hard-wired into the platform, Temu having done just the same already.

You want to buy a certain product, so ebay just pulls up matching sales listings which you choose one from, like it doesn’t matter who the seller is any more. I noticed that even leaving (seller) feedback, it’s loaded towards product feedback instead, which is not the same thing as giving a seller a good rating.

The Simple Delivery will kill it off for some, it’s too much hassle and you’re treated like you’re a zero-hours task rabbit. It’s become very sanitised and de-personalised. I think worse is yet to come as ebay seems to be making things up as they go along. Only my view.

[jpa61]

They should dedicate a module at Harvard in "How to Destroy a Market Leading Brand" based on eBay.

They bought Gumtree and probably would have bought Vinted if it has a chance, ironically now it is copying the Vinted model of making the buyer pay the listing fees, this turned a lot of people off eBay.

eBay has destroyed the concept of bargain hunting my messing with the timer at the end of an auction, that is why nobody is bothering with sniping.  Whoever said it, repeating the same thing and expecting a different outcome is a definition of madness.

I feel sorry for "in-country" eBay sellers,  i.e. UK sellers in UK, French sellers in France, these were the bedrock of eBay but eBay has systematically destroyed the ROI for these sellers.  Instead we have thousands of Chinese accounts in each product sector pushing down "in-country" sellers with SEO tricks like listing a product range of 0.01p to £24.99, where the 0.01p option is some unrelated product like a washer or piece of wire.  This annoys the hell out of buyers and just confirms eBay is not a safe place to trade.

eBay allows a Chinese company to say it's location is the UK when this is either a deception or they have a fulfilment house in the UK but in these situation it is one way, so returns are absurdly expected to be returned to China.  On top of that the Chinese sellers have a delaying tactic, asking for videos of a product, they they say they can't view it or they start with a photo then ask for a video. LED light was an example of this, then they send a series of template emails that make no sense in reply to any message.  They do these delays to exhaust the eBay limits on returns and complaints.   When I drill down on these companies I find the company in China that owns them also owns a dozen other million listing accounts.  eBay should insist that Chinese sellers honour ALL of the rights conveyed in the Consumer Rights Act (2015) and the Consumer Contracts Regulations that define distance selling regulations, that means they are responsible for returns when there is a fault, they must arrange the Courier.  Damn don't get me started on Couriers, EVRI did not deliver my most recent order from eBay but alleged they had, when I complained EVRI asked me to scour the neighbourhood for the missing parcel.  Evri have a review funnel that seeks to make people think they are reviewing on Trustpilot but for negative reviews it is their clone review process and nothing gets posted on Trustpilot, so that eBay seller will be getting a bad feedback, they have not even replied.

Another thing that ruins the eBay experience is the listing page itself, it is now smothered with ads for other listings to the point where you can't make an informed decision because the proper description requires further buttons to be pressed.  This is a breach of the Consumer Rights Act (2015) which requires key terms to be prominent.

For cars eBay hosts the scourge of rogue car dealers who pretend to be private sellers but are in fact traders, they get people to buy off eBay which then means an immediate loss of protection. Of course even if you stayed on eBay they would not help you if the transmission failed within a month of buying.  The Consumer Rights Act (2015) would protect you if you can show that the seller is a trader as all the rights

For bikes watch the Channel 4 Documentaries on YouTube showing how stolen bikes are listed on eBay within hours with no proof of authentic purchase.

The eBay app does not even work on my phone, it seems that eBay does not understand that losing even a single user over a software version is utter madness, they should be supporting the earliest version of IOS, even V11.  However, here is the kicker, if I find an eBay listing on Google when I am searching for a product and I follow the link, the eBay app intecepts and tells me to upgrade, I can't see the listing, so I close the app and move on.  The eBay app is ever worse than the web experience, whether on laptop or iPad.

I used to sell things on eBay but make them charitable listings, now I just give things away on Freecycle, life is too short to put up with eBay, if something has some value then I might list of Gumtree (owned by eBay). I look forward to Vinted taking even more market share from eBay, they have added tech and others will follow.  Based on the callers on BBC Consumer shows I do not know that Vinted are any better, they banned a seller when the Courier lost a parcel (EVRI again).  It got cleared up but only with the intervention of the BBC.

There is a gap between my purchases on eBay which reflects the amount of time it takes for me to forget the negative experience I had the previous time (3 months).  eBay cynically sends me a WELCOME BACK message which annoys me even more.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"I might list of Gumtree (owned by eBay)"

Although Gumtree used to be owned by ebay, that is no longer the case.  I believe Gumtree UK is now owned by a Chinese company, 58.com.

[sirulrichvonliechtenstein]

i have not read the thread but i have been with ebay 25 years and seen a lot of changes 

the bad...

feedback no longer works both ways

too easy for negs to be removed

postage system has gone stupid causing too many issues that i try and sell on Facebook 

returns now ebay decide if you keep a damaged item of not

payout now very slow

the good

you can actually talk to someone when needed ! 

[pegr-834437]

---

@sirulrichvonliechtenstein wrote:

i have not read the thread but i have been with ebay 25 years and seen a lot of changes 

the bad...

too easy for negs to be removed

---

This has been changed now, new law has been introduced so getting feedback removed is pretty hard unless its so blatantly wrong, but its gone too far the other way. As eBay distance themselves and just say they put the buyer and seller together and never see the product theres no way to prove either side of the story so they stick with the buyer, but they 100% dont take sides whilst they stick with the buyer.

[roger_roger_over_and_nowt]

If i were to reply my pc would run out of ink ...