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.

[eternalgazeratstars]

Indeed, it's obvious, that they are not interested in sellers, or buyers, it's also obvious, that nobody with any clout, is either, or both, a buyer &/ or seller. It's also obvious, that their I.T. department is focussed on neither. If they did U.A.T. - User Acceptance Testing, all these idiosynchrasies, glitches, bugs etc. would be ironed out BEFORE the changes are rolled out on the LIVE system. If someone at least familiar with the processes & procedures, of buying &/ or selling, testing within the parameters, while exercising every variable, were to analyse the outputs against certain protocols, none of us, would have a single thing to complain about - except rogue sellers/ buyers! They do not do bug-fixes until it's broken beyond repair & turned people away in droves - If, when we complain about reduced/ deleted functionality, they did a change control to make it as it was, or, improve it, we wouldn't be in this mess - that "listening to users" thing, is non-existent, here. They do not do regression testing, either, nor do they they even have focus groups - whereby potential changes can be debated upon, by both buyers & sellers, on their merits & their impacts, again, BEFORE being rolled out on the LIVE system. I'm very good at noticing when there is a complete lack of care - my entire family is as toxic as they come - I've had no choice but to notice, eBay's complete lack of care this last two years - it's taken this long, for me to become completely & utterly fed up, to the back teeth, with their lack of care, lack of interest in & involvement with the people that create their revenue. Reputation is everything - eBay's, is currently residing in the porcelain hotline to God.

[bittyboy101]

 1) EBAY MANAGED DELIVERY 

(NO CHOICE DELIVERY FOR PRIVATE SELLERS)

2) EBAY MANAGED PAYMENTS (DELAYED PAYMENT - NOW VERY INCONVENIENT)

[sazzler0779]

They have maximised holding payments now and after more than 15 years i won't be using it again .

They removed the add a tracking king number from the app to force the use of the ebay option that takes longer ,utterly terrible site now .

A shadow of what it once was .

I wanted to send RM and to write the label it took 5 clicks to get the buyers name and address .

It's clearly so they hold as much money as possible for as long as possible .

[themilkywaygroup]

It's shocking how bad its actually getting. Never ending changes, pretty much always for the worse. Yesterday, I was searching for a pair of flat shoes, I filtered down to ones I wanted to look at. After 6 pages, I realised my filters had been deleted and I was now looking at all 30,000 or so ladies shoes. Today, looking for a jumper, the listings are all over the page with massive gaps. Its becoming an absolute joke. The developers need to be sacked, absolutely useless. 

[gazzer666]

Final strw for mw s the Buyer protection fee. An item that was 99p is now £1.75 plus postage (going up) just not worth it anymore to me to be buying anything I maybe didn't need. I usally give my cast offs (barely worn) to a local cat charity for resale. Will no longer be able to do that so they will lose out. Also the post as i won;t be buying so much for sure. 

The amount I have had to claim for since 2001 does not bare any resemblance to having to pay a minimum of 75p for every item purchased. 
I am hoping to retire the end of the year & husband has told me I need to cut out my wasteful spending (another 7 years until state pension) so this will force my hand  

[edwardian-dreams]

Years ago everything I put on I sold

now I’m lucky if people actually look

somewhere down the line ebay started controlling why listings people see and what they don’t 

went downhill from there 

[nigel_paul_wright7557]

It isnt just long delivery times for Chinese goods its the poor quality too.

Its also clothes sizes are way off, as much as 3 sizes out.

Transistors, chips etc are often fakes.

[ajones00]

For used items, it's the perpetual relisting of over-priced Buy it Now (BIN) items, with no incentives on the sellers that create some sense of urgency, to push the sellers to adjust the prices to get the item sold.

It's become a sort of dusty, stagnant shop window stuffed with vast amounts of over-priced BIN items which sit for very long times, crowding out the relatively fewer items where the seller is realistic and wants to sell the item, pricing it to meet what buyers are actually willing to pay.

Ebay should charge a relisting fee, nothing too huge but enough to give sellers are good financial prod that they need to be getting their item sold within several weeks, or if they want to keep their listing cluttering up everyone's search results month after month, then they need to be paying for the privilege.

[department28]

Yes, I agree. eBay has never been quite the same since the 'promoted listings' thing was introduced. It has messed up the search results, which are now 'streamlined' & interspersed with 'picks for you'. Before all this, you could see all the 'newly listed' items in a couple of clicks, without any distractions, or having to scroll past all the promoted stuff.

[m25jet]

The fact that this thread is still going six months after it was started, and with people adding more things that they feel have ruined the site and suggestions as to how they would improve it, just goes to show that eBay clearly are not taking any notice of anything that their users say.  Ideally this thread should have been brought to the attention of the people at eBay Towers tasked with implementing changes to the site, with orders to them all to read the thread in full and use it as guidance as to what changes they need to make in order to improve the site!  Anyway, I've decided to add the following to my own list of things that I feel eBay ought to change, as at the time of posting my original response on this thread eBay had not yet created the additional problem that I have now decided to post about here.

Personally I would advise eBay to reverse their decision to charge buyers the Buyer Protection Fee on private listings.  It was always free to use until recently, so why should buyers have to pay for it now?  Either this is a very badly thought out idea by eBay as to how to drive unregistered business sellers off of the site who are masquerading as private sellers, or it's an attempt to drive all private sellers off of the site for good - including the genuine ones.  However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if in the next year or two eBay try to roll this out to such an extent that they decide to apply it globally to every single listing on all of their sites, regardless of whether the seller is a business or private seller.  However, even the biggest companies can only push their luck so far before it finally runs out.   Therefore, if eBay do end up doing this then I predict that it would end up being the equivalent to eBay of what the iceberg was to the RMS Titanic, in that such a move will cause irreparable damage to the site and finally end up sinking eBay for good.

[ed_58611]

Yes!

I have just come from another thread in which several sellers have mentioned the rise in the number of cancellations they are experiencing, while a number of buyers are reporting that immediately after making a purchase eBay is then showing exactly the same items but for lower prices...

I think it fair, not to say downright obvious, to assume that search results are being manipulated, or at the very least skewed, but then this deliberate effort/policy is being undermined by subsequent offers such as "buy it again" or "see similar" and the like, thereby revealing live listings that were not previously shown for consideration prior to purchase.

It would seem that eBay is hoisting itself on its own petard because this evident "control" must lessen confidence, satisfaction & trust in we users,  sellers and buyers alike, as we become more and more convinced that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark".

[andha-21]

@ed_58611 

"as we become more and more convinced that "something is rotten in the state of Denmark"."

Greenland?

[ccpr22]

Definitely gone down hill.

Obviously ebay are changing everything and it's getting worse.

Listing an item is a real pain and you can't change the font colour no more or put the listing into bold type.

I use to love ebay but no more.

Just hope now more selling platforms become more popular. 

[keelinge]

Poor search engine. 

Sponsored listings.

Excessive fees.

Decreased confidence and rival selling platforms.

Decreased traffic/ views. 

[iss504]

Delivery,..item not received from Evri,Evri and Evri.

[forapersona1]

For some reason I'm still able to list items with me choosing the postage method, but come the day SD is forced on me I'm finished selling on here.

I grudgingly put up with the miss-managed payments, but yesterday I discovered a sale for £16 which I had  forgotten about over two weeks ago.

Two recent gripes which have me wondering if it is worth staying with this lot.

I have a Star Wars action figure of a specific character, listed. I typed a search in on a seperate account from my selling account. Pages and pages of irrelevant items and despite putting the characters name in the search I was presented with anything with the words star wars in it, 3 pages before I got one with the character in it and after about 9 pages I gave up trying to find my listing.

I was recently given some DVD's which included the first two seasons of "Supernatural". Having watched them I thought I'd try and buy some of the following seasons. You'd think typing in "Supernatural"  and a season number I'd get relevant listings, but no I got lots of "you might like these" offerings for stuff like "Charmed" and "Vampire Diaries".

And then there is this SD bolleaux, bad enough as a seller but as a buyer, you are offered 2 choices, none of which the carriers are identified. Sorry private sellers, but if I don't see RM on offer I won't be buying. Evri are useless round here.

[craig_marvin]

The biggest gripe for me is the ease and speed at which negative feedback is removed by eBay. i very rarely need to leave negative feedback and the last two over three years i guess were removed. This has meant that i rarely leave feedback at all. As it is, the feedback system has effectively lost its worth, its not about sharing your experience for the benefit of other buyers or making sellers do better, its helping the machine print money.

About a year ago i signed up for prime  which is next or even same day delivery, so i no longer default to eBay.