eBay

moonlight-rhapsody · ‎13-05-2025

I put a few listings back a few days ago when I realised SD still hadn’t been applied to my account. I’ve just done a search for one of the items to see if there was an obvious reason as to why it hadn’t had any views. The sort order was Low to High Price + P&P.

It will probably come as no surprise to anyone that some of the items were out of price order.

In addition, some completely unrelated items had been included near the top of the results. They were all private seller listings, and it didn’t say sponsored or promoted listing. Neither the image nor a single word of the title matched the search terms. There was zero reason why those listings should have been included in the search results.

How can this happen? Does anyone complain to ebay about mismatched search results, and what do they say?

clearingmyshelves2025 · ‎13-05-2025

I had that earlier with a search for a perfume with low to high price +p&p that wasn't exactly that. I didn't delve too deeply as to why/what/who, etc that was happening as there weren't a lot of hits to for me to go through.

But along with everything else it doesn't exactly inspire confidence in Ebay.

sianchris · ‎14-05-2025

For me its been like this for a few years, if im buying off ebay its usually something i need delivered within a week, i select UK sellers only but still end up with Chinese sellers registered in the UK but their items will take up to 10 to 14 days to arrive. & by the time i trawl past all the suggested stuff they come up with that has no relevance to what im looking for no matter how many filters i use i start to lose the will to live & end up going to Amazon.
Ive never thought of complaining though because i dont expect them to listen.

akemp1 · ‎14-05-2025

@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:
Does anyone complain to ebay about mismatched search results, and what do they say?

It's either a bug or intentional - you never know when things are wrong with ebay these days - probably a mix of both as ebay love making extra money on promoted listings.

The best thing I have found to resolve my frustrations with ebay is to pity them as their greed and ineptitude is taking them going down a route that will lead to continual decline.

Sadly ebay is turning into a place that people don't want to be anymore. But that's positive for competitors as it was never healthy that ebay had such high market share when they used to make some efforts to keep their buyers and sellers happy. Now they only change things for the benefit of users if they are cornered.

moonlight-rhapsody · ‎06-06-2025

I’ve just noticed a clickable Feedback icon at the bottom of the page when you do a search. Has it always been there, I’ve never noticed it before. It says “Tell us about your Search experience” and you can rate it 1 to 5. It also says "Tell us how can we improve your search experience(optional)”.

I brought up the ineffectiveness of the search function at the weekly chat a couple of weeks ago, using a specific example. There was a denial of any problem and I was told to clear cache/cookies and try again. So I used an alternative browser (I usually use Firefox so I used Chrome instead, auto updated) with a 100% clean history. I wasn’t surprised to see that the results were still rubbish for the Low-High price order - random items featured which had zero relevance to the search terms, and some prices out of price order.

They must know that the search function is broken - it gets complained about on the forums often enough. So what’s the point of the Feedback button for Searches, and is there any point using it. Even if they get flooded with “Very poor” ratings, will they do anything about it, and is their technology even capable of fixing it, even if they wanted to?

eastern-lights · ‎07-06-2025

@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:
I was told to clear cache/cookies and try again.

Has that EVER worked as a fix for an Ebay problem?

moonlight-rhapsody · ‎07-06-2025

It certainly didn't work for me. I normally have a commitment on a Wednesday afternoon so it's difficult for me to ask again on the weekly chat, but I'll try and bring it up again sometime.