Cheapest not showing up

[unobtainables]

I have been buying & selling on Ebay for more than 10 yrs and it has always served me very well.

What I would like to know is why customers are being railroaded into buying from certain sellers 

Take the  'lowest price plus P&P' selection?  Using identical keywords for a product and selecting 'Lowest price' option will obviousy display the items in price order starting with the lowest price for the item you are searching for, right? WRONG! 

That search wil now take you to the company that pays the most commission to eBay each month from their total sales, it would seem.

This concerns me because something I have been selling in good numbers for years (of which I have plenty of stock) has hardly moved for 2 mths yet a higher priced competitor has sold loads, yet is more expensive.

I contacted ebay Cust Support last week and they cant (or wont) explain

This is extremely unfair and stops any competition.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[rusticrye · Accepted solution]

This is the Answer Centre, for those who have questions that require urgent answers. To discuss issues (or to rant!), you should use the Business Seller board in the Discussion forums.

I would normally have taken a quick look at your listings anyway, to see if I could make any helpful suggestions, but you've not posted using that account. So all I can suggest is that you ensure you're trading legally (ie. registered as a business), as I would expect those trading illegally on private accounts to be greatly disadvantaged.  And rightly so, of course.

@unobtainables 

[red_magpie]

The "best match" algorithm has always given the best visibility to established, high volume sellers.

When a buyer selects sort by price, I would have expected it to do just that. Where the price is identical it would be reasonable to rank established sellers with good performance records first.

If you take this to the business sellers board, I suggest that you give some examples of searches that support your claim. I couldn't find any when I tried a few at random.