The Official EBay Discussion Thread

[Bills72sj]

2 hours ago, BlackSheep214 said:

Maybe we should post dishonest sellers from eBay?

As much as that sounds like a noble idea, I doubt the moderators want to get into monitoring the morality police. I suspect a whole lotta complaining would ensue.

[Ace-Garageguy]

I'd sure like to know how much eBay pays their third-rate techie dwerps, 'cause the site is continually glitchy, and different glitches seem to manifest almost every other day.

I have to use eBay rather a lot for business, and I continue to do so because there's not much of anything I need available locally anymore, little in uncommon hardware, metal and plastic stock, machine tools, electronic bits, etc., and I refuse to support Bezos (Amazon) unless there's just no other alternative.

I'm sick to death of having to devise workarounds for stupid almost every damm time I try to accomplish anything.

I remember a world where things actually worked, a time where a lot of people in the USA made things and fixed things, and not every dammed thing came from China. But I guess "you can't live in the past", eh?

Edited December 29, 2022 by Ace-Garageguy
sarcastic self deprecating humor

[keyser]

[Tom Geiger]

Although sellers cannot leave negative feedback for buyers, eBay does ding buyers who don’t complete transactions. 

Ive had people contact me that they want to buy one of my items but eBay won’t let them bid because they have two unpaid strikes.  As if I’m going to deal with them off eBay!

[Can-Con]

This is the problem I've been having., , 

I do a search and when I see something I'm interested in I klik on it, OK,

Then I see below the listing that seller has other thinks listed I may be interested in.

So, I klik on "see other items" and is says there are no items from this seller, doesn't even show the item I had originally kliked on in the first place.

Anyone else have this happen? 

 

 , ,and is there any way to keep that guy who's reselling [or trying to resell] diecasts for 5 or 10 times the original retail price from showing up on my searches? 

Not a big deal but that guy doing that just peeves me off, trying to rip people off who don't know any better.

[Straightliner59]

Please delete. 

Edited December 30, 2022 by Straightliner59

[Tom Geiger]

On 12/30/2022 at 11:53 AM, Can-Con said:

 , ,and is there any way to keep that guy who's reselling [or trying to resell] diecasts for 5 or 10 times the original retail price from showing up on my searches? 

Not a big deal but that guy doing that just peeves me off, trying to rip people off who don't know any better.

EBay encourages “trolling for suckers” since everyone gets 200 free listings a month.   It costs people nothing to put a $10 kit out there with a $1,000 Buy It Now.  They even get lucky sometimes!

 

 

[peteski]

1 hour ago, Tom Geiger said:

EBay encourages “trolling for suckers” since everyone gets 200 free listings a month.   It costs people nothing to put a $10 kit out there with a $1,000 Buy It Now.  They even get lucky sometimes!

Yeah, I  miss the days when you had to not only pay insertion price just to create the listing, but also percentage of the opening bid.  That is why so many auctions back then had opening bid of a penny.
EBay is like wast wasteland nowadays, full of commercial sellers and opportunists hoping for suckers.  The search engine also stinks, and all the "helpful"  similar items to the one you are viewing are also very annoying.

Edited January 2, 2023 by peteski

[Tom Geiger]

The big problem with eBay is that it was founded for collectors and got greedy and decided to chase Amazon’s tail with consumer garbage. 
 

A bit ago someone posted on the eBay Seller board asking how they could increase they’re sales in the Postcard category.. eBay response was that they should sell something popular like sneakers!   
 

That’s supposed to change. eBay just hired a new Head of Collectables who already said they realized they’ll never beat Amazon and are going to focus back on their roots.  We will see!

[peteski]

25 minutes ago, Tom Geiger said:

That’s supposed to change. eBay just hired a new Head of Collectables who already said they realized they’ll never beat Amazon and are going to focus back on their roots.  We will see!

That would be good, but I'll believe it when I see it.

[Straightliner59]

12 hours ago, Tom Geiger said:

The big problem with eBay is that it was founded for collectors and got greedy and decided to chase Amazon’s tail with consumer garbage. 
 

A bit ago someone posted on the eBay Seller board asking how they could increase they’re sales in the Postcard category.. eBay response was that they should sell something popular like sneakers!   
 

That’s supposed to change. eBay just hired a new Head of Collectables who already said they realized they’ll never beat Amazon and are going to focus back on their roots.  We will see!

Maybe they should just make it a two-headed snake, one head for the marketplace stuff, like Amazon (I buy a lot of my tools and supplies, there, so I appreciate having that option), and one for collectibles. Or just make it easy for a seller to differentiate what they're selling, between the two. This kind of junk is why I don't run a company--I would be sadly incapable!

[sfhess]

A few weeks ago I discovered that most of my saved searches no longer work.  Searches I used to look for certain model kits (i.e. Mercury) now show mostly stuff for Mercury Marine engines or full-scale Mercury cars.  

[peteski]

17 hours ago, sfhess said:

A few weeks ago I discovered that most of my saved searches no longer work.  Searches I used to look for certain model kits (i.e. Mercury) now show mostly stuff for Mercury Marine engines or full-scale Mercury cars.  

Not a news to me - it's been like that for over a year (or longer). They also reshuffled many categories. It is really useless.   We have discussed this on the forum  in the past (maybe even in this thread).

[charger74]

On 2/22/2023 at 12:05 AM, sfhess said:

A few weeks ago I discovered that most of my saved searches no longer work.  Searches I used to look for certain model kits (i.e. Mercury) now show mostly stuff for Mercury Marine engines or full-scale Mercury cars.  

Same for me, it does it when i do a search for a challenger, firebird or 442

[bbowser]

I found I have to put in 1/24 or 1/25 after the subject to get the search back to kits.

[Bills72sj]

I use an ebay search tool called https://picclick.com

It lets me drill down to what I am looking for much faster. You can sort by lowest price. Keep adding qualifiers in the search box and limit it to US or North America listing only.

WAY FASTER

Here is an example:

https://picclick.com/Toys-Hobbies/Models-Kits/?q=mercury+model+kit

[charger74]

7 hours ago, Bills72sj said:

I use an ebay search tool called https://picclick.com

It lets me drill down to what I am looking for much faster. You can sort by lowest price. Keep adding qualifiers in the search box and limit it to US or North America listing only.

WAY FASTER

Here is an example:

https://picclick.com/Toys-Hobbies/Models-Kits/?q=mercury+model+kit

I just tried it with firebird and roadrunner and it gave me: did not match any items

[slusher]

I always end up with armor in what ever I search for…

[Bills72sj]

18 hours ago, charger74 said:

I just tried it with firebird and roadrunner and it gave me: did not match any items

Type in "Firebird model kit" not just Firebird. Once the Toys & Hobbies category show in the header, click on it.

https://picclick.com/Toys-Hobbies/?q=Firebird+model+kit

Same for Roadrunner

https://picclick.com/Toys-Hobbies/Models-Kits/?q=Roadrunner+kit

Once you get the hang of it you can find what is available at the best price.

Edited February 26, 2023 by Bills72sj
grammar

[gary jackson]

do you guys think ebay sellers raise the bid  because the bid raises within millaseconds when you raise your bid  just wondering if you guys have any experiencewith this

[stitchdup]

thats not how it works. I'll use myself as an example. I really cant be bothered going back and fore bidding on items. I put in my max bid from the beginning and it will increase by the minimum each time somebody else bids. for example say the item is at 2.99 and i bid 15.00, my bid will show as 3.49 but will increase each time someone else bids until it reaches my max bid. Even then if you have bid the same amount as me, i would win it as my bid was first. If you look at the bid history when an item ends you can select it show automatic bids and you will see some bidders highlighted in blue. these are people that bid in the same way i do. its very rare that I'll bid again

[stitchdup]

if your doing bids the way i do it helps to not end with.99 or .00, go for an odd number like say 15.47 and you can sometimes win against people that bid 15.50 as their bid isn't the minimum above your bid but this is rare. i usually end my bids in the high 70s or low 80s and i've won items tht were bid at the dollar amount above my bid simply because the minimum above is .50

[peteski]

It is called "proxy bidding"  we have discussed this in the proper section of the forum.  Then there is "snipping", where a bidder comes in at a last second with a very high bid.

[gary jackson]

thanks guys   so far i havent won a bid

[peteski]

9 hours ago, gary jackson said:

thanks guys   so far i havent won a bid

That just means that someone else has put in a higher bid amount than you did.  Like I mentioned, I prefer snipping because that eliminates all that drama you described. It doesn't mean I always win either (again, someone else could have put down more money in their earlier bid), but it is less stressful, and if I'm the  high bidder (win the auction) I feel that I got the best price for the money I was willing to spend.  Some people despise people who snipe, but I see nothing wrong with it since the bidding system allows for it (and always has).

Like Les mentioned, just bid the highest amount you are willing to spend on the item and if the current bid is lower, eBay will proxy bid for you til the end of the auction (or til someone outbids you) using the lowest amount of money possible.  Or snipe by bidding your highest amount of money right before the auction ends.  If you win, you win, but if not, that again means that someone wanted the item more than you did.