eBay Mess

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Matt

This issue really wasn't/isn't effecting searches that much - it effects browsing - people want to sit on the 1930's category and watch all the interesting stuff that comes in. There was a very cool Mordecai Brown flip book that was listed last week by a board member; I don't think the year is even known and I doubt most of the people bidding have a saved search for "Mordecai Brown Flip Book." They were browsing the category and saw it. I don't think it would pull in 1/3 of what it did if listed now.

And again, as I pointed out, by using the item specifics, you're still missing 70k of the 200k listings.

Not trying to be difficult here, but your complaint is that, last week you found a flip book, which was incorrectly listed in the Pre 1930's baseball card category, and now you wouldn't find this mis-listed item?

[Matt]

Originally Posted by Jim VB

Not trying to be difficult here, but your complaint is that, last week you found a flip book, which was incorrectly listed in the Pre 1930's baseball card category, and now you wouldn't find this mis-listed item?

Yes you are

I have no complaint - I think this latest eBay change will end up being great for everyone.

I think the seller of that item, which doesn't fit neatly into any of the "item specifics" categories and was listed as correctly as it could have been, would now not get 1/3 of what he got.

[jbsports33]

I agree with Jim (VB), I just tried searches and on the left side there are many options you can play around with including years, lots, packs. Trust me I am not happy with the change and emailed them twice already, will call asap too. I just think there are ways around the changes eBay makes and my search only was about 10-20 min more. I am sure I can cut that time down as well and I search almost all sports cats not just cards. I am disappointed, but I can work with it and the search is almost the same, just need to click a few more buttons with each sport. Keep calling, it will not hurt because they did mess up and did not think about sellers and buyers that have built in searches.

Jimmy

[paul]

Buythatcard needs to tell us his secret.

[painthistorian]

many of you have good responses regarding refining searches and that is important HOWEVER....

Browsing is different than searching and many of us browse and find era related material by era categories... what makes NO sense is collectibles such as coins still have easy to navigate & selling sub categories by era, US, foreign gold, US, professional graded & non graded (different wording, same thing) and they are a similar type rare collectibles with recent shiny junk too, but they are not MIXED TOGETHER...you can still search for lots or singles and not be lumped together. Their categories were NOT changed, ours were.....why? If e bay was to benefit on a profitable level for this stupidity, why destroy the cards categories and not do same w/ coins?

I can still browse gold coins and get a single search for all gold coins but if I want to find all Mickey mantle cards 1950-1959 graded(PSA,GAI,SGC BVG) etc. in one search (which I could last week), it will be Mickey Mantle reprint garbage mixed w/ good cards, graded mixed w/ non graded, now the search MUST be refined or you will lose the ability to "browse" not search.

Sellers are going to lose 1/2 of their watchers, we see our results last two days and it is way down from comparible watchers of similar items this month.

It just makes no sense from any point of view.....

[paul]

The worst part is that they didn't screw up the other categories. That means they will get only a minimum number of complaints -- probably a number similar to the number of people who read this board. There just aren't that many prewar collectors out there. So it will be much tougher to get them to change.

I originally thought these changes were across the whole website, and I was about to invest heavily in selling ebay stock short. With only cards affected, it probably won't make a difference.

[Exhibitman]

Originally Posted by painthistorian

many of you have good responses regarding refining searches and that is important HOWEVER....

Browsing is different than searching and many of us browse and find era related material by era categories... what makes NO sense is collectibles such as coins still have easy to navigate & selling sub categories by era, US, foreign gold, US, professional graded & non graded (different wording, same thing) and they are a similar type rare collectibles with recent shiny junk too, but they are not MIXED TOGETHER...you can still search for lots or singles and not be lumped together. Their categories were NOT changed, ours were.....why? If e bay was to benefit on a profitable level for this stupidity, why destroy the cards categories and not do same w/ coins?

I can still browse gold coins and get a single search for all gold coins but if I want to find all Mickey mantle cards 1950-1959 graded(PSA,GAI,SGC BVG) etc. in one search (which I could last week), it will be Mickey Mantle reprint garbage mixed w/ good cards, graded mixed w/ non graded, now the search MUST be refined or you will lose the ability to "browse" not search.

Sellers are going to lose 1/2 of their watchers, we see our results last two days and it is way down from comparible watchers of similar items this month.

It just makes no sense from any point of view.....

Actually, it does; here's another conspiracy theory to chew on: ebay wants to be rid of the auction format and has been doing things to favor fixed price sales for quite some time. Perhaps chopping out the browsing contingent is part of that strategy--drive the prices down on auctions and force everyone to go to fixed price listings to protect their suddenly much larger downsides.

[danmckee]

I agree with Larry, Matt and Adam. No searching can accomplish what the browsing of an era category did. The flip booklet with no year in the title is a great example, Matt is correct, listed now, that book brings $50 to $75 as many would not have seen it.

I also think Adam is on to something: Ebay is really pushing the direct sale and no auctions. This loss of sub categories will cause loss of revenue for sellers and for them to list with BIN's.

All sellers will do the inventory dumps.

Also, there are doctored fakes popping up like crazy now and the report item feature hasn't worked for 2 days.

Amazing!

[barrysloate]

Adam makes a good point, but I've been wondering: why does ebay want to get rid of the auction format? Why is a fixed price site to their advantage? Is it too costly to run the auction software?

It's easy for us to sit here and say ebay is really stupid to make the changes they have made, but the fact is a good deal of thought is put into these decisions. And it is done because the company believes it will make them more profitable. But why? That's what escapes me.

[Rich Klein]

Because in "fixed sales" mode EBay would have a higher percentage of high volume sellers instead of the Mom and Pop sellers who do auctions.

It's much easier for a business to deal with a smaller number of "distributors" then it is to deal with a large number of "retailers".

Rich

[mintacular]

Originally Posted by barrysloate

Adam makes a good point, but I've been wondering: why does ebay want to get rid of the auction format? Why is a fixed price site to their advantage? Is it too costly to run the auction software?

It's easy for us to sit here and say ebay is really stupid to make the changes they have made, but the fact is a good deal of thought is put into these decisions. And it is done because the company believes it will make them more profitable. But why? That's what escapes me.

Just b/c this decision has been made doesn't mean eBay it works for the consumer or that their "research process" was conducted accurately. There are many companies (like Enron) that make poor decisions and pay for it--getting too big can contribute to MORE errors, not less.

There are two options of what happened here in my opinion:
1) Some wonk in corporate has no idea how collectors search/buy cards & proposed this reconfiguration to save $ on server space, etc.
2) This was a strategic & deliberate choice to kill off auctions/small sellers in their continued transition to fixed BINS/stores

I'm leaning towards option 2 at this point. The consequence of this change will immediately kill penny auctions which no doubt hurts the big seller who offers the same product in their stores, but at a higher price. Also notice the new seach options which allows you to easily search for specific sellers. To me, this option further confirms my suspicions regarding WHY this change was implemented.

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

Actually, it does; here's another conspiracy theory to chew on: ebay wants to be rid of the auction format and has been doing things to favor fixed price sales for quite some time. Perhaps chopping out the browsing contingent is part of that strategy--drive the prices down on auctions and force everyone to go to fixed price listings to protect their suddenly much larger downsides.

This theory makes a lot of sense. If you get all of your sellers paranoid that buyers won't find their item, they are all going to start listing items as Buy it Now to make sure that they don't take a huge loss on their item because nobody saw it.

[Buythatcard]

I might have spoken to quickly when I said teh categories were back.

I can see the categories when I do a refined search. I was not able to do that over the past 2 days. It looks the same to me as it did before we had these problems.

But, I still cannot choose any subcategories under baseball when listing new items.

So, it's still a mess.

[Jim VB]

Originally Posted by Matt

Yes you are

I have no complaint - I think this latest eBay change will end up being great for everyone.

I think the seller of that item, which doesn't fit neatly into any of the "item specifics" categories and was listed as correctly as it could have been, would now not get 1/3 of what he got.

OK. I agree. Sellers of oddball items may have to work a little harder to have their item be randomly "found."

Sellers of more mainstream items may have to work a little harder to be sure their listings are accurate in their use of item specifics.

And browsers may have to be just a little more creative than we were to create search/browse categories that fit our desires.

But... it's better than it was this morning, albeit worse/different than it was two days ago.