Not Receiving My "Saved Searches" Emails from Ebay!

budnonymous · Top Poster

ebaY’s Search is Hopelessly Broken

budnonymous · Top Poster

Just the same as illustrated at the above blog, with many similar reports on the search forum at ebaY and elsewhere...

Happy Holidays! Oh what fun we'll have...

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

ebay.com search completely broken?

Dec 4, 2012 12:07 PM

Since a week or so, searching on ebay.com for something trivial like 'glass' consistantly returns the following result:

0 results found for glass Save search

Your search returned 0 items.

0 results found, so we searched international listings.

[Return to original search]

But when I add the by now discontinued '*' after 'glass', then a search gives:

1,989,711 results found for glass*

I somewhat doubt that this only affects me, but I didn't find more information or any statement about this on ebay.com.

I'd appreciate any feedback or clarifications on the issue.

Thanks in advance,

Herbert

budnonymous · Top Poster

Wow they've mangled search beyond belief, and they won't stop tweaking...

ebaY Removes Buy it Now and Auctions Only Options from Search

budnonymous · Top Poster

Just trying to search something on ebay but I get this when clicking any and every item:

Item 1234567890 is no longer available.
50 items found similar to 'random widget x

Here I searched for the term random, got thousands of returns/results, then clicked one.

Random Axe Random Axe Vinyl 2011 2 LP Explicit L 640_20130306.png

Same every time I clicked any item page no matter how I got/tried to get there. I don't see anyone else reporting this right now. I'm guessing they are just tweaking again. ymmv.

Not that it matters that much since it's borked in so many ways to begin with including people still reporting Zero Results and all sorts of other functionality issues.

budnonymous · Top Poster

Now finding a very curous search & finding glitch. When clicking view seller's other items from feedback page or item listings, presented with 2 results. However, if I use an old bookmark to check the seller's liast I get back 34 results.

00000000000000000000000000001 in CollectiblesI eBay_20130411_480c.png

eBay_com Seller List_ 00000000000000000000000000001_20130411_480c.png

Having posted similar old bookmark urls before. and having seen them become disabled. Perhaps to reduce visibilty of fraud listings which have exposed etc? At any rate you'll forgive if I don't post the link. Any ebay "old timers" probably still know how to get there.

I haven't tried this with other IDs due to lack of time and interest, but maybe this info will spark someone else to look into the issue further?

If others are like this too I would say this is very significant.

Here's a starting point, where I found this.

*should be fixed in a few months. LoLo

"

Apr 11, 2013 09:14 AM

Talked to ebay support, they say this is a bug, it should be fixed in a 'few months'

meanwhile sellers are losing $$.

budnonymous · Top Poster

Good golly!

Wonder what causes this?

Nice site, ebaY. Keep up the good work!

-- Edited by budnonymous on Saturday 13th of April 2013 11:07:01 PM

budnonymous · Top Poster

now focusing on a topic/comment on the search help forum at ebay: (emphasis mine)

Re: Best Match broken???
May 9, 2013 02:13 PM
I have only been on these discussion boards once before. THIS IS RIDICULOUS and I am with all of you that are talking about this issue. I am usually at the top of the best match on nearly everything I sell. I am DEAD LAST on nearly every single item I am selling and I have called and called and they act like they do not know what is going on. I am so upset at this point. I am with others that this is how we make our house payment, this is how we pay our employees. I am sooooooooooooooo mad at ebay right now. I did go in and list some things on another account of mine and they show up near the top on best match and it is a brand new seller account as of a couple months ago AND has only one feedback remark. I am LIVID!!!!! Something has to be done.

At some point you have to wonder things like... whether an IT outfit like ebay might have the abilty and the desire to deliberately alter or manipulate search placement/results/terms etc, so as to ensure success for new users during/in the wake of a TV ad campaign/ seller/membership drive event?

And... is there anything in this outfit's past or well known pattern of corporate conduct which would hint at such a possibilty?

The obvious punchlines:

"bye bye camera"

"The best way to buy more is to sell more"

hilarious!

Just imagine all the people who will be very upset when they have their funds [unlawfully] seized/held, perhaps in lieu of sensitive info they did not require to sign up, (or, iow, a trapdoor/bait & switch scam variant) or get scammed by SNAD artists or whatever, then are told things like "It's your own fault, you didn't read the user agreement' etc ?

-- Edited by budnonymous on Thursday 9th of May 2013 04:48:37 PM

budnonymous · Top Poster

Looks like a pretty substantial failure in a declining cluster of fizzle.

Advanced search is counting any advanced terms as over 100 characters no matter how many [fewer] there actually are. I tried many test runs with real terms etc.

Returning error message:

Unfortunately, we only have room for around 100 characters, so we had to shorten your search.

Thread about it from ebay search help forum shows people have had enough. wow. LoLz!

100 character limit on searches?!

Here's my screenshot of an actual sample search; quite a bit lower than the "around 100" character threshold.

lmao. ;p

Cassini -borked_20130604_640.png

budnonymous · Top Poster

ebaY Cassini search, out again. I've been getting blank pages, without any results or even sponsored ads.

Similar reports/complaints are appearing on ebaY forums.

EBAY is not working Type in new search. Screen Flashes items , 1 second, then goes blank What

The Cassini-Houdini-Cantseeme team must be proud.

budnonymous · Top Poster

This recent experience is worth sharing. Back on June 23, 2013, we began a search from ebaY's front page. with cookies clean/clear, adblock plus turned on. That was about 3 days prior to the announcement of Ebay's Secret Cassini Launch

The item was an i-phone.

Here's the item, from ebay seller giospeedy2009. As you can see, there's a couple issues with that item right off the bat which may be warning/danger signs.

1) the image has someone else's username in it.

2) the feedback is what would be considered low/risky, at 96.2% and the sellers overall rank is fairly low, with only 122. (Longevity: registered Sep-08-11)

iphone_item_featured_on_ebay_main_page_06222013_640ce.png

Fast forward to today. The seller's feedback is now sitting at 94.4%. Feedback does not appear to have been issued for that particular item, so at this point, we can't be sure if the deal was good, bad, fake, real or whatever. One other negative review has been posted since, for a different smartphone though (for alleged non-receipt of item and no communication).

Notice also the amount of people who had viewed the item. It could have just as easily been a Buy-it-Now listing, or hacked/hijacked account with the typical image showing instructions to contact off ebay or any number of scenarios. That could make for quite a number of victims.

The point to be made is that supposedly Cassini will protect you, according to the terapeak how-to article Crucial Factors in eBay Search for the New Cassini Platform, published June 11, 2013. (among several other bullet points/buzzphrases)

Trust. Shoppers should see listings that they can trust, from sellers that are likely to serve them well and to generate return business for eBay and eBay sellers.

Here's another choice tidbit:

eBay is not focused on showing you, any other particular seller, or even any particular product to shoppers in response to a search. Instead, eBay wants to show every shopper the listings that are most likely to result in a completed sale with a high-satisfaction outcome. With Cassini, eBay will acomplish [sic] this using real data about buyer and seller behavior - and sellers should bear in mind that eBay has a lot of data about buyer and seller behavior on its hands.

Does it seem that ebaY steers, or would steer folks right to risky deals? Why are such risky deals even on the site, let alone on the front page? Can't ebaY's new photo-inspection bots determine when someone else's photo, or someone else's name is being used? Don't they have human beings to do anything for them? And if not, why is that?

Don't they believe they should treat folks the way they want to be treated?

At the end of it all, the best conclusion is to avoid ebaY. If you want some widget, just use a search engine to find it. Buy it from the manufacturer or authorized outlet, where you have full guarantee/ warrantee, real human beings rather that never answered emails, no contact customer service etc and no ridiculous environment, rules, procedures, payment funding options fraud/SNAFUs, to need to engross yourself in. Buying in person may be the best option for any item, all things given.

It's pretty much a given that ebaY is a terrible place to buy or sell a smartphone/ cellphone.

If you're a seller on ebaY, you may want to seriously re-evaluate your situation.

One last thing here, this is merely a demonstration of ebaY issues, not anything against any particular seller.

For extra points, try such experiments yourself. Share your findings.

-- Edited by budnonymous on Friday 19th of July 2013 01:22:28 AM

budnonymous · Top Poster

More ongoing search related issues:

This one has been around for quite some time:

Not Receiving My "Saved Searches" Emails from Ebay!

Here is a totally strange one. Maybe they are testing a new feature? lmao

Clicking search result takes you to another results page isntead of auction page
08-26-2013 08:30 PM

Something is totally broken.
Here's my search results list:
http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?LH_PrefLoc=2&_odkw=(gobot%2Cgobots%2Cgo%20bot%2Cgo%20bots%2Cmachine%2...
Click on any of these search results takes you NOT to the actual auction page you just clicked on, but to some worthless alternate search result thing I cannot fathom.
For instance, clicking this link:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Gobot-Fitor-Fighter-Bandai-Gobots-/1377572606?pt=US_Action_Figures&h...
Doesn't actually take you to the item page, it takes you to this alternate search results page instead:
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/gobots-fitor

I can't for the life of me figure out how to actually go to the auction I'm clicking on! No matter what clickign on any of the auctions within the results it just sends me to one of these alternate results pages instead
What in the world is going on? Why would I want my search results auction link to take me to ANOTHER SEARCH RESULTS PAGE???
UPDATE: In the time it took me to write this message, the search seems to have reverted to its previous state. I have to image they got so overwhelmed with negative response in teh 5 minutes it was probably live that they tore it down immediately. Though it would be a first.
But these horrible alternate search results pages still exist, you can check them out and shudder at the horror of what might be next week's e-bay:
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/gobots-fitor
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/vintage-gobots
http://www.ebay.com/bhp/transformers-g1-huge-lot

-----------------------------------

I've observed some things similar, (but it would be easier to demonstrate on video that with screencaptures) as well as blank pages being served up when drilling down through various searches, completely unrelated results etc. LoLz

Do you know what a site looks and/or acts like when it's hacked? (whether by accident or design) Just search in generic terms for symptoms of a hacked website. How many indicators does ebaY have? lmao.

But don't tell ebaY or make a fuss. They don't like the "H word". Besides, if someone did state that or ask ebaY what their problems are really all about, ebaY would just lie anyway, wouldn't they? hahaha

How many [more] things need to be broken before people figure it out?

budnonymous · Top Poster

Another report of this strange issue, though hardly the only such.

Viewing photo for sale listing leads instead to search listing of other items, wth?

10-10-2013 10:24 AM

I'm trying to view a few listings of press photos for sale by Historic Images 04. I click on the listing for "1934 Press Photo Cooper bathing suits on models in Arizona" and wind up instead on a page of search results for Moroccan bathing suits! If I try to search for the photo item number 1381535351, I get "no such listing."

This isn't the only photo it's happening with. Trying to view listing for "1930 Press Photo Model wearing satin pajamas" brings me to a page of "1930's Satin" items, as if I had searched for that. Also 'no such item' when I use the photo item number to search: 370912904619.

Serious BS. In manipulating search results, ebay has now further screwed up seller's listings. And to '
screwed up" I say 'screw this.' No photo purchases for me today.

Thank goodness I don't have to sell on here.

jane

budnonymous · Top Poster

Here's a good one:

ATTENTION SELLERS - HUGE PROBLEM - YOUR ITEMS ARE DISAPPEARI NG EARLY

01-15-2014 02:53 PM

Sellers you need to see this: click on a category, for example "Records" (under "Music"). Order the listings by "Time Ending Soonest". notice the top listing - you'll see it has roughly 30 seconds to go. Click refresh - you'll see the first listing is GONE!!!

So will also see that all the other listings ending in about 30 seconds are disappearing.

Not only does this happen in the category search, but also keyword search.

It happened in every category I tested, in both Google Chrome and Internet Explorer.

THIS MEANS YOUR BUYERS ARE NOT SEEING YOUR ITEMS RIGHT BEFORE THEY CLOSE. THIS IS COSTING YOU MONEY.

I have notified eBay's "Customer Support" about 20 hours ago when I noticed this, and they have apparently written a "Sevice Request" to Technical Support to try to "replicate" the problem. Fine. But I have little faith that my one request will do any good. An it has been going on for at least a day - who knows how long this has been happening?

PLEASE CONTACT CUSTOMER SUPPORT AND/OR TECHNICAL SUPPORT AND REPORT THE PROBLEM - THE ONLY POSSIBLE WAY THIS ISSUE WILL GET RESOLVED IS IF LOTS OF SELLERS REPORT IT.

----------------------------------------

When I tested it extensively, sure enough, in not all, but many (if not most) tries, auction format items with time remaining (according to the live countdown clock on the category pages, sorted by ending soonest) vanished before they should have.

However, I also saw items mysteriously appearing! LoLz! Try it yourselves

-- Edited by budnonymous on Thursday 16th of January 2014 11:53:47 PM

RichVernadeau · Noob

Well, the FB group Former Ebay Sellers has now reached 144 members, many are vocal posters posting links to video interviews with JD, links to news stories about ebay, etc., etc. Many are refuges from the rude and misleading bizarro world of Seller Central on ebay discussion groups, good people who grew tired of insults and bickering. In many ways, this group has become an alternative to the ebay discussion boards for many people. It is part of the social media backlash against ebay, a natural grassroots phenomena that is happening. Visit www.facebook.com/groups/formerebaysellers/

ebaYs Search is Hopelessly Broken

ebaY Removes Buy it Now and Auctions Only Options from Search

100 character limit on searches?!

Not Receiving My "Saved Searches" Emails from Ebay!

Clicking search result takes you to another results page isntead of auction page

Viewing photo for sale listing leads instead to search listing of other items, wth?

ATTENTION SELLERS - HUGE PROBLEM - YOUR ITEMS ARE DISAPPEARING EARLY

ATTENTION SELLERS - HUGE PROBLEM - YOUR ITEMS ARE DISAPPEARI NG EARLY