eBay Sellers Theorize on Reasons for Low Sales

Oh lookie! The troll job continues... Let's see, how many different times will someone suggest workarounds to language purposefully placed into the user agreement which specifies your items "may not" or will not be seen, coupled with the FACT that items are not being seen, (as evidenced by dismal sales, views, reports etc)? Too many to count, but here are recent examples all over the place...

Mon Nov 11 2013 14:08:29

eBay Seller Says Secret Tactic Increases Exposure in Search

last week the culprit was html...

Wed Oct 30 2013 13:34:31

Cassini Penalizes eBay Listings with HTML

Tamebay seems to be hinting at gaming the Watched Items, and more-less invokes the successor to the ebay pulse scam. Hilarious!

eBay test "Hot" watched items in search

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A racket is a service that is fraudulently offered to solve a problem, such as for a problem that does not actually exist, will not be affected, or would not otherwise exist. Conducting a racket is racketeering.^[1] Particularly, the potential problem may be caused by the same party that offers to solve it, although that fact may be concealed, with the specific intent to engender continual patronage for this party. A prototype is the protection racket, wherein a person or group indicates that they could protect a store from potential damage, damage that the same person or group would otherwise inflict, while the correlation of threat and protection may be more or less deniably veiled, distinguishing it from the more direct act of extortion.
Racketeering is often associated with organized crime, and the term was coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.^[2]

Sending someone on fool's errands looks just like the second element of a criminal racket. It doesn't really matter whether the suggestions come from 'official' sources or ones slightly less direct.

Depriving people of the service advertised expected, and paid for, via the use of secret criteria is theft, via deception, aka fraud, no matter what they put in their user agreement. It is now little to nothing more than unregulated gambling in essence.

budnonymous · Top Poster

Naru Messenger wrote:
One trick is to import your eBay Stores RSS Feed into Google FeedBurner. Then use FeedBurner to send to Twitter. Then connect Twitter to your Facebook account.

Quick and easy and the best part It's FREE! See this forum post for more info and videos: http://www.narumessenger.com/forum/ebay/ebanged-by-ebay-cassini-mucked-up-search/
YouTube Import RSS Video: http://youtu.be/ejjH57SO8uM

Also use WordPress to add all your inventory. Video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/nFHfgjfKFjs
Just beware - eBay might not like sellers doing this and suspend your account!
Cheers!

yeah but there's been a bazillion 'tricks' suggested to increase views/traffic/sales since 2010 when the phenomenon first began. Rather, there was a stone wall of "hidden listings" or Rolling Blackout denial, and the cheated members were repeatedly told, for every reason under the sun, it was their own fault.

Not a single workaround or trick has proven to be curative. Not only that, but never once has any of the experts, ebay bloggers etc told why all the tricks did not work. Instead they only attempt to string people along by having them try something else. It's a troll job. (dangling shiny bait in the water from a slowly moving boat) Anything to provide a glimmer of hope and keep them on the site.

There are no workarounds for this language being added to the User Agreement

"To further create a marketplace where buyers find what they want and drive positive user experience, we updated the provision regarding listing conditions to recognize that the appearance and placement of listings in search and browse results will depend on a variety of factors. So, in some situations a listing may not appear in some search and browse results regardless of sort order."

Let me just break it down into plain, easy to understand English.

Donahoe blurted out something stupid and the world noticed.

That, coupled with the fact that the hidden listings tests were documented and exposed.

If everyone remembers, ebay squeaked out the term "hidden listings" back directly after the "First Glitch of Springtime"

There's likely more to it than that of course, but we shall keep our cards close to the vest. muahahahahaha

But the bottom line, again there are no workarounds! They did not add that into the user agreement for no reason. It is strictly an attempt at CYA.

You can bet (because we can see them all) they have people out there who are ebay Rolling Blackout/Hidden listings (and Purge) deniers, just as there are Holocaust deniers.

Ebay is only in it for the money, and we know they lie like a rug! They will do and say anything to keep people on the site.

You can bet anything that if, and when they are called to the carpet by authorities, bigtime journalists etc over this affair, they will quickly point out the terms in the UA, and deny any chicanery involving the false workarounds, tips, 'secret tips', fake hope/propaganda being constantly fed to the cheated users.

What ebay is doing with the hidden listings, rotating servers, rolling blackouts, limited visibility, (whatever) for secret reasons, together with all the lies is theft, fraud, plain and simple. Don't reward them with your time and money.

Here's your best workaround and only guarantee.

Don't forget to close your paypal account too.

-- Edited by budnonymous on Friday 15th of November 2013 07:54:22 PM

Naru Messenger · Noob

One trick is to import your eBay Stores RSS Feed into Google FeedBurner. Then use FeedBurner to send to Twitter. Then connect Twitter to your Facebook account.

Quick and easy and the best part It's FREE! See this forum post for more info and videos: http://www.narumessenger.com/forum/ebay/ebanged-by-ebay-cassini-mucked-up-search/

YouTube Import RSS Video: http://youtu.be/ejjH57SO8uM

Also use WordPress to add all your inventory. Video on YouTube: http://youtu.be/nFHfgjfKFjs

Just beware - eBay might not like sellers doing this and suspend your account!

Cheers!

budnonymous · Top Poster

There's more to consider:

"If you're a customer, you're part of our experimentation," he said. "We do this with everybody who's online and we're running 200 of these tests at the same time."

They are constantly making statements to other groups to embellish their technical prowess, power managing capabilities and so on. They've made statements regarding turning off 400 servers etc. They tried to make statements to wallstreet without informing the members.

That's taking people's money and not providing the service advertised, expected, and lawfully due. The odds are at best 50/50 your items will be/have been/are being seen. Every last person cheated should get their money back. Rigged ToS or not.

In addition, the secret beta tests are unscrupulous if not unlawful. Consumers should have the right to be made full well aware, and to opt out of any given tests. Especially those which degrade or have the great potential to degrade the quality/level of service. That issue, again compounded by ill-informed or deliberately untruthful ebay personnel, various other associated entities perpetuating false or diversionary info, so as to assure and/or encourage (dare I say coerce?) continued patronage.

Place all that, again, in front of the tableaux of so many site functionality issues, constant mystery wallet share windfall glitches ad infinitum... some if not many literally uncorrected for years...