posted on February 18, 2001 09:31:23 AM
Hi, all--Now that I'm a seller, I'm discovering some more things about eBay listings that really bother me. This morning I posted this message at eBay's technical issues site:
Seems as though 'way in the past, when I was just a buyer on ebay, when I looked at a certain item's "ending today" page, the number of hits AND the current (not starting) price was showing.
I am now selling, and I'm shocked to see that the "ending today" page is not up to date--only shows the starting price, and no bids at all, even on items I've got which have had bids for days. However, there are SOME (just a few) items on that page that reflect actual bids. What gives?
How do some sellers get bids reflected on that page, for their items? Is there something else I should be doing???
We all know that buyers need to know WHERE the bid is NOW, and we also all know that an item showing several bids is more likely to attract looks from potential buyers. I do not understand why this isn't updated regularly. Any explanation????
Okay--is this an ongoing problem with all you sellers? Am I off base here? Have you already been complaining about this? Opinions, please! --Adele
posted on February 18, 2001 09:42:01 AM
I mentioned this to ebay about two years ago and they said their engineers are working on it. I'm not sure why they haven't done a thing about it. Even Bidbay has an automatic update every minute or so to reflect new bids.
posted on February 18, 2001 09:42:17 AM
Hi roadsmith! First of all, please be sure to take the extremist attitudes with a grain of salt. You will find a very small percentage of sellers that will be unhappy no matter what. You will NOT find an accurate representation of reality therein.
As for the updating, they tend to be as much as a few hours behind on the search, but when you go onto the auction you will see the up to date info reflected.
P.S. Nobody is being targeted here AT ALL!
[ edited by sharkbaby on Feb 18, 2001 09:43 AM ]
posted on February 18, 2001 10:23:05 AM"As for the updating, they tend to be as much as a few hours behind on the search, but when you go onto the auction you will see the up to date info reflected."
Try more than 8! That has been the average length of time for updates on items in my favorite category for more than 3 months now!
When I first started selling, I tried to list so that my items would hit the "front page" so to speak during peak times. I kept working with the submit times trying to figure it out. For awhile IF I allowed a 4 hour lag for updating, I was OK. However, it soon became much longer and my items might make their debute on page 10 of "new today"!
The reverse happened on closing. Sometimes my items never climbed higher than midway to the top in "going..gone" before they were closed. Often my auctions closed and I was still buried on page 25 of 30 for auctions closing today. I would complain to eBay, but of course it did no good. Usually, I was told although the auction never showed up on the top page, my item could/would show up in a search. That may be true, but I sell items that really do better from "browsing" than "searching".
