rpm757
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posted on October 12, 2006 06:00:57 PM
I am surprised that i have not seen one person complaining about the search mess on e-bay.
Sales seem to be non-existent or sporadic at best or is it just me??
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pixiamom
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posted on October 12, 2006 06:53:18 PM
RPM, I certainly feel for you. There is a great deal of speculation on the Powerseller's board that there is a rolling 'brown-out' when some items cannot be found with search and it affects all sellers, but not at the same time. I don't know if it's true or not - I do know there are days I don't get a single new bid on scads of auction listings and very few store sales. This week has been OK for me but I'm holding my breath, waiting for the black cloud to hit me. Edited to add: Have you noticed that all your listings have the same first four digits (at least) in the item # - check out other sellers, they have different digits than you do but their listings all start with the same digits. There is, again, speculation that eBay manages the brown-out via item number.
[ edited by pixiamom on Oct 12, 2006 07:04 PM ]
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rpm757
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posted on October 12, 2006 07:10:53 PM
I tell the joke that you could list a $100 bill on ebay right now for $9.99 and have IT CLOSE WITHOUT BIDS.
I spoke with a CSR at the power-sellers telephone call-in and he flat out said that they do not even read the posts.
I mentioned that in a post over there and I was pink slapped.
My sales are down $100,000 over the last three months.
I really get a laugh out of the posters who think power seller(platinium) are given special treatment.
I think the holiday season will fail this year.
I had three gold coins on now, two re-lists and I can not even get gold value on them.
It's not, stores or ebay express, it is every area is a big mess.
You can't get search from overseas bidders,
I really think I may just liquidate and move on.
I know I will get don't let the door hit you in the butt, but I have a ton of quality items and sources to Field great items from.
But you can not get it sold on ebay.
I hope they either wake up or someone gets fired so we can get someone in there that gives a damn!
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pixiamom
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posted on October 12, 2006 07:19:51 PM
The optimist in me hopes that this is not intentional - that the new search is broken and eBay is managing it until it gets fixed. I do many searches on eBay and often come up with totally different numbers on the same search - 2 minutes apart. As a buyer, my new frustration is that the ads on the search results page often prevents me from use the back button (on Firefox) to go to a previous page. Another peeve: a search for NPRR does not return listings with N.P.R.R. and vice-versa. It's frustrating that eBay doesn't communicate its known problems with buyers and sellers and give us some sort of confidence that the problems will get fixed.
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rpm757
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posted on October 12, 2006 07:50:36 PM
The current problem seems to be that it is not searching into descriptions.
So if your title is composed in a general fashion, due to the content in the ad you search may fail.
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pixiamom
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posted on October 12, 2006 07:57:24 PM
Rereading your posts and from my previous life in the corporate world - there are a gzillion red flags that scream you need to change your business model or suffer the fate of Glacier Bay. Is there any way of going on hiatus on eBay - for if and when things straightem out?
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rpm757
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posted on October 12, 2006 09:03:07 PM
I sell things for other coin dealers. most of what I sell i pay for after it is bought.
It is a perfect relationship that I have with them.
All they ask is that i get the stuff sold and out the door.
But your reference is a very real thought. (Glacier bay)
I have pulled back from selling about 400 items per week.
I have been selling lower end stamps items and have been doing OK.
That is where i realized that the search is targeted.
Stamps are not in the ebay express selling scope.
I have been getting bids and bidding wars there.
But the money is in the coins on consignment. But they must sell or I am cut off.
I have a very large base of email addresses.
We are working on a web site to move some items to.
I can liquidate right here on e-bay the stamps and continue to mine my name.
But they are going to see a lot of quality merchants leaving because they are messing with the producers of the fees not the junk sellers from from re shippers who make it on high shipping.
I can compete with the biggest coin guys, i really have a great network of product sources.
I just need to find more selling sources.
One thing we are doing and it is a great source of income, we advertise in a local paper we are in town buying stuff. It costs about $1500 and the money needed to buy the stuff.
We buy and turn over 90% in a week and the gravy goes to selling on e-bay.
We clear about 2 grand on each "roadshow"
so the big loser is ebay because we will be out of here in 6 months if this keeps up.
As the use to say when I worked in another industry "sales erase sins"
So when the sales are down the costs need to be trimmed.
An e-bay will the first place!!
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LtRay
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posted on October 13, 2006 02:50:15 AM
Very interesting thread. I think I am beginning to understand what happened to my sales the last few weeks.
Things were doing great and then 2 weeks ago it was like someone pulled the plug and sales plummeted.
I had forgotten about their new "intelligent" search.
As for Express, I've been monitoring items and can not begin to understand how the search works over there.
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NEGLUS
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posted on October 13, 2006 06:10:24 AM
My business died on the 10th - just stopped DEAD! No new bids - even newly listed items aren't being viewed. My items begin with the numbers 16004(Just rolled over to "4" from "3" if there is anything to that theory.
Reading the "technical issues" board, it looks like there are many problems with "Search":
Coding problems with ampersands(I think that is what they decided the problem was):
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000363033&start=0
This is about the "back" button not working on searches:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000358373&tstart=0
I will copy the "pink" response:
"The problem seems to be affecting Win XP (SP2) users only. A ticket has been filed and the team is currently working on a solution for you. I will post another update with an ETA on the fix as soon as I can.
How to tell if you are running Win XP Service Pack 2 (SP2)
1. right click on My Computer icon
2. click Properties
3. on the General tab under “System” you should see “Service Pack 2”
If you are NOT running Win XP SP2 and are still experiencing the problem, please send me an at: [email protected] and include the following information:
* Operating system (e.g. Win XP, Win 98, etc)
* Browser & version number (e.g. Firefox 1.5)
Thanks!
Chad"
Saved Searches not working:
http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=2000242938&tstart=0&mod=1160723399769
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
[ edited by NEGLUS on Oct 13, 2006 06:13 AM ]
[ edited by NEGLUS on Oct 13, 2006 06:16 AM ]
[ edited by NEGLUS on Oct 13, 2006 06:18 AM ]
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iceicepenguin
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posted on October 13, 2006 06:39:31 AM
There has been some speculation over on the Ebay boards that the first digits of your items are a regional designation.
The theory is that the numbers are rotated through different regions and internationally. I am in Indiana and I had a week of no sales, then a week where 90% of my buyers were from California, the next week East Coast, etc.
I closed my store after letting things expire as they came up last week due to my page visits going down the tube. Practically non-exsistant page visits. I'll use the the 15.00 to list in core. Everything else gets listed at my St. Elsewhere sites.
Last week I listed a large amount of Boyd's bears in core which were a consignment sale. 90% of the buyers were from Canada and a couple from upstate New York.
Guess last week was my turn up North!
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rpm757
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posted on October 13, 2006 07:28:50 AM
NEGLUS
thanks for the heads up
On the back button issue,I run service pack 2.
This explains why i have the same problem on Vendio when i use the checkout system.
The 11TH was a really bad day too!
Some of my assoc's who end their listing that night took it in the shorts.
they list 99CT to start, stamp collections and usually get them up to $100's or more.
he has a large following, I bet they could not find him on Wednesday night..
Like I said about the $100 bill listing for $9.99 with no takers, he sold out items that had a $1000 in postage for $200.
someone should be fired at e-bay for this someone high up, just to make an example of them!
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rpm757
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posted on October 13, 2006 07:29:53 AM
NEGLUS
thanks for the heads up
On the back button issue,I run service pack 2.
This explains why i have the same problem on Vendio when i use the checkout system.
The 11TH was a really bad day too!
Some of my assoc's who end their listing that night took it in the shorts.
they list 99CT to start, stamp collections and usually get them up to $100's or more.
he has a large following, I bet they could not find him on Wednesday night..
Like I said about the $100 bill listing for $9.99 with no takers, he sold out items that had a $1000 in postage for $200.
someone should be fired at e-bay for this someone high up, just to make an example of them!
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roadsmith
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posted on October 13, 2006 08:50:15 AM
Yup, me too! And I think I have that Windows service pack, will check later. Got back to town Wed. night and my hits numbers and bids haven't changed a bit since then. Disgusting.
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ladyjewels2000
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posted on October 13, 2006 09:58:01 AM
Hopefully there will be some improvement soon before we all lose our shirts.
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kozersky
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posted on October 13, 2006 04:23:41 PM
I would have commented on search earlier, but I was and am buried in trying to update my shipping options on ebay. Not only is there a search problem, There is problem with compatibility between the ebay system and listings composed on Vendio. Oh me. I have to go into my individual store items and adjust the shipping to coincide with the ebay "enhancements."
And, we have to pay for all this.
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dixielou
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posted on October 13, 2006 05:18:35 PM
As a buyer, I haven't received the results from any of my saved searches for several days until today. I have many saved searches and receive on average 10 daily emails.
Today I was looking at one of the emails and saw that shipping for the auction was $32.00 when shipping is normally between $10 and $15. Normally I would pass it by but for whatever reason I went to the auction and saw that this was the "Expedited" shipping and the buyer had also listed $8.00 for priority and $10 for parcel post.
So the emails are not necessarily correct.
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roadsmith
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posted on October 13, 2006 06:18:23 PM
Well, I am praying that eBay gets healed before Monday night! My hits are still absolutely static, as are the bids; and both are nearly non-existent.
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pixiamom
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posted on October 13, 2006 06:32:18 PM
kozersky- I had ebay/Vendio compat. shipping glitches almost a year ago. Positively devastated my October/November sales. I think I got a $10 credit from Vendio with no apology and over $3000 in lost sales.
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pixiamom
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posted on October 14, 2006 09:45:07 PM
What really baffles me is when things are found in my store but not in my auctions. 11 items sold from my store today- but only 1 new bid today on 300+ auctions, many of them started yesterday, many of them end tomorrow - go figure!
[ edited by pixiamom on Oct 14, 2006 09:46 PM ]
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oldscrazy
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posted on October 14, 2006 11:48:30 PM
Interesting thread! I too have noticed my hits on auctions has been almost no exsistant. Does anyone realize that is going against what Bill Cobb stated in that infamous email back in July? They took the store listing and final value fees up to try to return to the "core" of Ebay's business, i.e: auctions. My store is still getting hits , it is the auctions that seem to be bad. I started noticing it last April. Since then my overall sales have been down so much that I almost lost power seller status and then all of a sudden they went up enough in Sept to even it out. Now it is way too slow again. That is also an interesting take on the new item numbers but I have a hard time believing that is it regional sense I can't see a logical purpose for it. It is much more logical that the difference in the item numbers has to do with the catagory the items are in. All of mine since the change has started with 1500 and I sell on Ebay Motors. The real problem is Ebay is trying to fix something that wasn't broken and using all of us as their beta testers.They are the ones who are going to lose on this in the long run.I have spent the last week opening a Vendio store and moving a lot of the items that had been in my Ebay store to it. I had been averaging about 500 items a month in the store and am cutting it in half at least. I may move more depending on what happens at Ebay. There is no way I'm going to pay them more money per item when they are not upholding their part.Does anyone have any idea how many sellers Ebay has lost?
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pixiamom
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posted on October 16, 2006 02:54:41 PM
RPM is right about the title and description search. It is really, really broken. Searching for an exact phrase in titles only returned only a few items, I extended the search on the same phrase to titles and descriptions and it found zero nada zilch items.
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neglus
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posted on October 16, 2006 04:57:16 PM
Take a look at this thread on the ebay Search board:
http://forums.ebay.com/db1/thread.jspa?threadID=1000365313&tstart=0&mod=1161039735382
It looks like ebays search engine is toast.I think this has a lot to do with the disasters that many sellers have encountered since April of this year.
From that thread:
"eBay search is really toast... Wednesday they rolled out "ebaybase_e4814us.js" to apply a band-aid to the search URL problem... Thursday night, during regular, every two2 weeks, site-wide roll out of code, they replaced the above mentioned JS file with "ebaybase_e4815us.js"... Then this morning I noticed that they had rolled out "ebaybase_e4816us.js"... There is a lot that they are not revealing."
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
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neglus
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posted on October 16, 2006 07:22:41 PM
If you want to know where ebay is headed in the not so distant future, take a look at these articles:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y06/m06/i12/s00
It isn't about Auctions OR Stores anymore:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=17280&ch=biztech
Be afraid - be very afraid.
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http://stores.ebay.com/Moody-Mommys-Marvelous-Postcards?refid=store
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pixiamom
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posted on October 16, 2006 08:53:32 PM
I remember the AuctionBytes article from before. This is the first time I've read all the way through the Technology Review article. Interesting contrast to "get back to core" mutterings. That, and the Search Discussion board certainly help explain why we are going through this. I wonder if hanging their success on eBay Express achievements is going to back fire on them? I'm also interested in learning how they will enhance the collectibles buying experience? At least they mentioned collectibles ! In the long run, it might not be all bad news for those who can survive their testing phases.
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photosensitive
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posted on October 16, 2006 11:45:33 PM
I have several saved searches that always return 2 or 3 pages of results. In the last few days I can get the usual 100 or so items in my search but when I click on "next" page an error message comes up saying there are too many results to return and I should refine my search terms. If there are not too many on page one why are there too many on page two?
If I click a few times it will give me the next page.
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“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as of the pen.”
Maholy-Nagy, Vision in Motion, 1947
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