eBay

Anonymous · ‎10-18-2013

Did you notice that when you check feedback of buyers or sellers, you won't see what item they bought or sold anymore?

I noticed it a few days and thought it was another "glitch" but it appears to be like forever, no more we can see what times or $$$ anymore. Guess eBay decided to make it more private.

So to those who thought that any sellers that sell items "private" that you won't buy from, now you have to live with that, no more shown items what buyers or sellers buy or sold, now it is fully private.

I have another account that I post my items privately for very obvious reasons since 5 years ago and I was right to do so, it is to protect my buyers as the other ebayers do harass my buyers way too often. I had to call eBay so many times and they advised me to make my listings private. Now eBay is making them private, it took them more than 5 years to finally change it to private.

I think it is due to too many "out of eBay" practices that many sellers see what items their buyers bought and suggest to them if they want to buy other items. I get so many buyers asking me to do that which I was so leery as if one or few of them are "testing" me to see if I would do "out of eBay" practices, etc.

That is my past experiences.

mr.elmwood · ‎10-18-2013

Buyer FB is worthless anyway. All it is, is a list of "Thanks for paying".

.
.
.

ricarmic · ‎10-18-2013

Well, I did find it useful, it was a good way to see what else they had been buying so see how my material fit in their buying profile....I am sad to see it gone.....

marybrooks · ‎10-18-2013

You wrote:...when you check feedback of buyers or sellers...

Not something I usually do but I took your suggestion and checked the feedback you received, all from the same "seller", and then checked the feedback left for others by that "seller", looking at 200 per page to get a bigger picture. Anyone with half a brain will notice that seller often leaves positive feedback with negative comments for non-payers while most other positive comments use the same language except for the comments given to you! Someone once wrote: if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck...

recped · ‎10-18-2013

The Item Titles and Selling Price are back, the only thing missing is the View Item link.

If you really need to see the item page you still can by searching completed listings using the title.

"What else could I do? I had no trade so I became a peddler" - Lazarus Greenberg 1915
- answering Trolls is voluntary, my policy is not to participate.

rose-dee · ‎10-18-2013

Yes, I noticed this yesterday and thought it was a glitch too. Obviously not. Gee, I wish eBay would give some notice or open explanation about these moves -- it seems to be happening a lot over the last few months. Things just appear or disappear, all we're all left wondering if it's a site or browser problem.

Personally I found this information very useful when checking on the purchasing history of buyers making an offer on a higher-priced item I had listed. It gave me a good idea of (a) whether the buyer was able/willing to pay for it, based on purchases of similar value; and (b) the types of items the buyer was generally interested in.

On the downside, as the OP mentions, having those items open for all-too-easy viewing probably encouraged a lot of snooping and fishing of the nefarious kind.

So eBay obviously made a decision to err on the side of more privacy. As recped mentions, if you want to be really diligent you can do a search on the title. Inexperienced or lazy "phishers" probably won't bother.

I just wouldn't mind so much if they'd give us (especially sellers) a heads-up the next time something is removed across the site.

rose-dee · ‎10-18-2013

@ricarmic wrote:
Well, I did find it useful, it was a good way to see what else they had been buying so see how my material fit in their buying profile....I am sad to see it gone.....

This just made me realize another advantage to easy visibility of purchased items that was probably valuable -- people looking at my buyers' FB pages would see items purchased from me and be able to look at them directly, which in turn would route them to my store, the chain-link effect.

I know as a buyer I've often done this -- take a quick look at items other people have purchased in a category I'm interested in to find sellers I might not have known about. It was just easy to click on "View Item".

It's not the buyer FB per se that's important, but easy access to this information had its value for sellers and buyers.

lady.stark · ‎10-19-2013

I also noticed that change and was concerned it was a glitch. I searched here on the community and found this link given by Toby: http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/abn/y13/m10/i17/s01

If it really is intentional on eBay's part, how will we know if a negative was warranted or not if we can't see the description? That is one of the stupidest move on eBay's part after the "it ain't yours until you pay for it"!!

The article says and I quote: "Based on customer feedback from both buyers and sellers, we have made the decision to remove the view item link and item ID information on Buyer and Seller Feedback profiles pages".

Have you been asked your opinion? I know I haven't. None of my 2 IDs got a survey on this matter!

By the way, the link also disappeared from the sellers feedback, not just buyers feedback.

lady.stark · ‎10-19-2013

@rose-dee wrote:
I know as a buyer I've often done this -- take a quick look at items other people have purchased in a category I'm interested in to find sellers I might not have known about. It was just easy to click on "View Item".

As a buyer, that's something I often did too. Some sellers got sales because of that link on another buyer's feedback.

If it's there to stay, I just hope they will get rid of the private listings... which, in a certain way, is a good thing, because private listings are just too easy to shill bid on.

rose-dee · ‎10-19-2013

Yes, the more I think about it, the more vexed I am that this feature was just removed from the site without a word. I certainly don't recall it being a question on any survey I've completed.

There is another thing that's occurred to me: wasn't this the same eBay not so long ago who used to proclaim that they wanted an "open" site, where transactions were transparent to all? Wasn't that an original part of their credo? Wow, we've come a long way from home.

I still think the advantages of openness outweigh the issues of privacy -- why should transactions on this site be able to be private anyway? Personally I think it's possible that this new veiling of activity may lead to even more negative activity than the phishing, etc. which I assume was the rationale for removing the "View Item" feature.

Who knows, perhaps eBay had a completely different reason for removing it that will never be disclosed, and the survey 'explanation' is just a smokescreen.

The fact that there will no longer be any easy "cross-pollination" from buyer to seller and vice versa, through being able to view what others have purchased, is a real concern to me as a small seller.

karl*katz · ‎10-20-2013

If you go to the eBay UK site you can still view feedback with item links.

cumos55 · ‎10-20-2013

There was a judgment ruling in a class action suiit... that class action suits are no longer possible in the US.

eBay went directly to stating who can legally "sue" eBay.

Individuals on eBay.com

but ... not as a class action.

The class action option still remains on eBay.ca and perhaps elsewhere.

eBay has done several things over the last few months, since that judgment in the US....

Individuals can no longer get together for a class action on eBay.com...

eBay is protected quite significantly.

eBay can legally not show certain listings..... and now not show other things as well.

karl*katz · ‎10-20-2013

If there are no more class action suits in the United States there will be 200,000 unemployed Lawyers and John Grisham will have to find new subject material for his renderings. 🙂

rose-dee · ‎10-20-2013

@karl*katz wrote:
If you go to the eBay UK site you can still view feedback with item links.

Thanks for this tip - I'll remember this if I need to check out the purchase history of a buyer making an offer on one of my listings.

Unfortunately I doubt it will help U.S. buyers (who make up the majority of my sales) find my listings through taking a peek at what others have purchased. I can't imagine most would think to log onto the UK site.

I liked the concept of "cross-pollination", rather disgusted to see it removed.

pocomocomputing · ‎10-20-2013

@rose-dee wrote:
@karl*katz wrote:
If you go to the eBay UK site you can still view feedback with item links.

Thanks for this tip - I'll remember this if I need to check out the purchase history of a buyer making an offer on one of my listings.

Unfortunately I doubt it will help U.S. buyers (who make up the majority of my sales) find my listings through taking a peek at what others have purchased. I can't imagine most would think to log onto the UK site.

I liked the concept of "cross-pollination", rather disgusted to see it removed.

Logging on to other eBay English based sites is sometimes useful to find old ways of accessing help files or old ways of seeing things. The UK site keeps up with the USA site quickly but eBay Singapore is useful for finding old things or views since that site takes a long time to catch up with changes. But generally all catch up eventually.

Anonymous · ‎10-24-2013

One negative thing about View Item removed from feedback is that I cannot see what items and why that the buyers gave the sellers negative feedback so I can avoid of going into the similar problems. Now it is becoming a risk for us to buy anything from sellers with lots of neutral or negative feedback.

I do buy things from sellers with lots of neutral or negative feedback after checking their feedback history and seeing that it is nothing to do with the certain items that I am interested to bid or buy and now I am leery of taking risks. Sad. Oh well.