eBay

jt-libra · ‎11-15-2015

You know, of all the eBay glitches we experience, the missing gallery picture is the one that irks me the most.

I can understand a delay of a few hours during the last day of a promotion (like the one offered on .ca which ends today) but sometimes it takes 2 or 3 days for the picture to appear. And 2 or 3 days on a 7-day auction is h-u-u-u-u-g-e! You can revise and re-upload your pictures a hundred times, it won't make any difference.

Lately, when I've been shopping on eBay, or when I've been doing price comparisons, I see missing pictures all over the place. And I am less likely to click on a listing with no gallery picture even if the picture appears on the listing itself.

I wish something could be done about this recurring problem.

cumos55 · ‎11-15-2015

If I was given a dollar for every listing without a gallery picture in the book category ...

I would be a millionaire.

Picture policy in the book category is virtually ignored... and because of this the book category is a mess....

Gallery pictures...... Ho Hum

a Policy not enforced.....

So if you are reminded of the missing gallery photo ...

use the book category

as an indication of a lack of enforcement... of picture policy...

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

The primary problem is with sellers that have thousands... hundreds of thousands,,, and millions of listings.

A Gallery photo was never uploaded.....

jt-libra · ‎11-15-2015

@cumos55 wrote:
If I was given a dollar for every listing without a gallery picture in the book category ...

I would be a millionaire.

Picture policy in the book category is virtually ignored... and because of this the book category is a mess....

Gallery pictures...... Ho Hum

a Policy not enforced.....

So if you are reminded of the missing gallery photo ...

use the book category

as an indication of a lack of enforcement... of picture policy...

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

The primary problem is with sellers that have thousands... hundreds of thousands,,, and millions of listings.

A Gallery photo was never uploaded.....

I can see how frustrating that would be for you. The Health and Beauty category is not as bad as Books. I didn't realize that it was a problem of enforcement. I thought if there was a problem with the gallery picture function, it would affect all categories.

But, like you said, sellers with thousands and thousands of listings are likely some of the guiltiest parties.

I took another look around tonight and it's more than a 2 or 3 day delay in many cases. I see listings that have 20 days left on a 30 day listing and still no picture. That's unacceptable, particularly when we get our knuckles rapped if our pictures don't meet the size requirement.

e8group2007a · ‎11-15-2015

There is glitch...not just policy non-enforcement. Every time I upload a bunch of listings a few appear without picture at all. An example is eBay item number:

381466442816

The picture is in the turbo lister file. It met all the size requirements. When uploaded eBay took it as picture present (or the listing would have been rejected at upload) yet it appears with no picture at all. This happens with a few listings every time I dump up a bunch. Next time the pic in that item will be fine but a few others will not show up at all. At other times a pic will be in the listing but just the gallery pic will not show.

e8group2007a · ‎11-15-2015

Oops...like item 381416823996 I made an error with the first one.

westernstargifts · ‎11-15-2015

I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.

jt-libra · ‎11-15-2015

@westernstargifts wrote:
I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.

It's frustrating, isn't it? I've done that too but when it's still early in the month and I've used all my free listings, I hate to have to cancel perfectly good listings and then pay for new ones. It's not going to break the bank but it adds up, and we shouldn't have to go to additional expense and inconvenience and possibly missed sales because of this problem.

I'm going to raise this issue again at the Wednesday chat.

(I got lucky tonight .... all my missing pictures showed up after a few hours, but that doesn't always happen.)

cumos55 · ‎11-15-2015

There are just too many listings without gallery photos in the book category to say it is an eBay glitch.

Those booksellers list en mass... and definitely do not list with a gallery photo.

Many use the catalogue for books..... However, when there is no stock photo some sellers manufacture a photo to meet the requirement for a gallery photo.

but then they are not following another aspect of photo policy....

......providing a photo of the item... that is ... the book being sold....

Some listings are so bad it is very difficult determining what is being sold

pocomocomputing · ‎11-15-2015

@westernstargifts wrote:
I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.

eBay has this tool to refresh a gallery picture.

For listings on eBay.ca, Fix you picture link below:

http://cgi5.ebay.ca/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

On eBay.com

http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

Change the xxxxx to your userid

Another way for eBay.com only, if you can use the new enhanced loader, click on add edit photos and it will show you existing photos and you can edit them. Select the gallery photo and change the brightness the smallest amount possible. Then save the listing. This change in the photo forces a rewrite of the gallery picture and it should appear now. I have not tried this but I read that several sellers who tried this trick had their gallery photo fixed.

eBay.ca does not have the enhanced uploader so you can't use this trick here.

westernstargifts · ‎11-16-2015

@pocomocomputing wrote:
@westernstargifts wrote:
I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.
eBay has this tool to refresh a gallery picture.

For listings on eBay.ca, Fix you picture link below:

http://cgi5.ebay.ca/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

On eBay.com

http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

Change the xxxxx to your userid

Another way for eBay.com only, if you can use the new enhanced loader, click on add edit photos and it will show you existing photos and you can edit them. Select the gallery photo and change the brightness the smallest amount possible. Then save the listing. This change in the photo forces a rewrite of the gallery picture and it should appear now. I have not tried this but I read that several sellers who tried this trick had their gallery photo fixed.

eBay.ca does not have the enhanced uploader so you can't use this trick here.

They used to have a link on the listing itself where you could refresh the photo but, as I recall, it rarely worked. I did bookmark the link you provided and will try that if it happens again. Thanks for posting it.

faircrochet · ‎11-16-2015

When you use File Exchange to upload multiple listings with a .csv file and you make a mistake with the picture URL the listing goes live without a gallery picture. If you make a File Exchange correction, the extra pictures load when you click on a listing but the gallery photos never appear.

It just happened to me - somehow I changed my default picture extension to .JPG instead of .jpg - not a problem on windows machines. But my picure host uses Linux where the case of the letters does matter. No photos loaded 😞

The only way I knew to fix it was to go into each listing individually, which I wasn't going to do. I'll try that "Fix your picture" link and see if it's easier.

Thanks!

faircrochet · ‎11-16-2015

Bah! Neither link works. It shows the same 'broken' picture saying this is the new gallery. There's a link to the original they claim to have used to produce the 'new'picture, a button to "retry" and a link to manually revise the listing.

The original picture is fine. I gave up on the retry after about 20 minutes of "processing". And I'm not revising a large number of listings manually. So I'm stuck with broken pictures.

rose-dee · ‎11-16-2015

@pocomocomputing wrote:
eBay has this tool to refresh a gallery picture.

While I agree it's helpful to have a workaround available, I'm afraid I'm with 'jt' in believing that this is an absolutely fundamental issue that should be a priority for eBay to resolve. As others have indicated, this is a glitch, quite apart from the other problem (which is also serious) of listings being able to go live without a photo.

I noticed missing pictures in my categories a few weeks ago and reported it to Raphael at the Wed. Board Hour. At that time I thought it might be a policy violation, not a glitch, but clearly there are two things going on. Although Raphael kept it on his list of issues he's tracking, and indicated it was being worked on, apparently it still hasn't been fixed.

I hope 'jt' will bring this up this coming Wednesday. It's critical for eBay to fix this.

msmaggie060 · ‎11-16-2015

I have one listing right now that I have tried to revise and get the gallery photo to appear but with no luck. I'll have to end my listing and re-do the listing and hope it works the next time! I might try taking a new photo and uploading that first, don't know if it will make a difference though. Changing the brightness didn't work, have tried that.

jt-libra · ‎11-16-2015

@pocomocomputing wrote:
@westernstargifts wrote:
I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.
eBay has this tool to refresh a gallery picture.

For listings on eBay.ca, Fix you picture link below:

http://cgi5.ebay.ca/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

On eBay.com

http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

Change the xxxxx to your userid

Another way for eBay.com only, if you can use the new enhanced loader, click on add edit photos and it will show you existing photos and you can edit them. Select the gallery photo and change the brightness the smallest amount possible. Then save the listing. This change in the photo forces a rewrite of the gallery picture and it should appear now. I have not tried this but I read that several sellers who tried this trick had their gallery photo fixed.

eBay.ca does not have the enhanced uploader so you can't use this trick here.

II've tried those links from time to time, but they never seem to work. They were introduced, I believe, about 10 years ago and maybe they are now obsolete or need to be updated by eBay.

I like your tip for revising an existing picture slightly on the enhanced loader. Thanks.

pocomocomputing · ‎11-16-2015

@pocomocomputing wrote:
@westernstargifts wrote:
I had to end 2 FP listings the other day. Both were long time listings with multiple purchases but the gallery photo just disappeared. I sent an email to Raphael during last week's board hour and mentioned it to him. When there was no change after a few days I just ended the listing and made new ones.
eBay has this tool to refresh a gallery picture.

For listings on eBay.ca, Fix you picture link below:

http://cgi5.ebay.ca/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

On eBay.com

http://cgi5.ebay.com/ws1/eBayISAPI.dll?DisplayGalleryImagePageV3&guest=1&userid=xxxxx

Change the xxxxx to your userid

Another way for eBay.com only, if you can use the new enhanced loader, click on add edit photos and it will show you existing photos and you can edit them. Select the gallery photo and change the brightness the smallest amount possible. Then save the listing. This change in the photo forces a rewrite of the gallery picture and it should appear now. I have not tried this but I read that several sellers who tried this trick had their gallery photo fixed.

eBay.ca does not have the enhanced uploader so you can't use this trick here.

Sorry the above did not help.

I had the gallery picture fix bookmarked for a long time and the few times I have had a gallery picture issue, they worked for me. Of course, this was in the past (months ago) and not recently.

The other trick with changing the brightness I read on the USA forums but never tried.

eBay just has so many issues. Incredible. Sad.

westernstargifts · ‎11-16-2015

I am having major issues with photo gallery pictures not showing up. I did try the Fix It link but had no luck.

I edited a photo and revised the listing using the new one and it still does not show up. Then I did a search specific test to find my "solid copper bracelet" listings and found that there were 15 gallery photos missing in that search alone, although only 1 is missing in my Store view with the same search terms. These are a mixture of old and new listings. I am not willing to end them all because many have had sales and I don't want to lose that boost they get in Search. Also there is no guarantee that the Gallery photos will show up when relisted.

pocomocomputing · ‎11-16-2015

@westernstargifts wrote:
I am having major issues with photo gallery pictures not showing up. I did try the Fix It link but had no luck.

I edited a photo and revised the listing using the new one and it still does not show up. Then I did a search specific test to find my "solid copper bracelet" listings and found that there were 15 gallery photos missing in that search alone, although only 1 is missing in my Store view with the same search terms. These are a mixture of old and new listings. I am not willing to end them all because many have had sales and I don't want to lose that boost they get in Search. Also there is no guarantee that the Gallery photos will show up when relisted.

I searched your "solid copper bracelet" listings and saw the 15 missing gallery photos in the search. Just to confirm what you saw.

pierrelebel · ‎11-16-2015

I also did a search for solid copper bracelet and 2,239 listings showed up on .ca

The search was sorted by newly listed first

ALL of them had their image correctly displayed on the search result page.

I then selected located in Canada only and found solid copper bracelet 232 listings

ALL of them had their image correctly displayed on the search result page.

I am using Firefox

pierrelebel · ‎11-16-2015

When I searched westernstargifts specifically, some images were missing in the search result page but were shown within the listings.

The last time I had such problem - many months ago - I simply bulk revised the listings without making any change and the problem was solved within hours (once the listings are re-indexed by eBay).