Trickery

[whiteknight55528]

Is it just me or is there many sellers out there that are starting to try and trick people by adding a under $10 item to their listing but posting their listing as that price. With a large item in the picture wich is the main listing item .thinking your getting a deal but as soon as you choose a colour they jack the rate by800% i find this wrong and deceiving and should not be allowed what happens if someone accidently buys thinking they got a deal until they see the bill???

[momcqueen]

If I'm not mistaken this is less of a trick and more of a function of the multi-variation listing. 

Does or did the seller have several options that already sold out? Or in plentiful colours? 

It's a bit of a glitch with search results coming back. The buyer might see that something similar to what they want costs 99 cents but the item they really want costs $9.99. 

I don't think it's possible to accidentally pay for something costing ten times what you sought, but you might add it to the Shopping Cart like that. Luckily, the cart is simply a resting ground, not a commitment to purchase. 

[retroman_studios]

If I recall from when I did use the multi SKU listing tool, you can deliberately make your primary photo be of the most expensive SKU, giving the illusion that the lowest SKU is in fact your premium SKU.

Is it honest? No. Is it marketing? Yeah, that's a classic marketing.

All the more reason these days buying online you need to research and catch things like this. 

As a side note when I see new products on eBay I always search Amazon to see if they are drop shipping, you would be amazed to see how many eBay listings are lazy people re-listing Amazon items. I got hit with that a while back, and nearly lost out on a refund. 

[momcqueen]

Those aren’t ALWAYS lazy sellers relisting items *from* another marketplace; they can in fact be sellers on both. Listing the same items on both.

[retroman_studios]

True, I have seen eBay sellers who use Amazon Fulfillment, as it is multi platform.

But the real giveaway are items sold by Amazon.ca themselves, increased in price by 10-20 percent just for eBay users. Yay!

[momcqueen]

Well, I can excuse that. (Not that I do that.) Some people do prefer to use ebay, maybe it's adding toward their eBay Bucks total or using an existing coupon, or something else like the opportunity to use their paypal balance.

ebay sellers cannot compete for price with the items that The River sells themselves... unless the seller on ebay got it for free. A 10 to 20 per cent increase in price for a Widget sold by The River for the opportunity to buy it on ebay instead only covers the costs of selling it plus maybe a buck of profit for the ebay seller. Which is not a smart or sound business model.