eBay

pmar2730 · ‎10-12-2023

I collect sports cards and in our community, we check "SOLD" and "COMPLETED ITEMS" regularly and often. We use this eBay feature to give value to our cards when we're trading or selling privately. I've just realised that if somebody wins an auction or commits to buy a BIN price and never pays, the "sale" is still considered a transaction.

This is very odd as it wasn't a sale. Can anyone offer any explanation to this? Very peculiar feature and extremely misleading. Can be exploited easily!

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎10-12-2023

@pmar2730 wrote:
I collect sports cards and in our community, we check "SOLD" and "COMPLETED ITEMS" regularly and often. We use this eBay feature to give value to our cards when we're trading or selling privately. I've just realised that if somebody wins an auction or commits to buy a BIN price and never pays, the "sale" is still considered a transaction.

This is very odd as it wasn't a sale. Can anyone offer any explanation to this? Very peculiar feature and extremely misleading. Can be exploited easily!

@pmar2730

Unsure why it is that way, just that is but 1 other interesting nuance of this happens if an item sells using best offer. The best offer does not display as the sold price. Leaves anyone researching with inaccurate results. Confirmed by another seller who had something sell with best offer. Displays on their personal pages but not for anyone else.

-Lotz

reallynicestamps · ‎10-13-2023

Was the Unpaid Item claim filed and the transaction Cancelled?

If not it is quite possible that eBay does not know that it was unpaid. Unlikely but possible.

How would calling a Cancelled sale "sold" be misleading or exploited?

if somebody wins an auction or commits to buy a BIN price and never pays, the "sale" is still considered a transaction.

For research purposes, the fact that a listing was interesting enough that a deadbeat "bought" it is useful information.
However, I agree that the cancellation should be noted and that the failed transaction should not be called a "sale".

For privacy reasons, I would not want the amount of an accepted Best Offer publicized. I want to get the original asking price and publicizing an accepting offer makes that more difficult.

One example would be an item, practically deadstock, sold on Offer on Tuesday. On Friday I find another copy, unexpectedly. Because the Offer sale is fresh, that new listing gets a double boost, from the new listing and from the previous sale.

And this item is not deadstock. It's actually fresh. I want my asking price and won't be adding Best Offer for a couple of years. (My stuff is slow moving at best.)

rocketscollectibles · ‎10-13-2023

Sold listings is a good point of reference but not the ultimate truth. I'm selling in trading cards too and people way too blindly use sold listings. They also wrongly use united states sales, while we're in the canadian market. People are brainwashed about it. This is why and how there is market manipulation. When you have more than one in quantity too, if you sell one at $10.00 and increase your listing to $20.00 after, in sold listings it will eventually update as a $20.00 sale instead of $10.00. Seen that many times. They show the listing, not the actual sale price.

rocketscollectibles · ‎10-13-2023

How would calling a Cancelled sale "sold" be misleading or exploited?

Sellers do auction and chill bid, cancel, and it set an artificial market price. Then next buyers seeing that sold price will pay that price, because it's 'market price'. Most people in the hobby nowadays are brainwashed and pay what the datas tell em to pay, not what they're personally willing to pay.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎10-13-2023

@rocketscollectibles wrote:
Sold listings is a good point of reference but not the ultimate truth. I'm selling in trading cards too and people way too blindly use sold listings. They also wrongly use united states sales, while we're in the canadian market. People are brainwashed about it. This is why and how there is market manipulation. When you have more than one in quantity too, if you sell one at $10.00 and increase your listing to $20.00 after, in sold listings it will eventually update as a $20.00 sale instead of $10.00. Seen that many times. They show the listing, not the actual sale price.

@rocketscollectibles

@reallynicestamps

Not entirely sure when the data was removed but in the past with multiple quantity item listings if more than 1 had been sold you could click on the tab and see all the prices something sold for. It's similar to how buyer feedback left displays without a price. Or when you can see that a buyer has left negative/neutral feedback but are unable to see the type of item it applies to/not seeing history of types of items a buyer has purchased.

Follow that forward directing offers to unknown buyers without knowing where they are located or their past history with previous transactions (example: Standard practice to leave negs or neutrals). If had access to that info I might think twice before sending them an offer.

All of this muddles any realtime honest to goodness history or why should we even consider trusting eBay's version of AI?

-Lotz

Mark Twain Quotes: Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't.

rocketscollectibles · ‎10-13-2023

Not entirely sure when the data was removed but in the past with multiple quantity item listings if more than 1 had been sold you could click on the tab and see all the prices something sold for.

I'm not sure why they removed that tbh now sellers can manipulate and lie about sold prices.

Very strange coincidence. Someone just sent me a message about a random listing i ended 2 months ago and on which i was doing sold listings manipulation tests. I do not have this listing active anymore. As you guys can see, this card was in reality sold $6, but in sold listings it's shown as sold for $1000 with authenticity guarantee. This is what happen when you increase price of a listing with multiple quantity after a sale. And if you end listing, it's registered like this without the ability to change it. Someone just randomly messaged me about what this card had special to be sold this high, you see buyers can gets tricked. Sellers with bad intentions CAN do market manipulation this way.