eBay

musicyouneed · ‎07-16-2017

I have been selling quite well for July, at least 2 or 3 a day, so far 30 sales up to Thursday July 13. Now nothing, usually each weekend I would have at least 5 to 6 sales. It is like ebay turned my lights off. I'm wondering if other have noticed or is it only me?

tobyshitzu · ‎08-20-2017

For as many times over as many years people have claimed ebay "hides lsitings", "blackouts" etc, no one has ever been able to provide any evidence. Nor any credible theory on why ebay would want to intentionally "hide listings" Or if they did provide specific items, it was only because they didn't fill in the shipping section properly

Ebay does have in the tos that bit about listings not showing. Which they have tod us the circumstances they do that, eg duplicate acutions without bids, and how listings work between international sites

jt-libra · ‎08-20-2017

Could someone please do me a favour and search for the following items:

172817015893

182687832330

182668915597

Thanks to patphotog who recommended that TOR be used to see your own listings, I found that 125 of my listings are not showing and have not been showing for months. When I put them through the eBay active content scanner, it showed that the target was incorrect (the link to my store). I spent hours and hours, over a period of weeks, revising each and every one of my listings a few months ago, individually, since eBay's bulk editor cannot bulk add, bulk delete or search and replace, even though it is supposed to. It simply doesn't work. I ran them through the scanner and everything appeared okay. Now they are not.

As I mentioned earlier in this thread, there is no warning from eBay that your listing contains active content and needs to be corrected, although they warn about everything else under the sun. Plus they have stated that if active content is present, your listing will still show but there will be no description. WRONG

So it's going to take me a long time to revise each one of these AGAIN. But I've revised a few of them and they were clear in the scanner but they still don't show up in the TOR browser. That's why I'm asking if someone could view the three above and let me know if they can see them.

Thanks.

tobyshitzu · ‎08-20-2017

Looked at the first one. Search "the jinx dvd" and it comes up near the top on both .ca and .com while logged on as a Canadian. Wouldn;t expect it to sell to an American with lower priced listing available

jt-libra · ‎08-21-2017

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
Looked at the first one. Search "the jinx dvd" and it comes up near the top on both .ca and .com while logged on as a Canadian. Wouldn;t expect it to sell to an American with lower priced listing available

Thanks Toby. I just composed a long post in reply to yours but it disappeared when I tried to post it. eBay and I simply don't like each other

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-21-2017

I see the first 2 when searching by item number. I also searched and found them by title on .com.

I can't find the first one by item number.

Are the ones that you can't see the ones that showed the link problem? I'm just wondering if that really is the problem. I've sold 5 items in the last couple of days and when I scan my items all of the listings with recent sales show that they have target issues.

What I don't understand...I would think that if items are hid from buyers then they are hid from all buyers whether or not ebay can see their ip or not? If I can see 251 of your items why can't you see them when using that browser? Is the previous poster saying that your items only show if ebay knows you are? If so..then why can you see some of your items? I'm not expecting you to answer those questions, but this doesn't make sense to me.

tobyshitzu · ‎08-21-2017

I downloaded that TOR browser and used it default as it was. Not logged in to ebay. Looked at my own listings

The search page shows my listings with the overseas shipping rate displayed...and does not show my listings that do not have overseas shipping. So that browser is making ebay think Im overseas and not showing listings that don't ship there. No one is actually shopping on ebay with the TOR browser to make it look like they are in another country with shippign details to there. Completely useless as any sort of test

pjcdn2005 · ‎08-21-2017

I wondered about that and just asked about it on another thread. I wasn't signed in but I didn't download the browser or hide my ip and when I looked at jt's other id she had 251 listings. The majority have shipping to the US and Canada only but when I searched as if I was in the UK, only 7 listings were shown. Wouldn't that mean that when she was looking on Tor that she would just see the 7 that ship overseas?

Anyway...I agree that looking at listings anonymously doesn't really tell you anything.

hlmacdon · ‎08-21-2017

@toby**bleep**zu wrote:
I downloaded that TOR browser and used it default as it was. Not logged in to ebay. Looked at my own listings

The search page shows my listings with the overseas shipping rate displayed...and does not show my listings that do not have overseas shipping. So that browser is making ebay think Im overseas and not showing listings that don't ship there. No one is actually shopping on ebay with the TOR browser to make it look like they are in another country with shippign details to there. Completely useless as any sort of test

That is the correct behavior. If you are not signed in, ebay will use geolocation based on your IP address to determine your current location and listings will show or not show based on the ship to locations of given listings. Your traffic gets routed through a an exit node which often enough will be overseas and thus assign you an overseas IP. If you set a location in the shipping and payments on a listing or via the search results page then it will use that location and show listings accordingly.

jt-libra · ‎08-21-2017

I've read the last four posts and thank you for checking the listings for me. I'm not going to be able to do any further investigating until later today. I have two doctors appointments and a CT scan back to back to back. I only ship within North America and if my random IP address happened to be a UK one, then of course I wouldn't see any of them, so that test isn't really isn't helpful to me and may account for you being able to since you ship overseas.

Besides having very few sales, I noticed that each month, most of my listings only had 2 or 3 views which is unusually low so I began to think that the only people who looked at my items were those who clicked on my store link on the few listings which are visible and then viewed a couple of items within my store.

It's interesting that pj sold items that had target issues and I'm wondering if many of her clients go directly to her store and do not search by item. Who knows!

I lost sleep over this last night and it ruined my Game of Thrones viewing experience so I'll have to get back to this later.

Thanks.

momcqueen · ‎08-21-2017

What an episode it was!

Good luck with your medical appointments today.

Just a thought: have you ever had a duplicate listings warning? Even one on any ID? Anytime I read of a seller experiencing visibility issues, it makes me think about the eBay statement from about a year ago where it was stated that a seller's listings would be obscured in search as repurcusion for duplicate listings. And that the action would be taken without a big hullabaloo.

I've not experienced the visibility issues that you describe, so I have not spent much time contemplating the cause. I don't subscribe to the 'blackouts' theory, it's never seemed logical to me.

rose-dee · ‎08-21-2017

@jt-libra wrote:
Could someone please do me a favour and search for the following items:
172817015893
182687832330
182668915597

For what it may still be worth to you, I searched by these numbers, and was able to find the first two, but not the last one (182668915597). Nothing at all came up for that item.

I then tried searching under "The Jinx", and your listing came up 6th in the list. I was on eBay.ca at the time, but didn't check .com, I'll do that separately.

As an aside, since I've been too busy to read through all eBay's pronouncements about active content, does anyone know exactly what eBay has said it was going to do with or about any remaining active content listings? In other words, have they actually made any announcement that those listings would be taken down, hidden or otherwise demoted?

Although I printed out my "bad list" when eBay notified me about listings with active content, I haven't gone back to clean them up. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd know precisely what to clean up, or whether the time involved is even worth it. Since I'm re-doing a lot of other things for the fall and topping up my store, I think I'm just going to start from scratch relisting all of them. Ugghh, more busy-work. Never ends on eBay.

rose-dee · ‎08-21-2017

I've just tried the same searches on .com (signed in with my other ID), with the same results -- your first two numbers pull up the listings, the last one produces nothing.

On .com, "The Jinx" was 5th in line on a keyword search (the same as on .ca), so at least that's working well. Although I did expect it would have a higher rating when searched on .ca.

I hope this is of some help to you.

jt-libra · ‎08-21-2017

@rose-dee wrote:
@jt-libra wrote:
Could someone please do me a favour and search for the following items:
172817015893
182687832330
182668915597

For what it may still be worth to you, I searched by these numbers, and was able to find the first two, but not the last one (182668915597). Nothing at all came up for that item.

I then tried searching under "The Jinx", and your listing came up 6th in the list. I was on eBay.ca at the time, but didn't check .com, I'll do that separately.

As an aside, since I've been too busy to read through all eBay's pronouncements about active content, does anyone know exactly what eBay has said it was going to do with or about any remaining active content listings? In other words, have they actually made any announcement that those listings would be taken down, hidden or otherwise demoted?

Although I printed out my "bad list" when eBay notified me about listings with active content, I haven't gone back to clean them up. To be honest, I'm not sure I'd know precisely what to clean up, or whether the time involved is even worth it. Since I'm re-doing a lot of other things for the fall and topping up my store, I think I'm just going to start from scratch relisting all of them. Ugghh, more busy-work. Never ends on eBay.

Thanks for taking the time to look, rose. I had made a few notes to myself about the end of active content on June 26th. I can't find the official announcement from eBay, and I'm not sure there was just one. However, I'm pretty sure that my understanding is correct. On the 26th, eBay was going to disable all active content but not remove your listing. Should your listing continue to contain active content, a couple of things can happen. It may take a long time to load, if at all, and video or animation may not display properly.

In addition to active content, there were target issues that needed to be addressed. For example, links to a store would no longer open in a new window but would open in the current window, wiping out your description. We were provided with HTML coding to include as part of our link to enable them to continue to open in a new window.

For example:
✔ <a href="www.yourlinkhere.com" target="_blank">eBay</a>
✘ <a href="www.yourlinkhere.com">eBay</a>

This is where the eBay bulk editor was useless. That extra coding could not be added so I viewed the HTML description in each one of my listings and manually added the target code. Then I tested each one to confirm that they opened correctly. I thought I was good to go.

But I guess it's easy to make an error when you're inserting a little bit of code within thousands of characters, so when I ran my listings through the active content scanner yesterday, I found that 125 of them had target errors -- not active content as I had believed. So what I'm doing now is copying the corrected coding from the scanner, deleting the HTML code from each of my identified incorrect listings and pasting the revised coding. This will take a while. But I'm not so sure this is even why my listings aren't showing. PJ says that a lot of her listings display target issues but they don't seem to prevent them from showing or selling.

In addition to the eBay active content scanner, I just noticed yesterday that at the bottom of the Overview page in Seller Hub, there's a link to check if you have any active content.

rose-dee · ‎08-22-2017

Thank you for all of this information, "jt". Looking at your explanation about the store links, I think that's beyond my ken, or at least beyond my patience to bother with (LOL).

I can't believe how much time we sellers have to spend every few months to re-work our listings to accommodate these constant changes eBay introduces. Sometimes -- like this year -- it seems like a massive overhaul (oh yes, and now that I think of it, last year too with the currency change on .ca, and oh yes, the year before...oh yes and...). I suppose I'm getting tired of always trying to keep up. Just when you think you've got things up to snuff, the rules or policies change again.

My biggest wish is that eBay would just leave things alone for one 12-month cycle, focus on fixing the things that don't work, and let us all get settled into actually selling, rather than constantly fiddling around with our listings. OK, diatribe over, I've got that off my chest. 🙂

Thank you also for mentioning the active content check link on Seller Hub. I hadn't noticed it. I've pretty much decided to dump all my old listings and start over, since I'm at a low ebb in number of listings right now anyway. That will probably also do away with a lot of old, messy HTML that I'm not even aware of. Fortunately I use Auctiva, which is very good at keeping up with eBay changes, so I know that if I start from there, my listings will comply fully.

jt-libra · ‎08-22-2017

@rose-dee wrote:

I can't believe how much time we sellers have to spend every few months to re-work our listings to accommodate these constant changes eBay introduces. Sometimes -- like this year -- it seems like a massive overhaul (oh yes, and now that I think of it, last year too with the currency change on .ca, and oh yes, the year before...oh yes and...). I suppose I'm getting tired of always trying to keep up. Just when you think you've got things up to snuff, the rules or policies change again.

That's precisely how I feel. When I first started selling, I was working two other jobs and I didn't feel overwhelmed by keeping my eBay listings up to date.

Now it just seems like a whole lot of work for very little gain (at least in my case) Since the time I began converting my listings to USD, then opening my store and adding links to my description ... then revising those listings and links to be compliant with eBay's no active content policy, and learning to use and compare prices on various shipping platforms instead of PayPal, it feels like a full-time job. And I know that more changes are likely to come. I often look outside at the lovely weather .... which is short-lived in Manitoba .... and think, what the heck am I doing here in front of my computer. But I do rely on sales to assist with monthly expenses so I forge on. There's simply no fun in it anymore.

pocomocomputing · ‎08-22-2017

@jt-libra wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:

I can't believe how much time we sellers have to spend every few months to re-work our listings to accommodate these constant changes eBay introduces. Sometimes -- like this year -- it seems like a massive overhaul (oh yes, and now that I think of it, last year too with the currency change on .ca, and oh yes, the year before...oh yes and...). I suppose I'm getting tired of always trying to keep up. Just when you think you've got things up to snuff, the rules or policies change again.

That's precisely how I feel. When I first started selling, I was working two other jobs and I didn't feel overwhelmed by keeping my eBay listings up to date.

Now it just seems like a whole lot of work for very little gain (at least in my case) Since the time I began converting my listings to USD, then opening my store and adding links to my description ... then revising those listings and links to be compliant with eBay's no active content policy, and learning to use and compare prices on various shipping platforms instead of PayPal, it feels like a full-time job. And I know that more changes are likely to come. I often look outside at the lovely weather .... which is short-lived in Manitoba .... and think, what the heck am I doing here in front of my computer. But I do rely on sales to assist with monthly expenses so I forge on. There's simply no fun in it anymore.

That is the big reason why I stopped selling last year on eBay. Too much work for so little profit. I was selling for the fun of it. Selling some odd computer part or some no longer needed household item. A form of recycling.

Postage cost for Light Packet is what really killed my eBay selling. Most items well low cost and small and I could sell for $5 CDN or USD with Free Shipping using Lettermail within Canada and Light Packet USA with shipping cost under $3 CDN. Today Light Packet USA is $6.84 (?)

LOL, one time on my birthday 4-5 years ago, my son bought me a case of 12 beer from some small local brewery. Dead Frog was the brand and it had a neat name and logo. I bragged that I could probably sell the bottle caps on eBay since there is (was?) an active collector market for beer bottle caps. Within a month I had sold them in groups of 3 for $5 CDN for 4 sales. Shipping was $2.65 CDN to the USA with Light Packet USA. I was using discount postage stamps from reallynicestamps (femmefan1946) so the actual postage costs were even lower.

I got a couple more Dead Frog beer caps and ended up selling them with some other beer caps to a buyer in Spain and they paid for the extra cost of shipping internationally by Light Packet International.

jt-libra · ‎08-22-2017

@pocomocomputing wrote:
@jt-libra wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:

I can't believe how much time we sellers have to spend every few months to re-work our listings to accommodate these constant changes eBay introduces. Sometimes -- like this year -- it seems like a massive overhaul (oh yes, and now that I think of it, last year too with the currency change on .ca, and oh yes, the year before...oh yes and...). I suppose I'm getting tired of always trying to keep up. Just when you think you've got things up to snuff, the rules or policies change again.

That's precisely how I feel. When I first started selling, I was working two other jobs and I didn't feel overwhelmed by keeping my eBay listings up to date.

Now it just seems like a whole lot of work for very little gain (at least in my case) Since the time I began converting my listings to USD, then opening my store and adding links to my description ... then revising those listings and links to be compliant with eBay's no active content policy, and learning to use and compare prices on various shipping platforms instead of PayPal, it feels like a full-time job. And I know that more changes are likely to come. I often look outside at the lovely weather .... which is short-lived in Manitoba .... and think, what the heck am I doing here in front of my computer. But I do rely on sales to assist with monthly expenses so I forge on. There's simply no fun in it anymore.

That is the big reason why I stopped selling last year on eBay. Too much work for so little profit. I was selling for the fun of it. Selling some odd computer part or some no longer needed household item. A form of recycling.

Postage cost for Light Packet is what really killed my eBay selling. Most items well low cost and small and I could sell for $5 CDN or USD with Free Shipping using Lettermail within Canada and Light Packet USA with shipping cost under $3 CDN. Today Light Packet USA is $6.84 (?)

LOL, one time on my birthday 4-5 years ago, my son bought me a case of 12 beer from some small local brewery. Dead Frog was the brand and it had a neat name and logo. I bragged that I could probably sell the bottle caps on eBay since there is (was?) an active collector market for beer bottle caps. Within a month I had sold them in groups of 3 for $5 CDN for 4 sales. Shipping was $2.65 CDN to the USA with Light Packet USA. I was using discount postage stamps from reallynicestamps (femmefan1946) so the actual postage costs were even lower.

I got a couple more Dead Frog beer caps and ended up selling them with some other beer caps to a buyer in Spain and they paid for the extra cost of shipping internationally by Light Packet International.

That's interesting! Just a couple of days ago, I happened across some listings for bottle caps and it caught me by surprise. I hadn't thought of them as being collector's items.

I remember when Light Packet was just under $3.00 (I think about $2.84). I had just started selling then. But you're right, it's just not cost effective anymore when the smallest of items costs $6.84 to the U.S. I can't blame people for trying to get away with shipping goods by letterpost when only documents are supposed to be shipped by that method.

So, are you still selling, but just not on eBay?

pocomocomputing · ‎08-23-2017

@jt-libra wrote:
@pocomocomputing wrote:
@jt-libra wrote:
@rose-dee wrote:

I can't believe how much time we sellers have to spend every few months to re-work our listings to accommodate these constant changes eBay introduces. Sometimes -- like this year -- it seems like a massive overhaul (oh yes, and now that I think of it, last year too with the currency change on .ca, and oh yes, the year before...oh yes and...). I suppose I'm getting tired of always trying to keep up. Just when you think you've got things up to snuff, the rules or policies change again.

That's precisely how I feel. When I first started selling, I was working two other jobs and I didn't feel overwhelmed by keeping my eBay listings up to date.

Now it just seems like a whole lot of work for very little gain (at least in my case) Since the time I began converting my listings to USD, then opening my store and adding links to my description ... then revising those listings and links to be compliant with eBay's no active content policy, and learning to use and compare prices on various shipping platforms instead of PayPal, it feels like a full-time job. And I know that more changes are likely to come. I often look outside at the lovely weather .... which is short-lived in Manitoba .... and think, what the heck am I doing here in front of my computer. But I do rely on sales to assist with monthly expenses so I forge on. There's simply no fun in it anymore.

That is the big reason why I stopped selling last year on eBay. Too much work for so little profit. I was selling for the fun of it. Selling some odd computer part or some no longer needed household item. A form of recycling.

Postage cost for Light Packet is what really killed my eBay selling. Most items well low cost and small and I could sell for $5 CDN or USD with Free Shipping using Lettermail within Canada and Light Packet USA with shipping cost under $3 CDN. Today Light Packet USA is $6.84 (?)

LOL, one time on my birthday 4-5 years ago, my son bought me a case of 12 beer from some small local brewery. Dead Frog was the brand and it had a neat name and logo. I bragged that I could probably sell the bottle caps on eBay since there is (was?) an active collector market for beer bottle caps. Within a month I had sold them in groups of 3 for $5 CDN for 4 sales. Shipping was $2.65 CDN to the USA with Light Packet USA. I was using discount postage stamps from reallynicestamps (femmefan1946) so the actual postage costs were even lower.

I got a couple more Dead Frog beer caps and ended up selling them with some other beer caps to a buyer in Spain and they paid for the extra cost of shipping internationally by Light Packet International.
That's interesting! Just a couple of days ago, I happened across some listings for bottle caps and it caught me by surprise. I hadn't thought of them as being collector's items.

I remember when Light Packet was just under $3.00 (I think about $2.84). I had just started selling then. But you're right, it's just not cost effective anymore when the smallest of items costs $6.84 to the U.S. I can't blame people for trying to get away with shipping goods by letterpost when only documents are supposed to be shipped by that method.

So, are you still selling, but just not on eBay?

No, not selling anymore anywhere. Other than the odd item on Craigslist that are personal household items no longer needed (large size items like furniture, old kitchen sink and faucet after a reno and so on). Still have some things I could list on eBay but it takes a lot of energy and patience. As mentioned, the fun is gone. Sometimes I want to list items but it is hard to start.

With Turbo Lister being discontinued, all my old listings of the items I sold or listed in the past 8+ years may not be available one day to reuse. Not worth paying for a third party tool monthly to save them. I have them saved to a CSV file on my computer by exporting them from Turbo Lister so if one day eBay does make the Seller Hub able to import CSV files from a computer desktop maybe I may be able to save them or at least access them again.

It is nice to be free of eBay and the daily checking for sales and shipping but the constant glitches and issues wear you down.

I do read the forums daily or every other day. More like reading the newspaper type of activity. Many times it is on my smartphone when I read.

musicyouneed · ‎08-23-2017

Somewhere down the line on ebay you are going to be able to go back 2 years.

momcqueen · ‎08-26-2017

I loved collecting beer caps as a child. I don't partake today but if I started a collection, bottle caps would at the top of my list of interesting things.

Regarding the discussion around tor, anyone who plans to entertain the idea of using it may want more information which can, of course, be found on wikipedia but here are two interesting articles I found:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/05/tor-beginners-guide-nsa-browser

http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/technology/hidden-code-ip-address-police-dark-web-investigation-1.426310...

It's articles like these that make me happy I have no use for the dark web and effectively nothing to hide.