Lowest Price Filter Is A Con

[plantagenet77]

I've been shopping on ebay for over a decade (Member since: 24-Sep-07) and I am getting more and more frustrated with the lowest price filter.  It has become useless, as sellers put in multiple "size" or "color" which has nothing to do with the object and changes the price from $3 to $13.  An example: eBay item number: 362480500269.  The actual toy is C $9.98 but they advertise it as .99 because they added a little plush doll that has nothing to do with the title or search query.  

This is false advertising to lure people in, which makes the filter useless and frustrates me (along with MANY other shoppers) to the point where I have been taking my business to many of the other auction sites out there. 

I would suggest implementing a policy where sellers that are found to have fake pricing will result in a suspension of the seller's account (as a first offense).  Second may result in the seller's account being terminated.  That will include the loss of hundreds/thousands of feedback/transaction.  That will keep many sellers honest. 

Ebay needs to fix this problem, as the e-commerce world has grown and there are lots of other sites (ali**** on Sunday had $30.8 billion in sale, for example) that will continue to lure ebay customers away.    

[reallynicestamps · Accepted solution]

This is a much discussed problem.

My only method of dealing with it is to NOT use Lowest Price as a Search.

Instead I use Highest Price +Shipping.

Partly because those phoney baloney listings will be hundreds of pages below.

Partly because the higher priced items are likely to actually be what they say they are-- not counterfeits or vapourware.

But mostly because it is faster to drill down to my price point through a few dozen, perhaps a hundred, listings than to slog through hundreds even thousands of baloney listings.

YMMV.

[plantagenet77 · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the suggestion. I will try it out that way and hope to find better deals. It's unfortunate that it has come to this. As mentioned below, changing color or size shouldn't change the item being advertised. Hopefully Ebay will start to realize this and make changes to their code and sellers rules. Thanks again.

[ohyesidid · Accepted solution]

I also am fed up with these false advertising practices. I would never purchase anything from a seller that does that.

[ichopshop]

You can sort lower to higher but set a minimum dollar amount.  I usually have a good idea of what the lowest price should be anyways, this way a lot of those scam listings get cut off.

[reallynicestamps]

But the OP is right. This is a huge customer confidence problem.

Most people are smart enough not to get caught in the con, but these make finding the good stuff more difficult.

EBay needs a better filter.

If they can find duplicate listings before indexing, perhaps a bot could be set up to refuse those variations where the variation is not colour or number but entirely different products.

[retroman_studios]

It doesn't matter what options or tools there are, people will always find a way to abuse it.

[momcqueen]

Like femme says, sort in the other direction. Highest first and then work backwards. It way more reliably separates the wheat from the chaff.