on 11-15-2018 08:54 AM
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.
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.