Where Is eBay Hiding Product Reviews?

by: Philip Cohen

I am predominantly a buyer; I would not invest any time that I thought might benefit this most unscrupulous organisation; and, you can't find any reviews? That's likely because, if any exist at all, the unscrupulous, incompetent amateurs running this show would not know how to give consumers easy access to them; and, if any reviews do exist, they are most probably the work of (poorly paid) eBay shills ...

The eBay executive suite—where the incompetent mingle with the disingenuous, the malevolent and the outright criminal, and the just plain stupid … http://bit.ly/11F2eas  

by: Ric

As a buyer, I find product reviews useless.  I never made a purchase based on a review as I never pay attention to them.

Besides, between the ads and self promoting blurbs eBay loads listing pages with, who needs more clutter to distract you from what you came to do?

The fact that reviews on eBay are difficult to find is just fine with me.

by: veron

Ebay hiding everything: listings,Reviews,Ebay id,Dates, sold or bought items,descriptions.eBay is a mess!eBay Steals Money From HONEST Sellers.Criminals.That's all i have to say about that.

by: pace306

HOGWASH

"CEO John Donahoe said in January eBay planned to build its own product catalog to overcome SEO problems"

Well if eBay hadnt tried to scam Google - no SEO problems would have existed.

As for "fleshing out the catalog" ... gimme a break - eBay - STOP making your sellers do YOUR job.

Heres eBays solution:

http://icecat.biz/

Icecat: creating the world's largest open catalog with 2684807 data-sheets 11065 brands


thank you ... problem solved

by: nsc

@ric, reviews are useful for some products. For example, if 75% of the reviews for a certain style of shoe say that it runs narrow, that might make me order a different size.

by: Leroy

I find product reviews very helpful and rarely buy anything without running a Google search first to see what other people have to say. For example, I recently bought a travel steamer and despite the fact that there are dozens of steamers to choose from, I was able to make a decision fairly quickly and bought one that was ranked No. 1 on three different sites. I'm happy with mine, too!

As far as eBay reviews, I was asked to write a review for a camera battery in 2014. I just now ran a search for the same battery and was unable to find anything re. reviews on the search result page or inside a few random listings.

eBay's site map shows a link for ''Guides and Reviews'' but apparently someone forgot to include the reviews, as that page is specifically for Guides. However, when I took the link you provided above, and exchanged the item number for a battery like the one I reviewed, again I found nothing on the search page, but just below the title inside the listings, there are five stars and a link that says, ''10 product reviews.''

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Nikon-EN-EL9a-Rechargeable-Lithium-Ion
-Battery-25377-/301589248633?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item46381eba79

I'm thinking that eBay employees must not be able to communicate very effectively with one another and often end up working at cross-purposes. When it looks like eBay is being run by clever, malicious masterminds, it may actually be just a bunch of dumb-as-rocks boobs bumbling around and tripping over one another until something crucial finally breaks.

by: comet

I appreciate product reviews--and hotel and restaurant reviews too--but you do have to use your common sense and look at the site where they are posted.

I also WRITE reviews---often.

Would I TRUST an ebay product review IF I could FIND one?

Well==probably==-not. I use Amazon reviews;  Yelp; TripAdvisor--but ebay?

I have never SEEN an ebay  product review nor as far as I know have I been asked TO review there;  yet Amazon is Jonny on the Spot on this; just today I received a product that I have ALREADY reviewed on a prior purchase --and I am being asked via email this evening  to AGAIN review it!  I get this on ALL Amazon purchases--and I get follow up requests from their customers on products I have reviewed.  If you know the answers---thats fine;  if you don't you just click I can't help and move on.

Another BIG difference between Amazon and ebay---you CAN ask questions on Amazon without being BLOCKED for daring to have the impertinance of ASKING a question of a seller that you might want to send MONEY--your hard earned money--to.

Yes--I AM looking at some posters HERE.  

I DO find these very helpful on some things---stuff I might not be able to find locally and try I would much rather see what others say before I buy.

But-==-I know I already can't trust ebay.    

by: angryllama

I have been asked to leave reviews and from mere recollection I think I've left about 3 or 4.  A few months ago I did LOOK back to see if the reviews I left were there as by ODD CHANCE I had occasion to look at AMAZON to see if they had any "reviews" about the way that VAST QUANTITIES of DVD full season sets of Star Trek-Voyager and The Next Generation are total 101 percent COUNTERFEITS. Shock to my system is that there were TONS of such reviews on AMAZON that stressed that THAT BUYER had received COUNTERFEIT DVDs. Anybody here think that EBAY would "permit" such reviews to ever see the light of day?  I sure don't.  Back to the ones where I did leave reviews.  I did find my reviews, but they were linked ONLY to the individual buyers that I got them from NOT to the actual UPC / Catalog listing for THAT particular movie.  Maybe eBay is just trying to get folks to do Busy Work to keep their minds off the way actual TRAFFIC of Buyers / Lookers coming to and using Ebay is soooooo much Worse than what they are admitting to. Not the topic here, but I have come to suspect that the HAPPIEST possible explaination for HUGE DECLINE (60 percent drop from March) might be because some propeller-head at eBay has left some Software "switch" in the wrong position and they are TELLING us all is well whilst their Killer Robot Drones are treating Top Rated Sellers as though they Just Signed Up and need Guardrails and Limitations.

by: sasikat9

What kind of review would one give all the Chinese junk on the site that Fleecebay wouldn't hide???

by: Orwellwasright

The last 2 posters have it DEAD RIGHT

ebay is crippled by their dependence on dishonesty and absolute alligence to their Chinese junk Dumpers at the expense of 95% of the honest American sellers

How many reviews of so many products do you think will be filled with comments about the overall low quality and prevelance of counterfits frauds and fakes?

AN HONEST review of many product lines on ebay would cripple the Junk Dumpers

Feedback can be scrubbed, however comment boards by the thousands would be more difficult

Why would a functionally , by design dishonest venue want open honest reviews?

by: Rexford

If John Donahoe's name is associated with any implementation.............well I think you know how this sentence ends.

by: Will

Buyers love to be passive-aggressive and say negative things. You know for a fact, they will say something specific about the seller they bought from, in the event of a defective product. While the review is supposed to be about the product only, the seller's name, for all the world to see, will be attached if the buyer mentions it. The right thing, would be for eBay to erase the product review. Amazon does that.

But can you count on eBay to do the right thing?

by: Harriet

Reviews are out of bounds. Online buyers are being stalked. Buyers of all kinds of things are getting requests for reviews. I get them from my insurance agent, my health insurance company who wants me to review my doctor, the car dealership where I had service done, plus almost any product I buy online. I find it terribly annoying. Some of them won't let you go. They keep hounding you. Amazon is one of those. I made the mistake of reviewing one of the items I bought, and from that point on, I kept getting emails from potential buyers who wanted me to share with them, how I liked the product. That went on for about a year. How they got my email address is not such a mystery. They got it from Amazon.

Now here comes eBay. First, the buyer has to review the seller in 5 different categories, plus giving feedback, now they want the product to be reviewed.

Honestly, where does this end?? It's like being bothered by Rachel from Credit Card Services every evening when you are about to eat dinner.

And in a related annoyance, how many of us are being stalked online by product ad pop ups, when we have searched for a similar thing. I was searching for some underwear, and now on every page I go to, I see an underwear ad.

A total PIA. I suggest that none of us ever gives any product review.  

by: Toledo Maude

I rarely purchase anything online or in a brick and mortar store that I have not researched the item from online product reviews.  My favorite sites are Amazon, QVC and sometimes Lowes and Sears.  

If QVC or Amazon has an item with no product reviews, most likely I will pass it up.

Yes, there are always a few reviewers will write negative comments about something they bought, but reading many reviews and looking at the summary of five to one stars left from people who purchased  the same item, one can make an educated decision to buy or not.

I do find it disappointing when shopping on eBay that there are no product reviews.  That is for new items only.  To review a vintage collectable item would be pointless.

And yes, yes, yes, eBay does have a creditability problem.

If I heard a rumor that eBay's bonus baby soon to jump ship CEO when a Boy Scout was caught buying his merit badges at a flea market, I would probably believe it.  

by: RKTOYS

I think this is more poor management than overt dishonesty and the same goes for many other hidden features.

Somebody else here has to have been a programmer working under managers that can barely turn their PCs on.  You ask "why don't we fix X?" and they blow you off, form a committee that forgets to discuss X, buy a 3rd party product that just makes X worse, etc.  Users know X is broken, you know X is broken, and management would rather X stay broken than loosen their grip for even a moment.

by: The End

Ebay : Get serious. Lower Listing fees. Lower the Final Value Fee to 2.5%.
Without this, you have nothing.

by: wasteland-mechanic

Here is a perfect example of how ebay will eff up any product reviews. This Singer sewing machine (which is USED and was made from the 1930s through the 1950s) has 7 "product reviews".

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vtg-1955-Singer-201-2-Sewing-Machine-w
ith-Pedal-and-Case-WORKS-See-Video-/191540297837

How can you possibly have "reviews" for an item that is USED and can be in any possible condition from mint to completely worthless?????

by: ebay-dreckfresser

    The bottom line, as explained by Lawrence Meyers on InvestorPlace, is that ''You Can't Trust Ebay.''  The presence or absence of product reviews won't change that. Meyers' excellent article on Ebay's decline is available at the following link:

http://investorplace.com/2015/06/dont-trust-ebay-stock-fr
aud-paypal/#.VXW42UaUMxI

by: Philip Cohen

@ebay-dreckfresser,

Yeah, never a truer article has been written; but don't be misled, eBay is an equal-opportunity fraudster; they will facilitate, and aid and abet before and after the fact, the defrauding of both buyers and sellers, as long as there is a benefit in such fraud for eBay ...

The ugly reality of eBay’s demonstrable, calculated facilitation of endemic shill bidding fraud on consumers on its auctions marketplace … http://bit.ly/11F2eas

by: troglites

Unfortunately, Ebay already tons of product reviews - feedback from buyers blaming sellers for their dislike of a product. I've seen ''This movie sucks'' = negative. By the same token, some buyers rate sellers based soley on their like of a product. Buyers need to judge sellers on their service - sellers are not the manufacturers of the product. True, some cheap junk falls apart as soon the buyer receives the product, but the old adage is true - you get what you pay for.

I think this is just another move on their part to be like Amazon. I've seen a few listings that I was interested in that had product reviews - always bypassed those and went to Amazon. I just don't trust the climate Ebay has created.