Ex-Worker Sues eBay, Alleges Deceptive Practices

by: Shanna

Something longtime sellers have suspected all along.

by: etectra

Paying to promote listings on a long dying site whereas a large portion of the items are cheap made in China that would never be confused with what you are selling.

They have been hiding listings for years!

I wish I had a dollar every time I searched on eBay and come up with zero results yet the same search finds eBay listings on Google.

Caught them hiding shipping options on my listings. Of course they lied and said it was only for some areas. Nope! Every single zip code entered into a VPN browser from each of the shipping zones were hiding the same shipping service.

by: SilverTadpole8034

Been feeling for a long time that eBay has some bad actors calling the shots.  

by: RL15

what a surprise said nobody

by: Rexford

Would make for a nice modern day Nancy Drew book.  The Case of the Hidden Listings.

by: Rogue

🤡E~Bays Promoted Ghost Listings Scam
 It's really nothing but a manipulation tactic by 🤡E~Bay to make more money off you!
 It'll work, absolutely. (🤡E~Bay artificially drives clicks or attributes sales to ads to collect fees), But only at first. Say you start with 2% promotion; they'll throw you some sales and watchers (mostly bots) pretty quick. You think wow this promotion thing is amazzzing, it really does work! But they only ''make it work'' at first so you have something to chase in the future...After the initial short-lived boost, you'll get nothing with the 2%.(Suggesting throttling or reduced organic reach) Naturally, you then up it to maybe 3%, still nothing. So, then you try 5%, still nothing...and so on. Eventually you'll probably just give in to the ''recommended'' rate which is probably going to be something like 12-15% (not a typo) a lot of times, sometimes higher. You still won't get sales for the most part...then when you do, you'll resent the living SH@t out of how much of a cut 🤡E~Bay took.
The worst part being the returning customers aspect. This is where they really stick it in violently!
 OK, so a brand spankin new buyer found your listing via promoted. Great. you pay 🤡E~Bay the promotional fee, all good. Dandy. Very fair. 2 weeks later they return to your page and buy again...the seller gets charged promotional fees yet again. It should just be a 1time promotion charge per new buyer per listing, but it's not!
 When you try promoted listings it will be frustrating AF because if you already have a very dedicated base of returning customers - you figured you'd test it out to try and get even more. At that point youll be paying promotional fees on sales from old repeat buyers; (''Yep”, if anyone clicks on the promoted listing, whether it's the buyer, a window shopper, or even a competitor, you'll be charged the fee). Which is absolute insanity and pretty disgusting on 🤡E~Bays part.
🤡E~Bay will say because they found your page a certain way, you're charged the promotional fees...but I mean, they didn't ''find'' anything, they already knew where it was. the promoted listings aspect had literally nothing to do with them buying your items which they've been doing for years. They already knew about the listings far before you enabled promotions, so.......?
🤡E~Bay is a tech company; you'd think they'd have all this info. And they do, but they, WELL, YOU KNOW. “🤡E~Bay”
 Do your own promoting for free on 🤡E~Bay and elsewhere and your sales profits will never be higher. (Promotion can't create real demand; if an item has low demand, it won't sell just because it's promoted).
TLDR - JUST SAY NO!

by: Rexford

Rogue, what you describe sounds very much like what I have heard brand new sellers to eBay say.  When they first start, they are "wowed" by the number of sales that they get.  But within a short period of time, its crickets or a sale here and there.

I can always tell when eBay turns the faucet on and when they turn it off.  No matter what I do, from year to year, my sales are always consistent.  There is a ceiling and once you reach it for that month or whatever period they use, they'll turn your faucet off for a while.

I'm wondering if eBay will settle with the plaintiff to avoid discovery.

by: stage_won

I've been wondering why the new eBay user agreement is so harsh on their users not suing them. I think we have that answer now.