eBay rules

Thanks for the tip!

ZD, search for “Rotating Car Windshield Mount Holder Stand Bracket for Cell Phone”. Filter for under $1. Look at the second and third listings.

The cheaper ones do not fit the title.

I understand what you are asking, and I admit, I have done this myself once or twice. I do not recall ever seeing anything explicitly forbidding it in eBay rules. I had an item that just wasn’t selling at the price I listed it at, for many weeks. Instead of cancelling it and listing it cheaper, I created another identical listing with a lower selling price. Interesting to note – the first item included free shipping, but the second cheaper price did not. The second item sold very soon thereafter, even though the total cost with shipping was higher!!

Technically it is not affecting or manipulating the search results. The search remains unaffected. What it is affecting is the buyer’s perception that one item is cheaper than all of the rest, so it must be a bargain. OTOH, if you would just list the cheaper price, they would not be paying anything more or less anyway. Many of the chinese sellers have multiple listings for the same items, varying the price by just one cent (look at button batteries for example). Their intention here is not price manipulation, but merely to get more ‘shelf space’ in the search results. It is like a cereal company having 40 flavors instead of two, just to hog more retail shelf space.

It is notable that most of eBay’s policies are primarily intended to protect their profits, not the sellers or buyers. So this practice would be very low on their priority to prevent, as long as they are getting their selling fees. In fact, the people doing it are often high-volume sellers, which are eBay’s best customers.

ZD – The fact that eBay returns results that do not at all seem to fit what you are searching for, has nothing to do with the price manipulation that RebYidd23 asked about. It is something they call Best Match, and it stinks. Amazon also does this, and I hate it there too.

However, unlike Amazon, on eBay there is a simple solution – you can change the results list to “Cheapest” or something else. Then it reverts to exact match only. Best Match is just the default listing order.

On Amazon, if you search by price, you will get tons of garbage listings that do not match at all. Any search other than the ‘Relevence’ sort order is totally useless.

Ah – now I understand.

You mean the sellers that have multiple items within one sale, with a drop-down box to select which specific item you want. They sometimes include a dummy item that is cheaper.

Yes, that is definitely search manipulation. No, it is not forbidden, but maybe if enough people complain about it, eBay will change the way that works someday. There is no way to exclude those results. In general, I ignore any results that show the price as a range “$1 – $50”. That means that there are multiple items in that listing.

It is helpful to sometimes select “US Only” as one of the search options. That eliminates virtually all of the trash listings. However, it will also sometimes eliminate the cheapest legitimate options.

However, it will also sometimes eliminate the cheapest legitimate options.

Just about always.

I buy stuff from China all the time. Often you can get half decent stuff for like 75 cents and free shipping. No idea how that works out for them

Often you can get half decent stuff for like 75 cents and free shipping. No idea how that works out for them

I bought a wooden nickel for 75 cents once

Yes, you are surprised that it arrived at all!