Overlisting by eBay sellers

[edisonclassm]

I finally took the initiative to contact eBay about sellers who dominate a site category by listing hundreds of listings in a row making it difficult for the buyer who has to wade through all of these listings to get to the ones they have interest in. One seller had over 50 pages of stereo and Hi-Fi needles from the 50's and 60's. He keeps relisting them over and over obstructing other sellers. A few of the record sellers do the same to a lesser degree. Often the case their items are overpriced and in poor condition and that is why they don't sell but they insist on relisting them over and over. The eBay agent I got on the phone was very sympathetic and stated he was going to look into it and initiate some sort of enforcement action. If there is anyone else out there that shares my sentiments about this subject, I suggest you contact eBay as well. Many voices will get something done about this unfair practice by a few eBay sellers. I don't mind muddling through a couple of dozen listings by one seller but to have to suffer through dozens to hundreds that gets a bit much!

[Steve]

I find sifting through hundreds of listings for individual needle tins in the "Gramophones and Phonographs" section, quite frustrating although I doubt I'd take a complaint to Ebay about it to be honest. I usually just get bored and decide to switch it off and do something more interesting with my time!

[epigramophone]

I use the advanced search facility which enables me to exclude words, e.g. needles, tin etc, from my searches. It doesn't stop all the needle tin listings, but it greatly reduces their numbers.

My pet hate is Buy it Now listings which have been live for months and in some cases years. I wonder whether these sellers ever check their listings, and if so whether it ever dawns on them that their items do not sell because they are probably overpriced.

At present a Buy it Now listing remains live until the item is sold. I think there should be a time limit for such listings. It would force sellers to at least revisit their listings if they wanted them to continue, and perhaps to reflect on why their items have not sold.

[Steve]

If we're doing Ebay pet hates, mine has to be the sellers who incorrectly describe something with multiple factual errors and mistaken assumptions.

If its an item of interest to me I will sometimes point out what the correct description should be and what is wrong with the item, especially if its over-priced!

Usually I receive a reply along the lines of "thank you very much, we did not know having just Googled it. We will revise our listing straight away".

Invariably they never do and the item just sits there over-priced and unwanted!

[Starkton]

Ebay is flooded with such overpriced or otherwise unattractive goods. I have long wanted the price of unsold buy-it-now items to be automatically and continuously reduced by 10% after a period of two weeks. In addition, you should not be allowed to re-list unsold articles if they are not offered at least 10% cheaper than before.

[Granby]

I'll apologize in advance, but I couldn't help but vent and keep this going....

What's with the prices on Ebay lately? I have seen extremely common machines listed at twice or three times market value.... just sitting.... never getting a bid. Wouldn't common sense kick in for some of these sellers eventually?

Plus, all this does is confuse other sellers who do their market research and claim, "you know these are going for $800 on ebay." No... they are not, someone has one "listed" on ebay and it has no bids....

Sorry about the vent...

- Chris

[gramophone-georg]

Yeah, that HiFi needle dump was off the hook stupid. I bet phono sellers in that category were "pleased". It's not the first time this donkey's tailpipe has done this either. Between that and the record sellers that insist on using that category it's tough to find an actual machine there now.

[Steve]

For what it's worth (nothing), I don't think it's anyone else's place to insist sellers cannot re-list items at the same price just because they don't sell quickly. If we can laugh at the prices and think we know better, thats fine and great, but let's just move on to something else.

It's simple market economics. One thing I've learnt watching auctions over the years is that prices are rarely as fixed as we might think or hope. The market is highly volatile and that works both ways.

Recently I was offering a very good machine at a very fair price on Ebay. It didn't sell so Ebay automatically relisted it. As a collector I wasn't fussed if I sold it or not so I left the price alone. It kept going for weeks without any interest. Then months. Eventually I removed it for a week before re-listing it manually. It sold instantly to a buyer who told me he'd been looking for the same machine for over 2 years! I wondered where he'd been looking when my listing was probably one of those irritating a few folks here. The moral is: there is always someone out there who will buy something most of us probably wouldn't. It can just take a liitle time and presumably some sellers are fine with that.

[JerryVan]

I use the advanced search facility which enables me to exclude words, e.g. needles, tin etc, from my searches.

You can also use that to block certain sellers from your searches, which is what I do. Every time I find a seller who bombs the catagory with endless junk, they get filtered out of my searches.

[rgordon939]

Well I guess I’m one of those people you’re speaking about. I typically list between 50 and 100 cylinders at a time and have been doing this for years. I believe eBay is a selling platform for people to list there wares for sale without limitations. My cylinders listings are listed separately because each one is different from the next one. I also believe it is easier for buyers when the items are listed together, additionally it would be difficult for sellers to combine shipping costs if they were listed a few at a time a day at a time. I’d be interested to hear your suggestions on a better way to list my cylinders on eBay. I still have a few thousand to list.

Rich Gordon