Abacus Ink Cartridge Blog Spot - Ramblings of a full-time eBayer

Problem With eBay's Sorting Method

 
In order to sell........You have to be SEEN.....Right?

~~ The Problem ~~

I was playing around with the search last week and I came across what I thought was an anomaly. However, after testing, I have found it consistent. It doesn't affect my selling strategy as much as some because I am never the lowest price......before shipping that is. However, if you sell items for pennies and charge more for shipping to compensate, this might be of great concern to you. Also, if eBay ever succeeds in stopping the "give the item away and make it up in the shipping" selling strategy it will become a larger concern for me. I don't want to lose sales because eBay's method of sorting.........

Here is the problem…… If you search for an item and then sort by price, the items are sorted by price first and item number second.

Why is this a problem?...... Item numbers used to be sequential based on the time you listed and this method worked fine. Now eBay seems to be assigning the same range of numbers to a specific seller. If your competitors have a lower range of numbers, all their listings will appear first even if your price is the same and your item is ending sooner.

Want to see what I’m looking at?...........Click on the link below to see a sample search.

Search for "canon ip4000" Sorted by Price

Notice that each seller has the same range of auction numbers for all of their auctions and are sorted accordingly.

So it posed the question how are auction numbers assigned to a username? How can I get a lower set of auction numbers?

Unfortunately this can give some an unfair advantage. The lower range of numbers you have the higher the visibility you will have.

Just curious if anyone else has noticed this and/or taken advantage of this?

kettco
WOW, this is VERY INTERESTING.....
Aug-10-06 17:34:51 PDT Report this comment
bookbuffs
Could it be that the top people on your list paid the Featured Plus price? The description for this option is found in the Seller Central Promotional Tools and it says you can get your item to go to the top on the list by paying for the Featured Plus feature.
Aug-10-06 17:54:35 PDT Report this comment
ivana021
that's one possibility...
Dec-28-06 07:47:18 PST Report this comment
onetwoizm
It is a listing violation for sellers to inflate shipping to offset a "super cheap" price. It is circumventing of eBay fees, since eBay derives part of it's fee from the selling price of an item. I would urge anyone who comes across an item that is doing this to report it immediately! Do your part to keep scammers and system-abusers off of eBay.
Jul-13-07 12:05:02 PDT Report this comment
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Nov-12-07 11:04:48 PST Report this comment

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