4 ms·
eBay can be good but some of its "features" are infuriating and ultimately drive me to buy stuff elsewhere. Multi-item listings is the worst thing they've ever
by wackget 4y ago
eBay can be good but some of its "features" are infuriating and ultimately drive me to buy stuff elsewhere.
Multi-item listings is the worst thing they've ever done because they totally ruin search results.
Let's say you're searching for something like a box of 200 disposable gloves. You dutifully type in "200 gloves" or "100 pairs gloves", filter by "Buy it Now" and sort "Price Low to High".
Suddenly your search results are filled with dozens of pages of results all priced at $0.99. How could a box of 200 gloves be so cheap? Because it's not showing results for 200 gloves... it's showing you a multi-item listing which contains packs of gloves in several quantities. One option is indeed a pack of 200 gloves, but that's priced at $20. The $0.99 option is, in fact, a single pair of gloves, listed as a "Sample".
You can't exclude multi-item listings from the search results, so this leaves things very much open to exploitation by unscrupulous sellers.
This makes the search basically useless for anything which could be sold in multi-item listings. It makes eBay unusable for me whenever I'm buying anything except for unique, clearly-listed items.
Another point of frustration is that you can't filter by shipping speed. Some listings boast a "Fast and Free" label which indicates that the item will be delivered within three days, but you can't actually filter on this in the search results. So if you need an item quickly, you just have to manually sift through all the results for items labelled "Fast and Free".
If any developers from eBay happen to read this comment, I'm available for hire as your personal rage and frustration consultant.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- gxqoz 4y agoI find this trend against "power users" increasingly more common in almost all software as companies have the incentive to just design for users more susceptible to the default, nudged experience. I understand the downsides of "let the user customize everything" designs but it definitely feels like more and more of a shift in that direction in the last few years.
- Scoundreller 4y agoHence whatever ebay’s “best match” algorithm is.
- voussoir 4y agoYes, this issue with multi-item listings is so prominent and long-standing that I simply must assume it is a deliberate anti-user decision by ebay, though I can't think of a good reason why. I just know that if they wanted to fix it they could have by now. All it would take is making "quantity" a core part of the data model for each listing, enabling search by quantity and sorting by price-per-unit.
- asah 4y agoTry restricting by price range.