slightly OT: eBay search by Bidder

[autograf]

So unless I'm missing something, eBay search by bidder has been down for about a week now......and I'm assuming it's going to slowly go away. Or fastly go away. First they took it off the search page when you click on 'advanced'. If you hit 'advanced' and then 'seller', it shows up, but it's not on the main 'advanced' page. Now my saved bidder searches aren't working nor is the ability to just pop a name in there.

Another potential eBay fail in a long line of fails..............

[Milton]

Ebay buyers will eventually have zero accountability.

[Rollingstone206]

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[4815162342]

Originally Posted by Rollingstone206

What constructive purpose do you use this search for

+1 I'm sure you have a good reason, but a saved bidder search sounds kinda creepy.

[autograf]

Curious to see what some friends win and know they have the same saved on me. Assuming ebay saw some benefit of it to have it since 1995.......kind of like leaving feedback for bidders.....and all of the other benefits they've seen fit to eliminate in their ever-increasing goal to be Amazon......

[Rollingstone206]

...

[thecatspajamas]

I noticed this as well. I hope that it's only temporary, as it was one of the few useful tools remaining, but with it actually being disabled rather than just hidden, I fear that it's gone for good.

As for why one would use it, I sometimes like to look and see what other items a new-to-me buyer has made when I get an oddball offer from them on one of my items. Just another way to make a quick character judgment sometimes when the buyer is otherwise unknown to me. For example, if they're giving me down the road for daring to ask $1000 for something, and they offer to "take it off my hands" for $200, but I look at their history and it shows they have never bought anything over $20, it's really hard to take them seriously.

It can also be useful in some cases for investigating unusual and shill bidding, and as Tom said, just seeing what your buddies have bought lately to see if they need an impromptu "congrats!"

Oh, and it's also useful for stalking Tom and making off-Bay offers to anyone he's buying Louisville Colonels stuff from I say that jokingly, but I understand that scenario has played out many times (even among Net54 members) with competitors stalking each other to interfere with the other's eBay dealings.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

I noticed this as well. I hope that it's only temporary, as it was one of the few useful tools remaining, but with it actually being disabled rather than just hidden, I fear that it's gone for good.

As for why one would use it, I sometimes like to look and see what other items a new-to-me buyer has made when I get an oddball offer from them on one of my items. Just another way to make a quick character judgment sometimes when the buyer is otherwise unknown to me. For example, if they're giving me down the road for daring to ask $1000 for something, and they offer to "take it off my hands" for $200, but I look at their history and it shows they have never bought anything over $20, it's really hard to take them seriously.

It can also be useful in some cases for investigating unusual and shill bidding, and as Tom said, just seeing what your buddies have bought lately to see if they need an impromptu "congrats!"

Oh, and it's also useful for stalking Tom and making off-Bay offers to anyone he's buying Louisville Colonels stuff from I say that jokingly, but I understand that scenario has played out many times (even among Net54 members) with competitors stalking each other to interfere with the other's eBay dealings.

Yup, all of the above. It's one of the few tools left for a seller to help protect themselves from sketchy bidders.

Like the guy you have blocked because he has too many unpaid items on his record, he contacts you and asks why he's blocked, and you go and look at his bidder list and noticed he has bid on 100 things in the past week, look deeper and see he had a ton of retractions and is just generally a problem bidder.

Or the guy who can't pay you until next month because his grandmother is in the hospital, his dog just died, and he needs to pay for surgery on the bunyon on his big toe...but you look a little deeper and see he's still throwing out bids and spending thousands of $'s, getting feedback from others, but for some reason can't pay YOU.

It's just a general way to suss out fishy bidders, and as mentioned already, keep track of some of the suspected shillers.

[D. Bergin]

According to the boards on Ebay, it seems this is a knee jerk response to the recent security breach, with this particular report being the culprit.

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...rity-conc.aspx

An emphasis on the following quote:

Researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering and NYU Shanghai have discovered a privacy flaw that allows site visitors to view a buyer's complete purchase history. That's a severe privacy breach, potentially revealing very personal information.

So apparently these geniuses have "discovered" a security flaw, that has existed on Ebay for as long as anybody can remember.


As recently as yesterday, Ebay pinks on the forums were pretending they didn't even know this was an issue, and would contact the tech team.

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-...2179096/page/2


Apparently the tech team has been contacted and is working on the problem. The suspicious part of me thinks it will only continue to be a problem as long as people keep asking about it.

[Peter_Spaeth]

Originally Posted by 4815162342

+1 I'm sure you have a good reason, but a saved bidder search sounds kinda creepy.

I used to use it to see what card doctors whose IDs I knew were buying.

[ooo-ribay]

Originally Posted by Rollingstone206

What constructive purpose do you use this search for

as others have said, I use it to keep tabs on two friends who collect the same stuff as me. It would let me know if I had missed anything. I hope they bring it back...

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by D. Bergin

According to the boards on Ebay, it seems this is a knee jerk response to the recent security breach, with this particular report being the culprit.

http://www.fool.com/investing/genera...rity-conc.aspx

An emphasis on the following quote:

Researchers at the New York University Polytechnic School of Engineering and NYU Shanghai have discovered a privacy flaw that allows site visitors to view a buyer's complete purchase history. That's a severe privacy breach, potentially revealing very personal information.

So apparently these geniuses have "discovered" a security flaw, that has existed on Ebay for as long as anybody can remember.


As recently as yesterday, Ebay pinks on the forums were pretending they didn't even know this was an issue, and would contact the tech team.

http://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-...2179096/page/2


Apparently the tech team has been contacted and is working on the problem. The suspicious part of me thinks it will only continue to be a problem as long as people keep asking about it.

If the reason mentioned on the boards that Dave quoted is accurate, then I fear that this feature is gone for good. Ebay does not have a good track record of implementing or updating potentially-useful features these days, but does have a long history of quickly removing anything publicly criticized, saying they are taking action, providing no details until everyone goes away and quits asking about it, and then never reinstating or successfully revising anything. The current programmers seem to be slowly dismantling or corrupting the base system that the early programmers put in place, and I doubt any of the original programmers are still around to tell them why those useful features were put in place to start with.

[Wite3]

I always hated the search by bidder function...

Back in the old days (before snipes), I had two buyers who would let me essentially do all the work (searching, finding, etc.) and then bid the hell out of me (not meanly, they just had more money).

I also did not like it back when I tried to turn over stuff I found. I would have people email me constantly with things like "I see you got it for $12 but you listed it at $300!!" Well, yes I did, because it was originally listed in the wrong category, with no picture, and Mantle misspelled Mantel!!

Drove me crazy...now...not so much since i rarely search and bid like before and when i do, I snipe.

Joshua

[autograf]

Useful on many levels......kind of like accurate bidder feedback.....but they jacked that up too. The 800 lb gorilla sleeps where they want to though.......

[whiteymet]

Another useful function of the bidder search is you could look at your own bidder page and see the ebay bidder ID of those who won the auctions you bid on.

It let you see others who collect what you collect.

MISS it BIG TIME

[polakoff]

Been using the By Seller>By Bidder workaround for months now, but now that functionality is gone as mentioned above. When you enter a name into the search field, it takes you to the user's page.

I used it to see how serious buyers were. If I get a high-dollar offer on a card from someone with a low feedback score, I'd see if he/she had experience buying high dollar items.

[D. Bergin]

Looks like this is gone permanently. What Ebay was claiming was a glitch for a couple weeks has turned into "policy" according to what I've been reading on the Ebay forums.

[SMPEP]

I'm actually more annoyed that they changed the format of the emails that I receive. It USED to be that when you got a notice on a search ... you saw the entire title of the item found. NOW they send an abbreviated version of the title and more often then not ... it does not contain enough information for you to know why it tripped the search in the first place. So, essentially, they have made the email searches useless.

Not sure what genius came up with this brilliant idea. It never ceases to amaze me me how Ebay had a killer ap ... yet they are working hard to make it useless. Once collectors wake up and realize that Check Out My Cards blows Ebay out of the water and stop sending their stuff there ... Ebay is going to take a big hit. And they won't even know why ... or that they did it to themselves.

Patrick

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by SMPEP

I'm actually more annoyed that they changed the format of the emails that I receive. It USED to be that when you got a notice on a search ... you saw the entire title of the item found. NOW they send an abbreviated version of the title and more often then not ... it does not contain enough information for you to know why it tripped the search in the first place. So, essentially, they have made the email searches useless.

YES, this.

Plus, they have done away with the "title" I gave to each search, choosing instead to show the full search parameter, which for most of mine amounts to several lines of text (searching for what I want, then using -minuses to pare away all the crap I don't want turning up in my daily searches). It takes me about twice as long to go through my daily search e-mails due to the nigh-illegible garbled mess that arrives in my inbox each morning.