Ebay drops sport specific subcategories for trading cards?!?!

[Buythatcard]

Not only do the buyers suffer from this change, the sellers do as well.

First of all, eBay never sent me an email regarding these changes. I only heard about it thru the Net54 Forum. I have been selling for over 18 years on eBay and thought it might be nice of them to inform me.

I have about 5,000 different templates thru my listing software that I use over and over. I just go in and update the pictures, headings and descriptions if needed. Each one has their own category, Trading Cards, Baseball or Trading Cards, Football, etc.

In order for my listings to work, I had to make sure that all the categories were changed to Trading Card Singles. Nothing separates the sports anymore. Luckily I was able to do some bulk edits.

I haven't received anything yet from eBay stating that my Item Specifics need to be updated. I am waiting for my listings to start getting kicked off because of that.

If eBay listens to the complaints and reverse everything (I doubt this will happen) then I will really run into an issue. I will not be able to do a bulk edit since all my listings now fall under Trading Card Singles. I will no longer be able to distinguish the different sports unless I manually update everything.

Bottom line. eBay sucks big time and once again they prove that it's run by a bunch of incompetent people who do not think outside of the box.

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

Not only do the buyers suffer from this change, the sellers do as well...

I wholeheartedly agree. I've spent the better part of three afternoons updating listings. They're mostly 45 RPM record listings. Most of the changes were just annoying. I actually contacted customer service once, though.

For all records, they now want the name of the album. I'm not comfortable putting the name of a product I'm not selling into my listings. It has the potential to confuse customers. I'm sure more than a few would file INAD refund requests and leave negative feedback. (but your listing said, "Meet The Beatles"...all I got was a little record with two songs!)

It only took 90 minutes and three separate CS reps to get this solved. Otherwise, I'd have had 650+ listings taken down.

[ValKehl]

Originally Posted by Buythatcard

Bottom line. eBay sucks big time and once again they prove that it's run by a bunch of incompetent people who do not think outside of the box.

Howard, it seems to me that the eBay incompetents don't do much thinking inside the box either!

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Howard, it seems to me that the eBay incompetents don't do much thinking inside the box either!

It seems like they should consider adopting the motto "Be the Box".

Brian

[brianp-beme]

Originally Posted by ValKehl

Howard, it seems to me that the eBay incompetents don't do much thinking inside the box either!

It seems like they should consider adopting the motto "Be the Box".

Brian

[Buythatcard]

Originally Posted by Eric72

I wholeheartedly agree. I've spent the better part of three afternoons updating listings. They're mostly 45 RPM record listings. Most of the changes were just annoying. I actually contacted customer service once, though.

For all records, they now want the name of the album. I'm not comfortable putting the name of a product I'm not selling into my listings. It has the potential to confuse customers. I'm sure more than a few would file INAD refund requests and leave negative feedback. (but your listing said, "Meet The Beatles"...all I got was a little record with two songs!)

It only took 90 minutes and three separate CS reps to get this solved. Otherwise, I'd have had 650+ listings taken down.

It just proves to you that eBay have people who work there who have no idea what they are doing. They don't understand that not all 45's are associated with an album. So, if you have 45's from the 60's, you have to look each one up to get the name of the album.

I can't wait to get my rejection letter from eBay. Are they going to tell me to include the player's wife name?

[Exhibitman]

The listings I had with the 'required soon' updates required information that added nothing of value to the listings.

I am just going to make up nonsense to fill in the blanks on listings where it doesn't matter. Like "name of book" is "Under The Grandstand", name of author "Seymour Butts" etc.

[thecatspajamas]

Originally Posted by Exhibitman

The listings I had with the 'required soon' updates required information that added nothing of value to the listings.

I am just going to make up nonsense to fill in the blanks on listings where it doesn't matter. Like "name of book" is "Under The Grandstand", name of author "Seymour Butts" etc.

I tend to use "Note Specified" wherever that is an available option and the actual specific is irrelevant to the item, as that or some variation is typically one of the standard options.

Or if you have a lot of listings, it might be interesting to see if you could use your store name for the same fill-in-the-blank specific often enough that eBay populates it as one of the standard options? (It could just as easily get all those listings booted though, so if you try it, don't blame me if that happens).

I think all of this is an attempt to force sellers to input information that can be used for off-eBay searches (google shopping, for instance) and data analysis, the idea being that everything that can be purchased fits into a standard catalog if only that catalog is large enough. There is a big disconnect though between how collectors search for "collectibles" from how someone looking for a "product" might search. Baseball card collectors who have spent well over a century differentiating pieces of cardboard by the most minute details and arranging them into ever-finer categories and sub-categories, creating a Standard Catalog into which nearly all of these cards will fall neatly (if only the specific information is entered) will go onto a site like eBay and spend hours upon hours focused on looking for items to buy that are miscategorized or mislabeled, completely foregoing all of the item specifics that (theoretically) would have led to a quick and easy search for exactly what they were looking for.

This is kind of behavior is baffling to non-collectors.

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by thecatspajamas

I tend to use "Note Specified" wherever that is an available option and the actual specific is irrelevant to the item, as that or some variation is typically one of the standard options.

Or if you have a lot of listings, it might be interesting to see if you could use your store name for the same fill-in-the-blank specific often enough that eBay populates it as one of the standard options? (It could just as easily get all those listings booted though, so if you try it, don't blame me if that happens).

I think all of this is an attempt to force sellers to input information that can be used for off-eBay searches (google shopping, for instance) and data analysis, the idea being that everything that can be purchased fits into a standard catalog if only that catalog is large enough. There is a big disconnect though between how collectors search for "collectibles" from how someone looking for a "product" might search. Baseball card collectors who have spent well over a century differentiating pieces of cardboard by the most minute details and arranging them into ever-finer categories and sub-categories, creating a Standard Catalog into which nearly all of these cards will fall neatly (if only the specific information is entered) will go onto a site like eBay and spend hours upon hours focused on looking for items to buy that are miscategorized or mislabeled, completely foregoing all of the item specifics that (theoretically) would have led to a quick and easy search for exactly what they were looking for.

This is kind of behavior is baffling to non-collectors.

Basically, they're continuing their Amazonification of the platform, while missing the point that people normally go to Ebay for completely different reasons then they go to Amazon for.

They aspire to be Amazon, without the infrastructure of Amazon...............so a completely inferior version of.

Wait until you see a single listing for "1986 Donruss Jose Canseco" with a stock image, and followed by the phrase "274 other sellers also have this product", buried in the bottom right hand corner of the page. Probably won't even see the non-anchor sellers on the mobile version.

[mikemb]

I just listed some cards for auction. One of the items is "Card Name". There is no drop down box but when I clicked on the box my credit card information came up!!

Mike

[ClementeFanOh]

It's been a LONG time since I was a fan of ebay, and decisions like this one reinforce my opinion of that venue. For what it's worth, they did the same thing to comics- lumped them all into one pot rather than by era. Awful. Trent King

[D. Bergin]

Originally Posted by mikemb

I just listed some cards for auction. One of the items is "Card Name". There is no drop down box but when I clicked on the box my credit card information came up!!

Mike

They couldn't even be bothered to notice that their programming would trigger an autofill response.

[jamest206]

I wonder if the genius that thought this through, and everyone who signed off on this disaster will have jobs by Friday. What a cluster f**k of a mess. This makes it not even worth trying to buy cards off there

[nat]

To whom does one direct complaints?

[Buythatcard]

We can complain all that we want to ebay's customer service. Do you really think they pass this on to upper management? If they do, do you really think they give a crap?
They probably don't.

When my account was hacked last month, eBay decided to delete all 300 of my items from my store. In addition, they deleted all sales from that week that were not paid for.

When I asked them why the f--k did they do that without telling me. They said they did not know. They also told me that they will pass this on to upper management and they will call back the next day. The next day came and they never called. I called again and was told the same thing. I called a third time and a fourth. I am still waiting for upper management to call back.

That's how I feel they are going to deal with this category fiasco. Nothing will happen. I hope that I am wrong this time.

[Orioles1954]

Originally Posted by Eric72

I wholeheartedly agree. I've spent the better part of three afternoons updating listings. They're mostly 45 RPM record listings. Most of the changes were just annoying. I actually contacted customer service once, though.

For all records, they now want the name of the album. I'm not comfortable putting the name of a product I'm not selling into my listings. It has the potential to confuse customers. I'm sure more than a few would file INAD refund requests and leave negative feedback. (but your listing said, "Meet The Beatles"...all I got was a little record with two songs!)

It only took 90 minutes and three separate CS reps to get this solved. Otherwise, I'd have had 650+ listings taken down.

. At least with records there is an alternative - Discogs.

[maniac_73]

IMO a good opportunity for someone like a COMC who already has the sports card userbase to introduce an ebay like platform.

[RL]

Originally Posted by jamest206

I wonder if the genius that thought this through, and everyone who signed off on this disaster will have jobs by Friday. What a cluster f**k of a mess. This makes it not even worth trying to buy cards off there

the way ebay operates.... they will all get raises and a bonus.

[Eric72]

There is now a "Set" filter for T206. I used it to search ungraded cards and am posting the screen shot here.

Yes, there will still be items listed in the wrong category. Some sellers do this accidentally, others on purpose.

Yes, there are still issues with eBay. I'm sure we can fill page after page with "I hate eBay because..." posts.

Yes, we can look at current listings (even sorted by newly listed) and find things that are wrong...especially with older listings.

Etc., etc., etc.

However, eBay seems to be taking a step in the right direction. A feature we were asking for yesterday is there today.

[ullmandds]

Ya to me this seems really stupid? Now they have some sets listed...no caramel sets or anything more obscure than t206...a ridiculous amount of different modern sets.

It would have been much more efficient to have eras...but i suppose it's a PLAY TO GAIN MORE INFO FOR PROFIT?