Author Topic: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!  (Read 22659 times)

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Online EEVblogTopic starter

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eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« on: May 21, 2016, 08:20:24 am »
Ebay Australia is BROKEN!, and Dave isn't happy.
Half the test equipment categories are either screwed up or not functional. What the hell is going on?

 

Offline AndreasF

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #1 on: May 21, 2016, 08:45:22 am »
Similar issues with ebay.co.uk

Going for the "Business, Office & Industrial  > Electrical & Test Equipment  > Test & Measurement Equipment  > Oscilloscopes" section returns no results.

Multimeters are OK, though.
my random ramblings mind-dump.net
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #2 on: May 21, 2016, 09:01:05 am »
Similar issues with ebay.co.uk
Going for the "Business, Office & Industrial  > Electrical & Test Equipment  > Test & Measurement Equipment  > Oscilloscopes" section returns no results.
Multimeters are OK, though.

Insane!
 

Offline kb0nly

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #3 on: May 21, 2016, 09:15:49 am »
Seems fine in the US for now at least.

Sent from my XT1254 using Tapatalk

 

Offline dmg

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #4 on: May 21, 2016, 09:47:17 am »
Same for ebay Spain. As a bonus they enforced automatic translation of listings titles and sometimes descritpions. You can't turn it off and the translation quality is as bad as it gets. At least the search engine still works in english...
 

Offline Towger

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #5 on: May 21, 2016, 10:11:48 am »
The eBay app is another piece of crap. It has a fraction of side the search capabilites. Older versions at least properly used searches saved on the Web site, but the last few updates don't.  You can't even search for items sold as 'Spares or Repairs', they now come under 'Used'.
It also no longer handles country searches correctly, no doubt rewritten by people in America who just use eBay.com.
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #6 on: May 21, 2016, 10:28:26 am »
http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/News/category-changes

Ah, thanks. Deliberate and recent. Explains everything except why it's so buggy and basically broken.
 

Offline nctnico

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #7 on: May 21, 2016, 11:45:00 am »
Count yourself lucky. In the NL there is just a category called 'test equipment' under business & industrial. Has been like that for years.
There are small lies, big lies and then there is what is on the screen of your oscilloscope.
 

Offline Brumby

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #8 on: May 21, 2016, 01:49:46 pm »
Explains everything except why it's so buggy and basically broken.

Ahhhh ... no ....

That is explained in full right here..........
http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/News/category-changes


Call me cynical - but they do provide a lot of material.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 02:28:48 am by Brumby »
 

Offline joseph nicholas

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #9 on: May 21, 2016, 03:55:44 pm »
I wish ebay would let you search by country.
 

Offline malekia

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #10 on: May 21, 2016, 04:15:26 pm »
What is that text in the "From AU" box? Is that normal? I don't see that on (US) Ebay, Firefox or Chrome.
 

Offline botcrusher

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #11 on: May 21, 2016, 04:43:14 pm »
The eBay app is another piece of crap. It has a fraction of side the search capabilites. Older versions at least properly used searches saved on the Web site, but the last few updates don't.  You can't even search for items sold as 'Spares or Repairs', they now come under 'Used'.
It also no longer handles country searches correctly, no doubt rewritten by people in America who just use eBay.com.

Yeah, the mobile app is definitely broken. It's updated about 5 times in the last two weeks, each time tweaking the UI and making it near impossible to communicate with the seller.

I wanted to communicate with a seller about shipping time
AND IT AUTOMATICALLY OPENED A CASE!
 :wtf:
 
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Offline bitwelder

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #12 on: May 21, 2016, 06:12:56 pm »
What is that text in the "From AU" box? Is that normal? I don't see that on (US) Ebay, Firefox or Chrome.
That's the LastPass plugin icon. It detected that there are 9+ valid entries for that website (though, in this case it has mistakenly taken a price field input for a login one).
 

Offline Skimask

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #13 on: May 21, 2016, 06:46:40 pm »
Noticed that last Tuesday (5 days ago).  They fucked it up royally.

P.S.  I can't find the EEVBLOG BM235 via the US ebay but I haven't looked very hard.  Doesn't come up with a search from the base ebay page.
« Last Edit: May 21, 2016, 06:56:17 pm by Skimask »
I didn't take it apart.
I turned it on.

The only stupid question is, well, most of them...

Save a fuse...Blow an electrician.
 

Offline altaic

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #14 on: May 22, 2016, 03:41:05 am »
P.S.  I can't find the EEVBLOG BM235 via the US ebay but I haven't looked very hard.  Doesn't come up with a search from the base ebay page.

I noticed the same thing. Tried all sorts of stuff, and it doesn't appear to be there.
 

Offline bitseeker

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #15 on: May 22, 2016, 05:24:49 am »
That is explained in full right here..........
http://sellercentre.ebay.com.au/News/category-changes

Call me cynical - but they do provide a lot of material.

At least the Australia site got an announcement of the changes. On the US site http://announcements.ebay.com/, no news, just chaos.
TEA is the way. | TEA Time channel
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #16 on: May 22, 2016, 05:41:28 am »
I gave up searching for it because during the process I was finding way too many other gadgets that I didn't need yet started to save them in a list.   :palm:

Oh look I just found it again.  :-+
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/EEVblog-Brymen-BM235-Multimeter-/222125712857
« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 10:12:36 am by Muttley Snickers »
 

Offline screwbreaker

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #17 on: May 22, 2016, 09:44:38 am »
... I can't find the EEVBLOG BM235 via the US ebay but I haven't looked very hard.  Doesn't come up with a search from the base ebay page.

I got the same on ebay.it yesterday. And now I can't find it on ebay.com.au too.

Plus, according to ebay the user eevblogstore has no items for sale:


even if  there are 7 available at the moment.

I think there are more than category changes.
« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 09:47:20 am by screwbreaker »
 

Online EEVblogTopic starter

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #18 on: May 22, 2016, 09:57:29 am »
I got the same on ebay.it yesterday. And now I can't find it on ebay.com.au too.
Plus, according to ebay the user eevblogstore has no items for sale:

They sold out. I could only list 10 for the month being a new store.
Got my account limit upgraded, and can only list another 7 this month!
 

Offline station240

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #19 on: May 22, 2016, 10:10:52 am »
Industrial > Electrical > Power Supplies
is also screwed up, and that covers everything from DC-DC converters to bench supplies, to transformers.

Ebay are monumentally stupid.
 

Offline Muttley Snickers

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #20 on: May 22, 2016, 11:18:07 am »
They sold out. I could only list 10 for the month being a new store.
Got my account limit upgraded, and can only list another 7 this month!

Is it permissible to place a link on the Ebay listing back to the main EEVblog site/store either permanently or just for the interim period ?, there is already a link to the PDF manual but some may find the meter via Ebay then start to wander off if no other options are available should you max out again, it is possible that some potential purchasers will not even know about EEVblog/forum/videos/etc such as plumbers, auto electricians and so on.


« Last Edit: May 22, 2016, 12:55:30 pm by Muttley Snickers »
 

Online HwAoRrDk

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #21 on: May 22, 2016, 11:59:13 am »
In recent years, eBay have been just ****ing awful with the consistency and reliability of functionality of their stuff. It's like they don't do any QA or testing on their code. Finished development of a new feature? Hey, let's just hit the button to deploy to the live servers - no worries, she'll be right!

I got extremely pissed off with eBay just a month or so ago, when I was lucky enough to experience a farcical sequence of broken crap.

  • Using their API for developers, I was trying to write some code to retrieve listings for a certain seller for products in a certain category with particular attributes. Despite being able to browse this seller's store and see that they had many products meeting the criteria, the API search results would only return a random half-dozen results.
  • Again using one part of their API, if you tried to specify the method name of the operation you wanted to perform in an HTTP header, you'd get an error. Even though the docs specify this is a supported option. It only works if you put the method name as a query string parameter. So either the docs are blatantly wrong, or the implementation is screwed.
  • Being the good little boy I am, I thought I should at least try and notify them, file a bug report, or whatever. Try and log in to the developer portal. Can't, because the damn login page is utterly broken! Nothing would happen when you try and log in. Just a little spinner animation for a few seconds, then nothing.
  • Alright, let's try and get some help with this login problem. For that you're directed to a contact form. I fill it in - blah blah, can't login, page broken, etc. Get down to the CAPTCHA image and it's the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. There is supposedly a series of characters shown, but some of them are so small they're just 3-pixel-high blobs. I had to refresh the thing about 3 times before I got even a vaguely legible one.
  • Eventually, form submitted. But, all that happened was I got redirected back to the main developer portal home page. No confirmation, no 'thank you', no message, nothing. Was my form submitted successfully? Who the hell knows.

|O :rant: :palm:

It doesn't surprise me one bit that they would now mess up the browsing of products in categories in an attempt to reorganise their category hierarchy.
 

Offline uncle_bob

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #22 on: May 22, 2016, 01:43:01 pm »
Hi

Well, just *try* to buy anything from Russia or the surrounding countries. At least if you are in the US, you get a cryptic "something went wrong" message. No explanation. No FAQ. No practical way (other than Google) to figure out what the crap DID go wrong. Not quite sure why we have the Ukraine under eBay embargo, but apparently we do.

Bob
 

Offline linux-works

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #23 on: May 22, 2016, 01:53:19 pm »
I had a job interview at ebay, in san jose (corp HQ and main development site) about a year ago.

let me just say, seeing the inside of the place, how they treat everyone and who they hire - well, I understand how their software quality is, uhm,  'outsource quality'.

just being there for the interview, it felt quite a lot like a sweat shop.

look, you pay peanuts and you get monkeys.  this is not rocket science.  and since tech companies ONLY care about 'how little can I get pay to get any work done', this is the end result.

this isn't just ebay.  its all of software 'engineering'.  I don't expect good designs or implementations anymore.  and it won't be getting any better, either, over time.  if anything, this trend of underpaying and overworking people is still on the race-to-the-bottom track.


Offline SilverSolder

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Re: eevBLAB #22 - Ebay is BROKEN!
« Reply #24 on: May 22, 2016, 02:39:03 pm »

eBay is a good example of a "natural monopoly", i.e. a monopoly where the barriers to entry give the largest supplier (often the first supplier) in a market an overwhelming advantage over potential competitors.  We are beginning to see the results of the lack of competition.

eBay is definitely decaying technically.  Look at the loss of ability to use wildcard characters in searches, for example.  And then there is the hopeless amounts of bugs, including the ones Dave pointed out.   The mobile app started out pretty good but has been "dumbed down" to become nearly useless (I stopped using it several versions ago).  My (admittedly old) browser hasn't been able to "auto log in" to Ebay for about 6 months now, due to some non-standard feature of their login page that stops it working.

Another irritating "dumbing down" of eBay is how much "air" there is on their pages - no matter how large your monitor, you will only see 4 search results (or records of any type actually, including My Ebay) on a page before you have to scroll - totally crazymaking how they can waste so much space, treating a big PC as if it only has the same space as a mobile phone.

 


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