General > General Technical Chat
Rant: eBay no longer allows to filter items based on location
Bicurico:
My rant with Ebay continues.
The search is now completely absurd.
I can no longer select the country of the products I am searching: even with advanced search, no options are show. If I search for something, I will get offers from any part in the world. Ebay seems to inforce me to purchase regardless of customs and shipping costs.
Also, the search now doesn't respect the keywords I type. If I search for something specific like "emitor" (swedish manufacturer of TV field meter), I will get results from all over the world for "emiter".
Even my saved searches, which previously worked pretty good to show me any new item of my broader interest, now no longer work correctly. I get hits from different but similar keywords, from UK (despite them no longer being part of the EU), etc.
This seems to be in alignment with my general impression of the current state of the world: marketing and sales consider their target customers to be the increasing percentage of idiots in the population - those that cannot write correctly, do not understand that shipping and taxes/customs increase the price considerably, etc.
It annoys me, because I do enjoy getting a good deal from time to time. There should be a "normal people" mode, where a search just works as expected, i.e. you search for "emitor" with filters like "used" and "within the EU" and get exactly that as a result. Is this so hard to do?
Rant off, thanks for listening and sharing your expience.
jpanhalt:
My search options have always been like the attachment. US only works, but after the US hits, they list items from international sellers.
magic:
--- Quote from: Bicurico on September 03, 2023, 05:28:38 pm ---This seems to be in alignment with my general impression of the current state of the world: marketing and sales consider their target customers to be the increasing percentage of idiots in the population - those that cannot write correctly, do not understand that shipping and taxes/customs increase the price considerably, etc.
It annoys me, because I do enjoy getting a good deal from time to time. There should be a "normal people" mode, where a search just works as expected, i.e. you search for "emitor" with filters like "used" and "within the EU" and get exactly that as a result. Is this so hard to do?
--- End quote ---
The general fashion in web services these days is to know what the customer wants better than the customer.
To them it's a game where you type words and they need to guess what you will end up buying before you get bored/frustrated/distracted and leave the site to buy your shit elsewhere. The will show you items which have actually been bought in the past by others who searched for similar things, or approximate guess made by some AI rubbish. Whether they actually are related to your keywords is immaterial.
Still, the absolute worst search engine I have ever had the displeasure of using is AliExpress.
In their case I don't even understand how it works or what it is trying to achieve. The results are extremely random and inconsistent.
woofy:
Works for me, too. I usually leave it on default though.
Bicurico:
On the PC, using the browser, it sometimes allows me to select the location, but not always.
The search words are ignored, results shown are considered by Ebay "close enough": if I search "emitor", I get shown results like "emitter". The problem is that I expect 1-2 hits for "emitor" per month, while "emitter" will show hundereds of results, which don't interest me, but make the "emitor" results hard to find.
On the Android app it is even worse! The location option can be selected, but then no options are shown - just a white empty tab, where options like Germany, EU, US, etc. should be shown. This is not a problem on this particular phone, as it happens on the two phones I use.
I guess that one reason for my reduced "user experience" is the fact that I am physically located in Portugal, but use the German Ebay (because I trust German sellers more than those from other EU countries - just my opinion - I have good experience with UK and French sellers, though, but UK now has customs and it is difficult to find the french listings due to lack of knowledge on the correct keywords).
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