Reading eBay tea leaves

[bucolic_frolic]

How bad are things at eBay? Well, I don't know, but I always postulate that companies give off signals in their publicly available behavior. So retailers will run sales, shorten hours, have too few employees, etc.

eBay has suddenly reactivated my Saved Searches to send me emails every day about what's available. Notable because for years I have been unable to activate any of them, except when they were new. So it's an indication to me that things are very slow. They're taking drastic measures to try to sell things.

Also I hear there are lots of non-paying buyers. And I notice a wealth of new sellers, all of whom don't know how to sell. THey fail to take good pics, list parts included and extras or exclude those that aren't included. Ask them a question - is the power cord included? I don't see it in the pics. They ignore you. eBay in my view is flawed. They have focused on big sellers and search engines - item specifics - instead of discipline and process. All these rules take personnel, so I assume they're still bloated too. Just my opinion, we'll see what happens.

[TwilightZone]

1. My Saved Searches never stopped working.

I only have a few of them and rarely buy anything on eBay, but I haven't had any issues with notifications. A couple are relatively new. A couple have been in place for several years.

I have noticed that I've started receiving e-mail from other senders from whom I hadn't received mail in years, but I discovered that my e-mail provider had been tagging them as spam and putting them in a junk folder I very rarely check. They weren't important, luckily. Perhaps that's what happened in your case, though it's certainly possible it was just an eBay issue or some kind of refresh.

As for sketchy sellers, it's been my experience that there's always been a segment of the seller base that fits that description. Perhaps there are more of late, but I don't frequent it enough to have noticed. I have read that a lot of people joined or rejoined during the pandemic to supplement their income.

[Historic NY]

2. Have your tried delete

go to my ebay after you sign in and click on the saved searches. Then unsave boxes for all those saved searches and then the delete box.

I regularly change some of the variants I have saved

[bucolic_frolic]

3. That would clear my wish list. Some things I've been seeking for years.

[Historic NY]

4. When you open only checks the boxs of the things (search) you don't want

the delete only clears the checked box.

[Vinca]

5. I suddenly started getting notifications for stuff I had browsed, not saved searches.

I also got notified about things similar to the exact item I had saved searches for. Just this afternoon I deleted all my saved searches because it was getting annoying. As for sellers, there are good ones and bad ones. I've been lucky so far.

[bucolic_frolic]

6. Yes, so they're doing some algorithmic seeding to stimulate business here or there