Strange way to sell things

[History dude]

Over the last few weeks I have noticed that some online selling sites are adopting strange practices that must make it difficult for people to sell things.  The first site is E-Bay. This is had a whole heap of changes done to it recently. Thing like ending the PapPal link. You can still use the Paypal there, but it will take you to an offsite link where you have to sign in plus verify who you are using an app. It takes longer to do, whereas before the payment was nearly automatic and you got an e-mail to say you have paid. But that was minor in comparison to the next change. E-Bay decided to change the categories that items for sale were placed in.  When they did this a lot of people's saved searches suddenly stopped working. Because what they were filed under cease to be there. Whole sections were removed most notably the collectables section. For example if you had a search for Sheffield Postcards - that search vanished and you got everywhere, not just Sheffield. All Model Railway stuff was grouped under a new heading of "model railroads".  All gauge or scale searchers under models vanished. Some people even had trouble uploading items for sale. For example someone wanted to upload a model railway brake van. And the site wouldn't list the "brake van" asking do you mean Caboose? The American term for a brake van. 

About five or six of my own searches there produced no results at all - they were tied in the "Ho Gauge" search.  Any left in the now new Model Railroads searches produced ALL scales, not just OO or HO.  As I commented on the forum they have, nearly all my recent purchases there were from looking at saved searches. I could go on E-Bay look at a search with 100 results and see any new listed items within that limit. Now I have 500 newly listed items. With even books and Magazines mixed in with what would be specific items.  Without the saved searches it just takes ages to find what you want. And know the saved searches are brother chip to just typing in the search box on E-bay.  Even if you do a Google Search off site, what you finish up with is rubbish. With E-Bay items that are already sold or the completely wrong thing.

But they are not the only ones messing things up. Enter Amazon.

Most people who use the site must be aware that Amazon recommend things to you based on your past purchases. And you could look at these recommendations in your Amazon page. There were lots of categories and most had a limit of 100 items to look through. You could go into any item and say you had purchased it already or were not interested in it. So it wouldn't crop again. You could also go on your past purchases and tick a box saying don't use it for recommendations. Handy if you bought a one off present for someone and the item had no use to you.

But Amazon started to make changes. The first thing I noticed that the DVD and Blue Ray section vanished completely. Even though I was using it alot.  Then the recommendations switched from the home page to a category under My Account.  Without telling me of course! It took me ages to find it.

Last week however they have now been removed completely. And if you click the that tab it takes you to a screen of past purchases and not many of them.

Of course you could just type in at the search box what you wanted. But I feel sorry for anyone trying to sell on Amazon now. Simply because it will not put any items up that anyone is not looking for but they have purchased things like it in the past. For example there was a recommendation for electrical parts. That meant at least 100 sellers had the option to sell anything electrical to the buyer looking in the section. Now if anyone wants a fuse they search for fuses and see only them. Not anything else.  It's a bit like a Supermarket allowing you to look only at the bread isle if you go there to buy some bread. 

It's shopping madness. How many people go into a shop and buy just what they wanted?  So why do they make shopping systems that do precisely that?  Can you imagine the Ronnie Barker character in Open All Ours doing what Amazon and E-Bay have done?  Somebody once said that England was a nation of Shopkeepers. Well not any longer. 

       

[RLongden]

“GRANVILLE! How many P’s are there in Per-Per-Per-Per-PayPal now welcome ‘ere?” 🤣🤣🤣