New brain dead Ebay behaviour breaks sold links

[pete.young]

As of tonight, it appears that Ebay have changed the way that sold listings work. If you include a link to an item for sale, it works fine until the item is sold. But then Ebay helpfullly redirects the link to something else which hasn't been sold, seemingly at random.

See my TRB 4P for an example. The only way now to find the original item is to search for 'Sold Items' , and even then if you find the sold item and copy the actual link, Ebay still redirects when you include it in a web page.

I think this is going to mean a lot of frustration and broken links in this forum.

 

[TheGreek]

I think I saw that...and yes, I noticed the (mis)direction to "similar" items (they're not!), I think it started last week?

Maybe they think they're being helpful...

[Bassassin]

Seen this a few times in the last couple of days. Fortunately, if you look closely, in the text of the fob-off the word "listing" is actually a link back to the original item. Still a frustrating pain in the ar$e though.

I'm guessing there's a rationale behind this, not including an obvious link & making the actual link inconspicuous, but it's anyone's guess what it is. Just another step in the ongoing process of making Ebay hostile, awkward, unintuitive and irritating.

[fleabag]

Reminds of those that shop for supermarket food online.   You ask for a punnet of grapes and they have none, so they replace them with  kippers in butter

[b7l4s]

A couple of times that link back to the original listing has failed to work for me... annoying. I'm sure that showing a 'similar' alternative listing works for some products, or new items, but I've yet to see one suggested alternative worthy of the name when looking at secondhand basses or amps etc.

I suppose they have to try things out, if it drives sales, but it would be a nice option to be able to disable the 'feature', either on the platform of via a URL parameter.

[Rick's Fine '52]

This is a new feature, and agree its annoying, what I have noticed though, is when you go to the 'ended' item, at the top, in a blue heading bar, above the item title, it says; 

"The listing you’re looking for is no longer available. Check out this similar item we found for you"

If you hover and click over the word 'listing', you will notice it is blue, and is actually a hyperlink to the original item, and not a similar one. 

Not sure how I discovered this, but it works. 

[Bassassin]

14 hours ago, Rick's Fine '52 said:

This is a new feature, and agree its annoying, what I have noticed though, is when you go to the 'ended' item, at the top, in a blue heading bar, above the item title, it says; 

"The listing you’re looking for is no longer available. Check out this similar item we found for you"

If you hover and click over the word 'listing', you will notice it is blue, and is actually a hyperlink to the original item, and not a similar one. 

Not sure how I discovered this, but it works. 

Perhaps you read this:

On 25/06/2018 at 23:13, Bassassin said:

...if you look closely, in the text of the fob-off the word "listing" is actually a link back to the original item.

[pete.young]

Thanks both for pointing that out, I missed it.

[fleabag]

I didnt notice that link either till it was posted here. Small isn't it ?   Slagbay obviously dont really want to make it easy for anyone to spot it. They'd rather you forget a bass thats's already sold and point you to a bass you have no interest in