I've mentioned frequently in the past that I like to camp out on eBay's newly-listed Buy It Now auctions to catch items and lots listed well below their actual value. I've gotten some great deals in the past that way, but you have to be fast -- the really good ones disappear within the first minute or two. Lately, though, the new listings don't show up reliably at all. I'll see a few new listings every few minutes, followed by a few from ten or fifteen minutes earlier, and some even older. This started happening on my iPad weeks or months ago. Then, it started happening in Safari on my Mac, but Firefox on the Mac was still fine. Now even Firefox has the problem; the only way I can see listings in a timely fashion is on the eBay Android app on my smartphone, and the combination of the app's limitations and my phone's limitations makes it not worthwhile. I experimented with clearing caches and cookies, and sometimes it changed the behavior, but never for long. It almost seems as though eBay is deliberately degrading performance to discourage campers. I've noticed that this listing style (Buy It Now, sort by newly-listed first) no longer displays the start or end time of the auction as it used to (and, yes, I've customized the view so it's supposed to show up). So, if you're looking casually, it's not immediately obvious that all the listings are stale. Is anyone else seeing this behavior? If most users are being affected the same way, at least it may still be a level playing field. If not, I might as well give up on the new-listing-camping strategy.
Well I just listed 3 items tonight, and when I closed my browser after listing them, opened ebay back up, I could not "find" my items while doing a search. They just weren't available immediately. I would say it took 5 mins to show up in search and browsing by categories, and suddenly they showed up, showing the original accurate listing time. Of course I could go directly to them through "My eBay", but my point is that perhaps its more a choking on listing/indexing the items, and not so much something intentionally done. And if that is true, then I would think ALL "campers" are experiencing the same thing, which is that there is nothing....nothing...and suddenly a bunch pop in, showing an earlier listing time by a few mins. I would think that no campers are getting an unfair start time, even if the start time is not accurate. You're all "starting late", so to speak.
Thing is, if I hop on with my phone and check, I see LOTS of new listings, with the "newest" ones I can see on my Mac appearing way down on the list. So, yeah, it sounds like your machine and mine are in the same boat -- but maybe somebody running the eBay app on a faster Android system would still have an advantage. I wish I could find some more discussions about this, but I haven't had much luck finding the right search terms yet. I'll keep looking.
