Friday, March 20, 2020

eBay removes repair kit listings containing "Not coming up" description in title

So today we, like probably others, have found out eBay has killed a number of our listings due to breaking eBay's Search Manipulation Policy.

The listings were for DIY repair kits that people use to resolve particular problems in failed electronic boards, namely (giving offending titles as they were listed on eBay; the links will point to our own website where eBay luckily does not have power yet):

PANASONIC TC-32LZ800 REPAIR KIT FOR TNPA4467 POWER TV NOT STARTING UP, NO IMAGE

REPAIR KIT FOR SAMSUNG BN44-00192A BN44-00192B POWER SUPPLY NOT COMING UP

SAMSUNG LN-T4042H LN-T4061F LN-T4053H REPAIR KIT (BASIC) FOR TV NOT COMING UP

Electronic boards are complicated creations and while at a high level one can say they either work or do not work and therefore should either be replaced or not, at a lower level things get way more complicated.

A failed / defective board may cause all kinds of unusual behavior in the appliance, e.g. endless restarting (aka power cycling), totally dead, trying to start, but failing (failing to start), dark or ghost image, inverse colors, excessive heat, whining noise etc. etc.

All those are different descriptions for (usually) different failures.

There is no ONE failure and there is no ONE description and, unless you are ShopJimmy, which used to advertise in their repair kits that they contain "all the parts needed to solve the problems with your board" (or something to that tune and which was so far fetched it was definitely flat out misleading and wrong), there is no one repair kit that solves a failure.

When creating listing titles we try to include the description of the problem or problems the kit addresses; this is based at our own first hand experience doing repairs and is integral part of the kit's description (which is also why it is contained in the description).
We often point to videos in our YouTube channel showing the particular failures.

Unlike most other vendors we also include information of the particular parts included in the repair kits so that people can test them and have actual factual information to decide if they need that kit or not.

The "Not Coming Up" is the opposite of search manipulation; it is the selection narrower and belongs where it is.

eBay would be better off spending their efforts ensuring customers who buy repair services ship the items to be repaired in a timely fashion and NOT penalizing vendors for customers not doing so.

In fact, eBay is better off making sure customers who buy repair services are AWARE they buy repair services in the first place.

A good first step would be to stop calling repair services "Items" and promising delivery date for them when clearly it can't be set without knowing how long customers will take to send their item to be repaired.

Another MUST DO item in eBay's todo list should be forcing buyers to actually read and agree with vendor's specific description of the listing; requirement may be optional so that it doesn't sharply kill the sweet revenue made by eBay, but it doesn't change the fact that, especially in the mobile versions, the listing description is flat out hidden and people often go by picture alone.
Where vendors- surprise, suprise! - are not allowed to use text.
So how do you show "REPAIR SERVICE" in a picture?

With its latest effort eBay is demonstrating the type of good intentions that lead to hell.