Yesterday, someone at eBay flipped a switch, and the eBay feed became this new eBay saved searches feed page on the desktop version of eBay. What I saw yesterday was completely unusable, and I was rather upset.
As far as I can tell, the saved searches feed has not yet been added to the eBay app, so this change does not impact mobile users at this time.
Now that I've had time to think, I have some additional thoughts on the situation.
The first question is whether this is a glitch or whether this is a permanent change. The saved searches feed is a new section of My eBay that is now present in the dropdown menu. The page has been added by design. The timing is very odd, so much so that its appearance yesterday might have been a mistake. It's bizarre for a website to launch a buggy new feature on the day after Christmas. Why would they do that? Maybe they hope we are so distracted by other stuff that we'll let it fly without saying anything.
Significant changes to a site's interface are normally done with a lot of beta testing to just some users. I don't think this is a beta test. eBay foisted it on us yesterday without warning.
If it was a mistake for it to go live yesterday, then they could roll it back. However, the timing is in between major holidays, and eBay's corporate headquarters is probably short on staff until after New Year's Day. Even if this is rolled back, it probably won't be done for a week or so.
If the buggy page going live is permanent, then it will likely take at least several months for eBay to fix the problems. eBay is notoriously slow about fixing glitches.
Yesterday, my saved searches feed was a mess. I had a few saved sellers, and their listings were most of the page. It was completely awful. I solved the problem by removing all of my saved sellers. Now I just see the saved searches feed on the saved searches feed page. That's how it should work: The saved searches feed page shouldn't be a saved sellers feed page.
I also went through my list of saved searches and removed the ones no longer of any interest. That cleaned up the terrible saved searches page some more. My page is now decent, although I still don't like it.
I dislike all the white space where unnecessary information is provided. Click on images in order to see them better.
eBay does have a place in the upper right whether users can toggle to see less information. It does improve the appearance some, although it doesn't make it like the old page.
The trouble is that the selection to see less information doesn't stick. When I reload the page, it reverts to the version that shows the names of the searches. Ugh.
This next image shows where the saved feed is now listed in the menu in My eBay.
And don't get me started on Thriftbooks. Thriftbooks is degrading the eBay search experience. Thriftbooks is dumping their entire inventory on eBay, single-handedly ruining searches with their millions of listings that contain no photo. And yet the little people like me are required to have pictures of our items in our listings.
While I'm at it, I might as well air every eBay grievance.
eBay has rendered my store categories to be pointless. Who is ever going to click on them?
I see where it says "categories," but it's not that noticeable. When I click on it, I only get some of my categories. I have to scroll down and click again to see the rest of them. Buyers don't want to do that!
I hate that Etsy only gives me 20 categories, but at least Etsy shows my categories all the time. I'd rather have just 20 categories than have my categories hidden.
Let's see... what else is eBay doing wrong? Oh, yeah! eBay keeps changing its stupid feedback page. That's why I seldom do feedback anymore. I can't stand it! Each change makes feedback take longer. I see they changed it yet again. Now the page creates a pop-up each time I want to leave feedback, then it asks me if I want to save the seller. Why? I do one-off purchases most of the time. I see something in my feed, then I buy it. I don't need to save the seller! Besides, I just removed all my saved sellers yesterday due to the clunky new feed.
Please give eBay feedback on the new saved searches page. Let them know how they can fix it so that it will function like the old feed page.
https://www.ebay.com/srv/survey/a/myebay.watchlist.desktop
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