eBay Search

Making it hard for customers to use site

[lexipixel]

I browse (as well as sell and buy) on eBay regularly. Today I found they removed the little check box below the search box to tell it search in descriptions.

Anyone else seeing this (or "not" seeing it as it were) ?

It makes the site pretty much useless -- I usually find about 75% more matches to what I'm looking for with the box checked.

Now you need to go into a full page "Advanced Search" form -- lots of extra clicking and scrolling -- and it loses what you've input after each search.

Pure stupidity.

[onepointone]

I'm still seeing the 'in description' box. Logged in or not.

But IMO, eBay still seems to be stumbling around in the dark as a company recently.

[rocknbil]

They lost me years ago when their Javascript-dependent posting interface made it unusable. Officially the only site I have to disable Javascript on if I hope to get anything done. Marketers today are mad(wo)men and sorely out of touch with real users. "We don't care about "them", that's not who we're marketing to." Madness!

[lexipixel]

I'm still seeing the 'in description' box. Logged in or not.

They must be doing some split testing. It's still gone for me.

[lexipixel]

..and now it's back.

I called support there -- nice to talk to a human. He had me clear cookies and cache, log out, then log back in -- it's seems I was (unknowingly) part of a UI test group.

The searchbox and related controls had what I'd call an "Ajax feel"... the search box had that soft-greyish js framework look and feel to it, (unlike a standard HTML text input), and had a 6-toothed gear icon that toggled a pull-down that took you into Advanced Search.