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View Full Version : eBay's horribly written/erroneous product information



nebrazca78
07-29-2011, 04:29 PM
eBay does it again. It never ceases to amaze. In all the years I've been selling Mortal Kombat for Genesis I've never actually looked at the product information. Here it is unedited:

The Mortal Kombat is an action video game developed for Sega Genesis. The evil wizard Shang Tsung gives a challenge to fight against the unbeaten competitor of Mortal Kombat tournament, named Goro. The motive behind this tournament is Earthrealm i.e. conquering the world. The player in this Sega Genesis game assumes as one of the 7 characters - Johnny Cage, Kano, Raiden, Liu Kang, Scorpion, Sub-Zero, and Sonya. The player in this Action video game must fight and defeat each of its seven opponents including a mirror match contender to reach to the higher levels. The player then goes through three endurance matches in this Sega Genesis game where winning over two consecutive opponents is a must to clear the level. After winning quiet a few matches in this Action video game, the player goes through a special game, Test Your Might which gives a chance to win huge bonus points. This Mortal Kombat allows up to 2 players to play simultaneously.

Where do you begin? Well straight away there is no game called "The Mortal Kombat." Secondly it's a fighting game, not an action game. Next we get a couple of strangely worded sentences on the edge of being correct and then some grammatical, punctuation, spelling and capitalization errors. To top it all off, "The Mortal Kombat" has been replaced with "This Mortal Kombat" at the end, an even more incorrect version of the name.

Now I'm not the type to troll forums pointing out errors in posts. But this is information on a corporate website that has probably been viewed by over a million people over the years. And it's absolutely terrible! It seems to have been written by someone for whom English is a self-taught second language. Teaching yourself a foreign language is admirable, but you probably shouldn't have people with English difficulties writing your copy. Not to mention the whole thing is strangely written and only vaguely correct.

But of course it doesn't stop there. I recently found out that at least 17% of my Saturn auctions have errors in their product information or tech details. The product information and tech details can't be submitted for correction either. Half of these incorrect entries are misspellings, incorrect game series information and HTML where it doesn't belong. The other half are completely incorrect product information. For instance, here is the product information for Virtua Fighter 2:

Rough and tumble to the core, TOTAL OVERDOSE: A GUNSLINGER'S TALE IN MEXICO for PC by Eidos Interactive is all about the guns, shooting, and action. The storyline is based around the character Ramiro Cruz... blah blah blah.

So now I have to go back through and check/revise about 300 games. I did end up calling eBay and finding out that they use a 3rd party for the product information. Supposedly the rep I talked to is sending an error report to them. I called them before about a similar problem years ago and they never did anything about it, hopefully they will this time.


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Wookie
07-29-2011, 08:26 PM
You actually use the pre-written descriptions? I can honestly say I've never read one of those in any auction I've looked at. I'd guess most folks looking to buy a classic game are already familiar with it, or want it to complete a set, and only care about price, condition, and completeness.

Kitsune Sniper
07-29-2011, 10:05 PM
You actually use the pre-written descriptions? I can honestly say I've never read one of those in any auction I've looked at. I'd guess most folks looking to buy a classic game are already familiar with it, or want it to complete a set, and only care about price, condition, and completeness.

It's necessary if you want the 5 cent listing cost on video games with buy it now. And you supposedly get a better search ranking (but what that means is that eBay likes to hide items that don't have a product description included.)

vintagegamecrazy
07-30-2011, 12:00 AM
It all boils down to Ebay wanting to be a store and not an online auction or flea market site.

mobiusclimber
07-30-2011, 01:08 AM
It all boils down to Ebay wanting to be a store and not an online auction or flea market site.

Yeah, the moron who took over decided he was tired of Ebay being Ebay and wanted to become Amazon. Gee, guy, you don't think AMAZON already has that market fuckin cornered, do you?

nebrazca78
07-31-2011, 04:03 PM
You actually use the pre-written descriptions? I can honestly say I've never read one of those in any auction I've looked at. I'd guess most folks looking to buy a classic game are already familiar with it, or want it to complete a set, and only care about price, condition, and completeness.

It is true that most of us already know what we're looking for by the time we check eBay. But before I started using eBay's catalog information (which I now use mostly to get the fee discount), a few people noted that they wanted a game summary in the description. And I'm sure as hell not writing hundreds upon hundreds of summaries. The thing that amazes me the most is that these incorrect product descriptions have probably been wrong for 10 years or more and have never been fixed. I've contacted eBay about this five or six times over the years but nothing has ever been corrected.


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Ze_ro
08-01-2011, 11:18 AM
I really wish eBay wouldn't do stuff like this. And remove the stock photos too... who does that help? It just tricks uneducated buyers and promotes lazy sellers who don't want to take the time to properly document their items.

--Zero

DREW
08-03-2011, 02:27 PM
You actually use the pre-written descriptions? I can honestly say I've never read one of those in any auction I've looked at. I'd guess most folks looking to buy a classic game are already familiar with it, or want it to complete a set, and only care about price, condition, and completeness.

Recently I listed a game without the catalog and received this email warrning from ebay

Titled
"MC054 Listing policy violation alert: Listing with product details (494688328) "

With this Threat
"Although we haven't removed your listing, please keep in mind that sellers who repeatedly list items or fail to relist with the catalog when there is a product match may be subject to a range of actions including listing removal and limits to their selling privileges. Please use the information below to edit your listing so it follows our policy,


I went ahead and inserted the catalog information but had to remove it later as my item
titled was then changed and the search would only bring up a ICON photo not the item
photo I wanted. Without going into to much detail I relisted this item no less then 6 times
trying to fix the problem, called ebay help line 3 times with no help. Finally had to remove
the catalog info before it would work correctly in the search. Oh by the way the catalog
info said my game was a HACK ? WTF.

drew

Kitsune Sniper
08-03-2011, 02:46 PM
I really wish eBay wouldn't do stuff like this. And remove the stock photos too... who does that help? It just tricks uneducated buyers and promotes lazy sellers who don't want to take the time to properly document their items.

--Zero

... But I've ALWAYS listed stuff without stock photos. You can delete them yourself, eBay won't really care.

Edit: If eBay starts to force us to list stuff using their catalog, then that's too much. Their catalog is not nearly as comprehensive as they'd like to think. Just imagine how it'll be for Japanese eBay sellers!

Zing
08-03-2011, 08:55 PM
You actually use the pre-written descriptions? I can honestly say I've never read one of those in any auction I've looked at. I'd guess most folks looking to buy a classic game are already familiar with it, or want it to complete a set, and only care about price, condition, and completeness.

I used to always disable the pre-filled info, but Ebay essentially forces you to use it now.

And yes, the catalog thing is garbage. I can't stand using it. If I want to view listings like Amazon, I will just buy from Amazon. Their new rules about hiding search results which do not use the catalog is bullshit.

DREW
08-04-2011, 05:48 PM
I used to always disable the pre-filled info, but Ebay essentially forces you to use it now.

And yes, the catalog thing is garbage. I can't stand using it. If I want to view listings like Amazon, I will just buy from Amazon. Their new rules about hiding search results which do not use the catalog is bullshit.
The only way I could get around the problem with the search and Icon search photo was to
list using "Video Games>other" rather then "Video Games>Games" this way they dont
know I am selling an actual Video game and it does not trigger the catalog warning

Rickstilwell1
08-04-2011, 10:52 PM
I usually sell wholesale lots on ebay anyway so I haven't had this problem yet.