eBay Seller Shocked By Price Dropping Glitch
UPDATE 5-29-23
There is now a third report of an item in the jewelry category on eBay selling for a significantly lower price than listed.
This seller had a $3250 item sell for $8.06 (with tax). 🤯
The listing history shows an offer was accepted for this item, but the seller is insistent they did not have the listing set to accept offers and some sleuthing by an eBay community members suggest this could be the result of clever checkout page hacking or a glitch affecting the jewelry category.
According to the revisions history, the listing was last revised last Aug 15, 2022, and some change was made to the Best Offer status at that time. That was more than a year after the first offer was made, which was declined. All of the cached pages for that listing were made after it was revised, and they don't show that best offer was available, so I believe that it was removed Aug 15, 2022. The sold listing doesn't have a strike-through on the price, as would be expected if it had sold to a best offer.
It appears that the same buyer who originally made an offer that was declined in July 2021, made the offer for $7.50 which was accepted. It's the same masked ID.
To be honest, I think it was probably the buyer who did this, by hacking the checkout page. That was reported a few times a while back, and there was a youtube video showing how to do it. Then it stopped, and I thought that eBay had fixed the vulnerability. I suspect that your buyer may have exploited some information or link from their original offer a couple of years ago, and probably just did it to find out if they could do it or not.
You should contact eBay on Facebook.com/eBay or Twitter.com/AskeBay. They are eBay employees who reply there, not outsourced workers who are only trained to handle the usual problems. Give them a link to this thread, and say that you didn't accept an offer, the listing didn't have best offer available anymore, and you think the checkout page was hacked.
This is third example I've seen in the past week or two - all in the jewelry category.
So if it's not the checkout hack/scam, then it's a tech issue with the jewelry category.
Whatever is going on here, whether a hack or a glitch, eBay owes these sellers an explanation!
UPDATE 5-28-23
Another seller in the jewelry category is reporting two items listed for $299 and $349 respectively were able to be purchased for $25 each in another unexplained pricing glitch.
Why am I getting a request to ship to a buyer that has only paid a partial amount of the list price?...
... they paid $25 each for two items I listed for $299 and $349 and eBay is saying I should ship...
...I sent out no offers, discounts, or changes in price on these items. They have been listed for several weeks with no activity. I will check with CS and find a way to cancel the order. We definitely will not ship two pairs of gold earrings for $50. Thanks to all for the feedback. Still baffled at how eBay let this go through.
An eBay seller was shocked when a piece of fine jewelry they had listed sold for $229.49 instead of the $637.49 price that should have been charged.
Just had an item sell for $229.49, when listed at $637.49. No offers, no communication, just sold for the wrong price. Called eBay, and apparently it's a known issue!?!?! So heads up everybody. Make sure you're double checking all of your sales. CSR was very helpful, and of course the transaction got cancelled. Just wanted to make sure this issue was a bit more public!
For those who may be skeptical, the seller also posted a screenshot of the transaction from their seller hub showing it was in fact completed and paid for at $229.49, even though looking at the item in their public facing sold history shows it was sold at $637.49.
The original listed price was $749.99 and the seller had a 15% markdown sale running to get to the $637.49 price.
The seller says support confirmed there was no Best Offer and provided no explanation beyond simply that it was a "known issue" - and that's the really scary part of the story.
Other sellers chimed in saying they've also experienced pricing glitches that have caused the purchase price to be lower than it should have been.
I've experienced this three times now.
- $9999.00 item sold for $199.00.
- $1500 item sold for $150.
- Same situation but in the $100 range.
Both ebay, and the buyers were helpful in all three cases, simply a cancellation and no risk of negative feedback (all 3 had paid), it turned out that an ebay anomaly had increased the promotional discount structure.
I've seen other complaints here on a low but steady basis about unexpected low-price sales for no apparent reason.
Given all the mechanisms in play on some listings (e.g. Make Offer, blanket discount pricing, presence or absence of auto-accept), it would not entirely surprise me if there was some nasty collision of mathematics going on with various price alterations being made, perhaps under very weird but specific conditions that may make the problem hard to trace.
Regardless of what the reason really was, it's very concerning that support was unable to offer details or an explanation that would give any confidence the same problem won't happen again.
Have you experienced glitches causing eBay listings to sell for less than the advertised price? Let us know in the comments below!
