Late last week users of the eBay site began reporting that hundreds of thousands of listings suddenly appeared on the site that looked suspicious. The listings, with user ID's such as sdc_prod_301013_74 (along with many more that were similar) featured pictures and descriptions, but the ability to contact the seller or bid on the item was missing. These listings, again tens of thousands of them appeared to be listings from Shopping.com, an eBay owned company.

According to AuctionBytes.com, they received an explanation from an eBay spokesperson on Saturday saying that this was a limited test that had run it's course. Hmmm???? OK, it sounded plausible, though not really what sellers on the site wanted to hear. With the ads from Yahoo showing up in searches along with items for sale by eBay sellers who are paying for their items to be listed, sellers don't need or want any more competetion especially from sellers who are not paying eBay fees. But still, the explanation sounded plausible.

Then, on Sunday eBay posted this on the announcement page: Some Shopping.com listings appeared accidentally on eBay.com over the past two days. This system issue has been resolved. We apologize for any confusion or inconvenience this may have caused. See the post. 

To add insult to injury, eBay then removed all related posts by users on the eBay Discussion boards discussing the test, or glitch, or whatever it really was. In fairness to eBay, their rules for the discussion boards say that they can remove any post for any reason. So they apparently choose to take this action in an effort to reduce the visibiltiy of the test or accident, whichever it was.........eBay needs to get their stories STRAIGHT!

My Opinion
If it really was a test, eBay should have announced it before they ran it, on the system announcement board. This was no accident. eBay rarely does anything by accident, but if they do, it is corrected very quickly, not 2 or more days later.

With some reduction in listings due to the boycott/strike caused by the sweeping changes eBay recently announced, this test/accident may have been done at this time to correct those reductions in listings. Whether or not the boycott/strike had any effect is up for debate. However, as I have said before, if there was a reduction of just one listing, eBay has a dissatisfied customer, and that equates, according to eBay's own statements, as something that is not meeting the goal of a great customer experience.