Bidder/Buyer search too is gone! from Watchcount!

TPF may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, and others

L

love4mom

O.G.
Aug 9, 2010
1,508
2
#1
That is a real shame:




Retired: eBay Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool
Posted: 19-Feb-2016
Today we've retired our Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool (on eBay's polite request). Over its 1+ year of existence, we'd heard from many eBayers who used it, expressing a whole spectrum of feelings about it. We'd been told it was helpful to many small sellers for a variety of reasons. But some users also understandably felt quite the opposite about it. It was somewhat controversial, so we considered it (and clearly labeled it) Experimental from the start.
But its short life has come to an end, as we're now permanently sunsetting this clever little tool.
As always, thank you for visiting WatchCount.com !
 
#3
love4mom said:
That is a real shame:




Retired: eBay Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool
Posted: 19-Feb-2016
Today we've retired our Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool (on eBay's polite request). Over its 1+ year of existence, we'd heard from many eBayers who used it, expressing a whole spectrum of feelings about it. We'd been told it was helpful to many small sellers for a variety of reasons. But some users also understandably felt quite the opposite about it. It was somewhat controversial, so we considered it (and clearly labeled it) Experimental from the start.
But its short life has come to an end, as we're now permanently sunsetting this clever little tool.
As always, thank you for visiting WatchCount.com !
Click to expand...



Ohhh wow!

That really sucks- :sad:
This was a useful tool in many, MANY ways..

I can't tell you how many times I've used this (and I've seen it used by countless people) on the eBay forums to help people that had questions, concerns, complaints etc..

I used it just yesterday to reply to a person that was already leaving Neg FB and threatening to report a seller.. They were angry they didn't have a "tracking number" yet for an order.
I'm really going to miss this-
Anyway, this is SAD... :nogood:

Does anyone know of any other similar tool??

Thanks for the info Love4Mom
 
#4
love4mom said:
That is a real shame:




Retired: eBay Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool
Posted: 19-Feb-2016
Today we've retired our Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool (on eBay's polite request). Over its 1+ year of existence, we'd heard from many eBayers who used it, expressing a whole spectrum of feelings about it. We'd been told it was helpful to many small sellers for a variety of reasons. But some users also understandably felt quite the opposite about it. It was somewhat controversial, so we considered it (and clearly labeled it) Experimental from the start.
But its short life has come to an end, as we're now permanently sunsetting this clever little tool.
As always, thank you for visiting WatchCount.com !
Click to expand...
I don't doubt that ebay's polite request included a handsome payment!
 
#5
Hopefully, someone else will come up with a similar tool. I imagine the technology necessary to produce it is out there. May have to be outside of the US, but it should be possible.
 
Last edited:
#6
That is so sad! I used it all the time. One of things I liked to check was how much other stuff my buyer was getting to try to gauge whether or not it was likely to be returned. The buyer that eventually filed a credit card dispute because she said she didn't buy my item had purchased many similar items on the same day. Another buyer had bought the same identical bag as mine from someone else. She ended up keeping mine and returning the other because mine was in better condition.
 
#7
love4mom said:
That is a real shame:




Retired: eBay Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool
Posted: 19-Feb-2016
Today we've retired our Buyer/Bidder History Search Tool (on eBay's polite request). Over its 1+ year of existence, we'd heard from many eBayers who used it, expressing a whole spectrum of feelings about it. We'd been told it was helpful to many small sellers for a variety of reasons. But some users also understandably felt quite the opposite about it. It was somewhat controversial, so we considered it (and clearly labeled it) Experimental from the start.
But its short life has come to an end, as we're now permanently sunsetting this clever little tool.
As always, thank you for visiting WatchCount.com !
Click to expand...
I just clicked on your link and it's still works.
 
#10
I think it's really sad that ebay speaks with its pocketbook (pun intended). They tried to do it to toolhaus too but they wouldn't be bought.
 
#11
BeenBurned said:
I think it's really sad that ebay speaks with its pocketbook (pun intended). They tried to do it to toolhaus too but they wouldn't be bought.
Click to expand...

Me too!

And I think it's very unfair they took away one of the only tools we have that actually is very useful.
I used that in many different ways- for my own protection as well as for helping to answer questions & advise others.

It's really too bad & says a lot about what eBay thinks about sellers deserving to protect themselves. :nogood:
 
#13
carlpsmom said:
Hopefully, someone else will come up with a similar tool. I imagine the technology necessary to produce it is out there. May have to be outside of the US, but it should be possible.
Click to expand...

I hope so too!

I signed up ages ago for the developer program but never used it due to a complete unfamiliarity with APIs in general & being a total hobbyist/newbie. But after trying to use the watchcount tool today & seeing it retired, I figured they had to have used ebay's API to query for bid history somehow.

As far as I can tell, I think GetBidderList call from the Trading API might be what the site used, and it was specified by UserID?

But thanks to ebay's awfully glitchy API test tool, I can't test out my theory to see if it does allow for you to search other people's bid histories. For whatever reason, I can only access the sandbox option, & not the production option that would let me search real users. The sandbox doesn't appear to use the actual database of users, so I can't search myself, and my test user obviously doesn't have any history to search...

I might be totally off base here. I lack the tech skills to puzzle this one out, but if anyone knows anything about XML or APIs, please help a body out. :graucho: It took me entirely too long to figure out how to generate tokens, lol, let alone figuring out how to test the code and then format the xml into a pleasing format.

Code: 
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<GetBidderListRequest xmlns="urn:ebay:apis:eBLBaseComponents">
<RequesterCredentials>
<eBayAuthToken>enter token here</eBayAuthToken>
</RequesterCredentials>
<UserID>sample_name</UserID>
</GetBidderListRequest>&#8203;

Eh, I might attempt to download python & learn how to use it at this point, because I loved this tool (maybe I'll be forced to learn some software development so I can finally replace that godawful turbolister which dates back to the stone age). :P

EDIT: All that said, I wonder if ebay won't remove the option to search for bid history altogether? Watchcount seemed to think they would revoke support for it when they first launched the tool (according to their first announcement, after ebay removed the option from the website in advanced search), and since Ebay asked them to remove the tool, they might be more proactive about preventing future attempts to do the same thing?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top