VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1937-1945 Is Ebay dead ?

In his infinite wisdom ebay decided today to drop wildcard search. Thus stuff like "193* chevrolet" is no longer supported. I've written to them to complain, perhaps if some of you fellows that use this search method would do the same they'll eventually come to their senses.

Yup,
Now you have to put (1930, 1931,....1939) instead of the wild card *. They claim it does the same thing. It may be better because it eliminates 19304 or any other more than four digit 193_ number from coming up in the search. We will see.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/01/19/us-ebay-idUSTRE70I71W20110119

Ebay profit was almost 11 BILLION in 2011. If the new proposed tax goes in where tax has to be paid to the government on every purchase, Ebay will lay off thousands and the stock will tumble.

I called customer service and complained about them no longer supporting a wildcard in search criteria.

The poor person on the phone said that something new and great was in development, but couldn't say when "it" would come out.

I made the point that they shouldn't take a function away until the replacement was in place, was tested, and deemed truly an improvement.

One hint about what might be going on is he said that the wildcard 'slowed their system down'.

If this is the case, they need more horsepower in the system. It's not MY problem as a user or customer.

Frustrated. Dean

The nice thing about the wild card it helped us find items that may never been found. I used to try chev, chevy & chevrolet. The wild card helped me find the items posted by people who couldn't spell any of the names...Joe