The ‘Last One’ trick….

sham63

Bought an item this evening with the listing stating “2 sold, last one”. 

Not wanting to miss out as it’s the cheapest listing encouraged me to make the purchase.
Almost immediately, it’s relisted - “2 sold, last one” 
Sharp practice?

elsien

Just disbelieve any messages like that that ever come up and you’ll be fine.

sham63

elsien said:

Just disbelieve any messages like that that ever come up and you’ll be fine.

But what if it really was the last one…… ? 🤣

elsien

Then you decide if it's from a retailer you trust at a price you want to pay at the time you want to buy it.
I don't believe any of the "going fast" messages. 

soolin

In fairness the message saying it was the last one was correct - the ebay system detected a MVL listing with all but one item sold and flagged it up as the last one (On that listing)

I don't particularly find myself bothered by that automatic message as I can see for myself how many are left on the listing. What I do dislike is sellers who use terms like extremely rare, ultra rare or virtually impossible to find and then have a MVL listing or where there are a dozen more on the same ebay search. I've seen this 'ultra rare' term used on ebay for current Lego sets that are available at RRP on at most retailers and even online at Amazon. Also for cheap bits of modern jewellery from the Far East sites ike Shein or Temu.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

sham63 said:

Bought an item this evening with the listing stating “2 sold, last one”. 

Not wanting to miss out as it’s the cheapest listing encouraged me to make the purchase.
Almost immediately, it’s relisted - “2 sold, last one” 
Sharp practice?

The way eBay works with this is very questionable, if a seller has sold 1000 from a listing and has 999 left eBay will say "limited quantity available".

"Last one" is difficult, from the seller's point of view they may have 4 available as 1 on 4 platforms, if one platform sells out they zero the least popular avenue and add 1 back to where the last one sold.

Perhaps a new box of stock arrived that day? 

But ultimately I think the problem is eBay doing this stuff automatically rather than any trick the seller may deliberately be doing  

sham63

The seller also has their own website and the item was not showing on there, so I assumed that they were clearing stock via Ebay. Also, this was yesterday (Sunday) evening, so unlikely that a new box of stock arrived. 

soolin

Ssham63 said:

The seller also has their own website and the item was not showing on there, so I assumed that they were clearing stock via Ebay. Also, this was yesterday (Sunday) evening, so unlikely that a new box of stock arrived. 

The ‘last one’ banner though was put there by eBay and purely based on the listing. 

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

sham63 said:

The seller also has their own website and the item was not showing on there, so I assumed that they were clearing stock via Ebay. Also, this was yesterday (Sunday) evening, so unlikely that a new box of stock arrived. 

There could a bunch reasons really, with what I was selling with my old business when the supplier ran out of stock it would usually take a few weeks for them to restock, the very large sellers were either using them for fulfilment or just ordering from them as the customer ordered. 

They'd run their listings off CVS stock files from the supplier so within 24 hours max of the supplier being OOS half the listings on eBay would disappear. 

I always set the quantity on the listing low so if the above happened I could up my price to a reasonable margin rather than the peanuts the volume sellers drove prices down to.  

Unless you are buying something that is no longer produced I would assume most sellers will continue to sell a product that they have listed indefinitely, possibly with an OOS break in between if waiting for more stock. 

If I was selling something that was no longer produced I wouldn't list all my stock as available, again so I could monitor prices and max out profit margins depending upon what else is listed on eBay at the time. 

se2020

It's only sharp practice if it's the seller putting "last one" in the title or item description. 

If a seller lists 5 of something and 4 sell then ebay will add "last one" in red.

I often buy items in a box of 10 and list them.
If it is an item that is selling quickly I'll order another 10 when I am down to the last 2 or 3.
So you will see the "last one" message from ebay but once that's sold I'll relist so another 10 will be available. 

As a seller I wouldn't bother to update a listing to say 11 available when the new box of 10 arrived. 

Also, if I have a one-off quantity of 8 items to sell I might only list 7 just incase one goes missing or gets damaged in the post.
Once all 7 have sold and been safely delivered I'd relist the last one