Hi everyone,
On April 1st, 2025, we noticed an unusual situation on one of our listings that we’ve never encountered before.
We offer this product in New condition and also in Used – Like New condition. Under normal circumstances, the New offer consistently wins the Buy Box and is shown by default on the product page.
However, on April 1st:
This had a direct impact on our advertising. Compared to our daily average, impressions dropped by more than 98% — since the New offers weren’t consistently in the Buy Box, and Used listings cannot be advertised.
After going back and forth with support, we couldn’t get a clear answer — only a generic explanation that Buy Box placement is determined by algorithms.
By the end of the day, we decided to disable the Used – Like New offer, just to see what would happen — and it seems that ad impressions started returning to normal, which supports our suspicion that the Buy Box behavior was the root cause.
We’ll be monitoring closely today to see how things go.
Has anyone else experienced something like this? Is this normal behavior we just haven’t encountered before, or possibly some change being tested?
Appreciate any insights or similar experiences.
I've seen this in years past with media items and I noticed some sellers were downgrading the condition of their items just to get in the buy box... and even in those cases the higher cost used items were showing up above new sealed items that were cheaper...
It might have to do with the list price or perhaps reference prices off of Amazon but I don't really know for sure what causes it.