A Better eBay Filter is a Greasemonkey script or stand-alone Firefox extension designed for users of eBay in several countries. It filters eBay listings and searches to hide item entries from sellers who have a feedback score or positive percentage below values you specify, or above for feedback score. The input values can be dynamically changed to filter items into or out of view. Last values are saved between browsing sessions. Note: A Better eBay Filter does require setting a nondefault value in Customize Display one time, a matter of three clicks and a few seconds effort.

This is a partial screen capture showing the user input and information lines appended by A Better eBay Filter:



The current A Better eBay Filter version is 2.0, released late-April 2007. 2.0 adds support for a maximum feedback score filter and multiple country sites of eBay beyond www.ebay.com, including tested sites for Germany (www.ebay.de), France (www.ebay.fr), the UK (www.ebay.co.uk), Canada (www.ebay.ca), Spain (www.ebay.es), Poland (www.ebay.pl) and Austria (www.ebay.at). For example, see the Polish site screen capture:



Other countries with eBay sites may work besides those listed. A Better eBay Filter is a simple browser script that has no association with eBay Inc. It is neither guaranteed to work without error nor to your satisfaction. Use A Better eBay Filter at your own risk.

A Better eBay Filter requires feedback information to be displayed on each item entry so it can filter the results. This information is not normally displayed without a small and easy change to your eBay setup. Note that specific link and button text is listed in English, the actual eBay text will differ depending on the site's native language.

Immediately after installing A Better eBay Filter, go to a listing or search screen. Click the Customize Display link at the top of the listings, on the right side. This will navigate you to the Customize Your Search page. On that page, you should see a checkbox titled Display feedback information. Check the checkbox. You may wish to change the items per page value directly below this box to 200 since some entries will be filtered out and the listing will be consequently shorter than normal, but this is optional. Click the Apply Changes button to finish the eBay setup. The changes you make should be permanent, or should at least last until eBay screws up.

After the proper setup, on each listing or search screen, A Better eBay filter will display two status lines immediately below the basic Search line (see the screenshots above). The first status line shows the minimum feedback score and positive feedback percentage necessary to display an item entry. The initial values of 50 and 98.5 are fairly forgiving, but easy to change. In addition, you may specify a maximum feedback score, or leave it blank if you do not wish a maximum: zero is not the same as blank. The default is blank (no maximum). The second line displays an Update Filter button and the current number of items hidden from view by the filter.

You can change the score and percentage values to whatever you want. For example, if you do not want to hide new user auctions, you can change the feedback score to 1 (or 0) and see those auctions. Should you change a value, the filtered items message changes to a Values changed. message. This is an indication to press the Update Filter button to immediately update the display with the new filter constraints. Each time you press Update Filter, the current values are stored for a future browser session or search/listing page display.

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