Frequently Asked Questions

What is Price Spectre?

Price Spectre is an automated pricing agent for eBay sellers. Price Spectre automatically monitors your competitors' listings and reprices your own listings based on rules you've set. Dynamic pricing can give you an edge over the competition.

How does Price Spectre find my competitor's listings?

For each managed listing, Price Spectre requires search parameters to be defined. This is basically an advanced search similar to the one found on eBay. Price Spectre uses the listings found via the search parameters when updating your prices.

Isn't this process time consuming?

To make the setup process quicker you can set default search parameters for everything except for keywords. If the item is in eBay's product catalog and you listed it using a UPC or ISBN number then Price Spectre will automatically import this along with the item's condition.

If you sell common items (media, books, etc) you could potentially have every listing automatically set up for you at listing time.

What happens when I list a new item?

When listing a new item it will automatically appear within Price Spectre. If you have any default settings they will then be applied to the listing.

What about when I relist an item?

When you list an item we automatically try to match it with your ended listings. If we find a match we'll use the same information you gave us for the original item. To take advantage of this feature you must relist within 30 days and must use the same title. Note: If you are using a third party tool to manage your listings it may not properly relist your listings. If you find that your listings are not being matched on relist, enable the setting called "Relaxed Relist". This setting will assume the most recently listed item with the same title and SKU is the original listing regardless if eBay has it marked as the original or not. Do not use this setting if you have multiple listings with the same title and sku.

What pricing strategy does Price Spectre use?

The seller has several to choose from. Initially Price Spectre comes with algorithms that price based on undercutting the lowest or nth lowest price available, charging a premium over the lowest or nth lowest price available, and charging based on the average price. Another algorithm undercuts the nth lowest price available while making sure your price places your listing on the first page. More pricing strategies are planned for the future including ones that take into effect the recent performance of the listing at various price points.

Users can also define their own custom algorithms using Price Spectre's algorithm editor. Custom algorithms are written in the javascript language. See our HTML or PDF documentation for details.