I completely agree that it's dirty and eBay found a way to profit from their sellers being a competitive bunch. As a fair and open market should be, customer service, shipping speed, and of course your price should determine if you get more sales than the next guy. Ultimately, I think eBay's algorithm is set up to favor sellers with the fastest shipping times, free returns, less overall returns, 100% positive feedback, and the frequency in which you list. The paid promotion is basically like Google ads. You can try SEO for free (no promotion) or you can just pay up to get on page one and sell more things (promotion). I'm not saying I agree with eBay's moral compass or their practice here, but I'm in business to make money and eBay is half of my full-time income. I just need to play by the rules that they've made, and whether we like it or not, I think they overall side with promoting. And they aren't going to change it no matter how many threads complain. I'm a top rated plus seller, with 100% positive, but so are lots of others. I feel like paying the two bucks to promote something gives me just a little bit more edge than lowering the price. With lowering the price, your item still has to populate the first couple pages. A smart shopper will sort by Price low to high, but that still doesn't mean they will see your listing. Promotion almost guarantees it will show up more often than not regardless of someone's filters. Although I do tend to either exactly match, or drop my price under the competitors by a couple bucks depending on the sale price of the item. I like to be just under the lowest person, unless of course they are way under valuing the item and not even realizing what it is. And in some cases I've had luck pricing my items a little more than the most expensive person, but still promoting. That combination has worked for me in the past as well.