Dear Uncle Griff and Dear Aunt Flossie

The following information is provided to educate and inform. eBay™ and its employees are not liable or responsible for any type of damage or loss caused, or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the information below.

eBay's kindly old Uncle Griff has agreed to answer questions for some of our members. If you have a question you would like to ask him, email him at unclgrff@ebay.com. NOTE: Not one to be left out of anything, Uncle Griff's mother, Aunt Flossie, loves to meddle in her son's business. Aunt Flossie offers "helpful" replies to questions also (email her at unclgrff@ebay.com).

Dear Uncle Griff,

I'm new to eBay. For the most part I'm impressed, finding it sensibly laid out and usable. However, I have a couple complaints/suggestions:

First, why in the world am I prompted for my User ID/password every time I return to the My eBay tab after browsing around awhile? This is incredibly annoying. At least give me a check box to remember the darn thing.

Second, it would be nice to have search filtering based on price. For example, I am interested in buying pinball machines, the big arcade ones that run more than $1000. Unfortunately, searching on "pinball" gives reams ands reams of PC pinball software, flyers, and other assorted items. I've eliminated some of these with -PC, -Gameboy, etc. However, use of the '-' option runs the risk of missing legitimate items. If I could filter for items greater than $1000, I would get exactly what I want.

Thanks, Steve

Dear Steve:

Thank you for your great suggestions! Having a "cookie" feature for My eBay would be a great time-saver and we will be sure to submit your suggestion to our Product Development Team, but in the meantime, there is a great workaround. If you go to your My eBay page and then bookmark it in your browser, you can access the page instantly without having to log in, by simply clicking on the bookmark! Remember to bookmark the actual My eBay page for your User ID, not the My eBay login page. The steps for creating bookmarks (or "favorites," depending on your browser) vary from browser to browser. Consult your browser's Help menu command for more information.

As for searching and sorting by bid price, try this:

Go to the Search page:

http://pages.ebay.com/search/items/search.html

and enter "pinball" as the keyword. Below the text box for keyword, you will find an option for Price Range. Enter a starting price of say, $1000. You can leave the second box blank if you choose. By submitting this search, you will limit the results to only those items that have a starting bid or a current high bid of $1000 or higher.

Regards, Uncle Griff

Dear Aunt Flossie,

Perhaps you can explain a few things to me. What do the eyeglass shades next to a User ID mean? What is a gift icon? What do you consider to be a "big ticket" item"?

Thank you, Rose

Hello Rose,

The short answers are as follows: