Same SKU listed at materially different prices on eBay vs Amazon UK. MAP / brand-consistency risk.
At a glance
Cross-channel SKU price comparison. Counts SKUs where the eBay listing price differs from the Amazon listing price by more than the configured drift threshold (default 15%). The “MAP / brand-consistency” lens, drift signals either a stale listing on one channel, a deliberate-but-unmonitored channel pricing strategy, or a third-party reseller drifting under your floor.
| What it counts | COUNT(SKUs WHERE abs(eBay_price - Amazon_price) / Amazon_price > 15%). SKUs are matched by GTIN / EAN / MPN where available, fallback by exact title-and-brand match. |
| Listing-format scope | eBay side: fixed-price (Buy It Now) only. Auction-format listings are excluded by definition (no fixed asking price). Best-Offer-enabled listings use the asking price for comparison. |
| GMV / fees framing | The card surfaces price drift, not revenue. Each row may or may not be material in £-terms depending on velocity. Sort by Amazon-side velocity descending to prioritise. |
| Promoted Listings | Promoted listings on eBay use the same listing price; promotion doesn’t move the underlying price. Drift detection is unaffected. |
| Multi-site aggregation | The card pairs each connected eBay marketplaceId with the corresponding Amazon marketplace (eBay UK ↔ Amazon UK, eBay US ↔ Amazon US, etc.). Cross-site comparisons (eBay UK vs Amazon US) are excluded by default; toggle per workspace. |
| Currency | Comparison is per-currency-pair (GBP-GBP, USD-USD). Cross-currency comparisons do FX conversion at the daily rate; small currency-fluctuation drift is filtered out by the 15% threshold. |
| Best-Offer-resolved orders | Not directly relevant; this card is listing-price-based, not order-based. Heavy Best Offer activity on a SKU can mean the effective eBay price is lower than the asking price, which the card doesn’t see. |
| Refunds | Not applicable. |
| Cancellations | Not applicable. |
| Time window | 30D (rolling). The card refreshes daily and shows SKUs that have drifted at any point in the last 30 days, so transient drifts (a 24-hour reprice mistake) get caught. |
| Alert trigger | >10 SKUs drifting >15% simultaneously. Drift threshold tunable; default 15% is a typical MAP-violation floor. |
| Roles | owner, marketing |
Calculation
Calculated automatically from your eBay data. See the At a glance summary above for what the metric tracks and the worked example below for a typical reading.Worked example
A UK consumer-electronics seller running ebay.co.uk + amazon.co.uk on a 1,200-SKU shared catalogue. Snapshot 28 Apr 26.| SKU | eBay UK price | Amazon UK price | Drift % | Velocity (Amazon, 30D) | Likely cause |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| BLU-HDMI-2M | £8.50 | £12.99 | -34.6% | 480 units | eBay listing wasn’t updated when supplier raised costs |
| WIFI-RT-AC1200 | £45.00 | £39.99 | +12.5% | 220 units | Below alert threshold (under 15%); no flag |
| HDMI-4K-3M | £19.99 | £14.50 | +37.9% | 65 units | eBay still using launch-month MSRP; Amazon repriced 3 weeks ago |
| BT-SPK-MINI | £24.99 | £29.99 | -16.7% | 380 units | eBay running an old promo that wasn’t taken down |
| Drifting SKUs (>15%) | 923 units | 3 SKUs flagged |
- Three flagged SKUs represent 923 units of monthly Amazon velocity. Per-SKU drift impact varies. BLU-HDMI-2M (480 u/mo, eBay 34% under Amazon) is the most material: if the seller ships 480 a month at £4.49 lower than Amazon, that’s £2,155 / month of margin walked because eBay buyers can see they’re getting a “deal” while Amazon buyers (or arbitrageurs) buy on eBay then resell on Amazon.
- Drift goes in both directions. SKUs over-priced on eBay (HDMI-4K-3M, +37.9% over Amazon) lose sales to Amazon: Amazon-side velocity is 65 units; eBay-side velocity for the same SKU could be 5 to 10 units, suppressed by the price gap. The fix is repricing eBay down to match Amazon.
- Arbitrage risk on under-priced SKUs. A 34% eBay-vs-Amazon gap on a high-velocity item invites arbitrageurs to scrape eBay listings and relist on Amazon at the gap. The seller’s eBay storefront becomes a wholesale source for third-party Amazon resellers, this looks like demand but is structurally bad (the seller’s Amazon Buy Box owners may now be the arbitrageur, not the seller).
- Promo tails are the most-common preventable cause. Sellers run a 14-day Easter promo on eBay, set the eBay listing price 20% below Amazon, and forget to revert. The card catches this within the next 24-hour scan; without the card, expired promos can persist for months.
- MAP violations matter for branded resellers. If the seller is an authorised reseller of a third-party brand, the brand’s MAP (Minimum Advertised Price) policy may forbid pricing more than X% below MSRP. eBay listings drifting under Amazon often violate MAP first; brands monitor this and can revoke reseller status. Watch the Catalogue Drift card alongside any MAP-policy thresholds you’ve negotiated.
Sibling cards merchants should reference together
| Card | Why pair it with Catalogue Drift vs Amazon |
|---|---|
| Amazon Top SKUs Missing on eBay | Sister card; tracks SKUs Amazon-listed but absent from eBay (channel-coverage gap). |
| eBay vs Amazon Revenue Share | The aggregate cross-channel revenue split. Drift contributes to share migration. |
| Top Listings | High-velocity eBay SKUs are the priority for drift-fix; pair to identify which SKUs need attention first. |
| Listings Missing Attributes | Adjacent listing-quality issue. Often the same upstream PIM gap drives both. |
| Total Revenue | Economic context for the drift impact. |
| Marketplace Fees | Fee math differs by channel: eBay 12.9% blended vs Amazon 8 to 15% referral. Drift decisions should be net-of-fees aware. |
| Shopify Total Revenue | Triangulation: a SKU drifting on eBay vs Amazon is often also priced inconsistently on the Shopify storefront. Audit all three. |
| Amazon Total Sales | The Amazon side of the comparison. |
Reconciling against the vendor’s own dashboard
Where to look in eBay Seller Hub (eBay-side data):Seller Hub → Listings → Active, current eBay listing prices. Sort by price descending or filter by category to spot-check.eBay alone doesn’t show drift vs Amazon; this card is a Vortex IQ cross-channel composite. To reconcile manually, pull the eBay listing price from Seller Hub and the Amazon listing price from Amazon Seller Central per SKU. Where to look on Amazon (Amazon-side data):
Amazon Seller Central → Inventory → Manage Inventory. Amazon listing prices.Timing, settlement, and reporting-lag table:
| Topic | Detail |
|---|---|
| Timezone | Both eBay and Amazon prices are point-in-time snapshots; no timezone-bounded windows. The card refreshes daily at 03:00 UTC. |
| Settlement / payout impact | Indirect. Persistent under-pricing on eBay relative to Amazon shifts margin away from the seller toward arbitrageurs / channel-cannibalisation. |
| Promoted Listings cost reporting lag | Not applicable to drift detection. |
| API throttling | Each side polls separately. eBay Sell Inventory API: 5,000 calls/day. Amazon SP-API: per-second per-resource throttle. Full catalogue scan typically completes within 4 hours; the card refreshes daily. |
| SKU matching cadence | The matching index (GTIN / EAN / MPN, fallback to title-and-brand) is rebuilt nightly. New SKUs added to either platform appear in the comparison the next day. |
| Reason | Direction | Why |
|---|---|---|
| SKU matching imperfections | Either | Title-and-brand fallback matches can produce false positives (different SKUs with similar titles) or false negatives (same SKU with slightly different titles). Workspace settings allow enforcing GTIN-only matching for higher precision at the cost of coverage. |
| Promo/sale prices | Either | Amazon’s Prime Day or eBay flash-sale pricing creates transient drift; the 30D window catches multi-day drifts but may miss flash sales under 24h. |
| Currency conversion | Within ±2% | Cross-currency comparisons (rare) use the daily FX rate; SKU drift within ±2% of the threshold may flip in/out of the alert from currency movement alone. |
| Refresh latency | Up to 24h | Both eBay and Amazon prices are scanned daily; intra-day price changes lag the card by up to 24h. |
| Card | Expected relationship | What causes legitimate divergence |
|---|---|---|
shopify.total_revenue | If the seller runs a Shopify storefront with the same SKUs, the Shopify price is a third data point. Drift between any two of (eBay, Amazon, Shopify) is the broader catalogue-pricing-consistency issue. | Use Shopify as the canonical source of truth if the seller runs DTC; align eBay and Amazon to it. |
amazon.total_sales | The Amazon side of the comparison provides velocity context for prioritising which drifting SKUs matter most. | Velocity ranking is independent of price; high-velocity SKUs with small drift can outweigh low-velocity SKUs with large drift in £ impact. |
Known limitations / merchant FAQs
What’s the right drift threshold for my business? Default is 15%. Tune lower (e.g. 10%) for branded MAP-policy resellers where small drifts are MAP violations. Tune higher (e.g. 25%) for clearance / liquidation sellers where channel-by-channel pricing flexibility is intentional. The threshold is workspace-configurable. Why GMV-of-fees framing on a price-comparison card? Because the outcome of drift is GMV migration. A SKU under-priced on eBay relative to Amazon will sell more on eBay (good for eBay GMV) but at thinner margin (bad for net), and create arbitrage opportunities (bad for long-term channel mix). The card surfaces the price gap; the GMV consequence is in eBay vs Amazon Revenue Share. Best Offer makes my eBay “effective price” lower than my asking price, does the card see this? No. The card compares listing prices (what’s displayed publicly), not realised order prices. If you accept Best Offers averaging 10% under asking, your effective eBay price is 10% lower than the card shows. For a fully-converged read, run the Vortex Mind investigation on the SKU; it pulls realised prices from order history. My multi-site SKUs are matched incorrectly, what now? SKU matching uses GTIN / EAN / MPN as the gold standard, with title-and-brand fallback. False matches happen when SKU titles are very similar across non-identical products (e.g. different sizes of the same model). Workspace settings let you enforce GTIN-only matching for higher precision at the cost of coverage; this is the recommended setting for branded resellers. What if Amazon repriced via the Buy Box and my listing didn’t? Amazon’s algorithmic Buy Box repricer can change a SKU’s displayed price within minutes; the Buy Box winner’s price is what buyers see. The card reads the Buy Box price by default. If you’re not the Buy Box winner, your own Amazon listing price may differ from the Buy Box; toggle the workspace setting to compare against your-own-price instead. Why doesn’t FBA / FBM split appear here? FBA / FBM is a fulfilment-method distinction, not a pricing one. Both FBA and FBM listings can use any price; the card compares displayed prices regardless of fulfilment method. The card flagged a SKU because Amazon dropped 20% overnight, should I match? Not automatically. Amazon’s algorithmic price changes can be transient (a competitor briefly dropped, Amazon’s repricer chased, then both reverted). Wait 48 to 72 hours before responding to a fresh drift alert; the card’s 30D window will keep tracking the SKU. If the gap persists, then reprice or investigate. Does this affect Promoted Listings ROI? Indirectly. Under-priced eBay listings convert more easily but at lower margin; Promoted spend on under-priced listings has higher conversion but lower per-conversion profit. Over-priced eBay listings convert less easily; Promoted spend is wasted. Either way, drift degrades Promoted ROI; fix drift before scaling Promoted spend. Action playbook when this card alerts (>10 SKUs drifting >15%):
- Sort the flagged-SKU list by Amazon-side velocity descending. Highest-velocity drifts first.
- For each: check the eBay listing’s recent price history (Vortex Mind can pull this). If a stale promo, revert. If no promo, match the Amazon price.
- Pause Promoted spend on flagged SKUs until pricing is reconciled.
- If the seller is a branded reseller with MAP policy, flag potential MAP violations to the brand-management team.
- Set up the Catalogue Drift card as a daily-checked dashboard tile to catch new drifts within 24 hours of occurrence.