eBay seller Custom LED filed a lawsuit against eBay on Monday over the marketplace's Featured Plus listing upgrade, which cost the seller up to $39.95 per listing. Readers may remember that eBay removed Featured Plus from eBay.com in 2009, but the feature is still available to sellers on eBay Motors for $24.95.

According to the description of the Featured Plus listing upgrade found on the eBay Motors website today, "Your item appears in the Featured Items section at the top of the search results page (for Motors site searches)." But the plaintiff claims eBay added that parenthetical phrase "only after Plaintiff complained about Featured Plus, presumably in an attempt to alleviate part of the complaints and claims set forth herein." And the plaintiff claims the new language still does not do enough to advise sellers of the feature's limitations.

The new class action lawsuit against eBay states that Featured Plus listings were supposed to appear at the top of the search results page, but claims the Featured Plus listings do not receive any priority unless a search happens to be initiated from eBay Motors, nor do they receive priority for certain types of searches, such as those based on price, date of listing, or geographic location. The plaintiff also claims that the feature was entirely non-functional for some period of time.

"eBay charges a high price for Featured Plus listings because it knows sellers value listing priority in search results. Given the large number of items listed on eBay at any given time, it is not unusual to have hundreds, thousands, and even hundreds of thousands of matches for a search. Priority in the search results therefore can dramatically improve the likelihood that a prospective buyer will see and ultimately purchase an item. Accordingly, throughout the Class Period, eBay promoted the expensive Featured Plus option to sellers as a way to improve the priority of their listings in search results and give themselves an advantage against competing listings."

The plaintiff claims that, "in order for a person to receive any benefit from a Feature Plus listing, a prospective buyer must do all of these three things: (1) initiate the search from a webpage within eBay Motors; (2) limit the search to listings within eBay Motors; and (3) sort the results by "Best Match." Otherwise, Featured Plus listings do not appear at the top of the search results."

eBay did away with Featured Plus when it rolled out its new "Best Match" search algorithm on eBay.com, explaining that because featured listings pushed the core results further down the page, it hampered the impact of Best Match.

The Courthouse News reported on the case on Wednesday.