More eBay Humor

OC Engineer JD Jan 16, 2009

  1. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    Apparently you can filter by scale... I just found that.

    Without filtering, just over one million listings. Only 55,500 or so are Auction, the rest are Buy It Now. Of those, some 5500 are in the "N" filter for "Gauge," and about 4200 of those are in the USA.

    Also, a number of other categories in other areas were "retired."
     
  2. Rich_S

    Rich_S TrainBoard Member

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    ebay has just gotten worse. Before you could search for a specific product like GP38 then choose N scale or search for a specific road name then choose N scale. Now it seems to be hit or miss if you get a filter that allows you to choose N scale. And even if you do get the filter, I'm still finding HO and O scale items mixed in with the N scale items, so buyer beware. I've left numerous "Poor" feedback today advising them to go back to allowing people to select a scale option below the model railroad option. I'm not sure what percentage of the pie model railroaders make up in the ebay universe, but one could only hope when sellers stop moving product because folks can no longer find what they are looking for, the sellers will start ringing ebay's phone?
     
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  3. Rich_S

    Rich_S TrainBoard Member

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    Here is the perfect example, I did a search for SW1500 and ebay returned 190 results without any way to filter those results for N scale items. Thanks ebay, my hobby is model railroading not looking through ebay listings. :mad:
     
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  4. Shortround

    Shortround TrainBoard Member

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    That is one of the reason I left there. And Amazon is doing the same.
    Of course the first were the local newspapers.
     
  5. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    Probably not enough to make a difference. Other categories have had the same "throw it all in one bin" done to them today as well.
    eBay's positive spin on this will be something like, "Now more people will have easier access to your listings! They can't narrow it down so they'll have to see yours!" They make money from sellers via stores whether said stores sell anything or not-- where else can they go?

    A few dozen pages ago on this thread I mentioned a seller who not so subtly hinted that you could go to his personal site to buy the same as what he had on eBay, rather than deal with "mangled payments." A recent listing has none of that information now. eBay is going to keep themselves a walled garden for as long as they can, and ever more powerful AI tools to purge listings of "violations of our community standards" will keep it that way.
     
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  6. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    Amazon search: Because the customer's time is assumed to be infinite and without any value.
     
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  7. CSX Robert

    CSX Robert TrainBoard Member

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    I had that problem a lot when they had the separate N-scale category
     
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  8. CSX Robert

    CSX Robert TrainBoard Member

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    Amazon's searching is horrible!
     
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  9. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    Wow. Very well stated! (y)(y)(y)
     
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  10. BoxcabE50

    BoxcabE50 HOn30 & N Scales Staff Member TrainBoard Supporter

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    It certainly is just that.
     
  11. jtomstarr

    jtomstarr TrainBoard Member

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  12. 308GTSi

    308GTSi TrainBoard Member

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    My recent eBay purchases have arrived with business cards for the sellers own web sites. Quite a wise move eBay can't do much about ,,,,,,, and yes, I have started buying direct from the sellers.
     
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  13. Shortround

    Shortround TrainBoard Member

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    Very good thing to do if possible. Get around the 3rd level dealer. The one I'm dealing with took over the warranty and refused to honor it.
     
  14. Hardcoaler

    Hardcoaler TrainBoard Member

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    An increasingly frustrating trend on websites is to skirt search criteria to first display "sponsored" or "featured" products instead of what you entered in your search. Many sites too use the "show them something, show them anything" technique so as to hopefully keep you paging through their site when they don't have what you entered. :mad:
     
  15. umtrr-author

    umtrr-author TrainBoard Member

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    And let's not leave out the minimal number of items per page. eBay went from 200 to 48 "to serve you better." Sorry, eBay, I don't see the ads that are on these pages... perhaps the real reason why the aim is to make the "customer" go through as many pages as possible.
     
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  16. ggnlars

    ggnlars TrainBoard Member

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    This may have been mentioned, but when ebay made this change, your active listings went into a generic category. It required a fair amount of work an each of the listings to get things correct. I have found a search like N scale (GP38) gets me go38 engines in N Nscale. You have to be careful because the listing may not be right.
     
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  17. Hardcoaler

    Hardcoaler TrainBoard Member

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    And many websites sort things by [Relevance], where items not relevant often appear first and what you're looking for is on the next page. Go figure.
     
  18. Shortround

    Shortround TrainBoard Member

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    Maybe that's why I no longer find
    "More eBay Humor"
    and else were like that. We even have local ones. (n)
     
  19. John Moore

    John Moore TrainBoard Supporter

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    I get severely angry at sites when you type N scale something or other in the search box you get deluged by HO and O scale even and no where near the item you had searched for. So I close the site I was on and go to another. It is pure crap when you enter an N scale 0-6-0 and you get a bunch of danged diesels. I have come to the conclusion that Ebay is staffed by morons.
     
  20. GP40X

    GP40X TrainBoard Member

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