eBay pillory

[Jeroen]

I used to be a frequent user of eBay. Searching, bidding, thinking about raising your max bid, we all know it. And even though we have several aids to help us bidding at the last moment for example, in many cases it is still a fun game to play. Increasing rapidly is the number of items with fixed prices. If anywhere near fair that's still ok with me and with rare items you can decide if you want a part that much that you're willing to pay a premium. Not exactly the basis of eBay but ok, I get the idea behind that.

But I have more problems with the rapidly growing number of a few kinds of malicious sellers:
1. The ones hoping to sell something at 5 times the price to that one retard we forgot to lock up. Offering used parts for more money than the new item would cost you at the dealer or local parts store, or asking prices that are not even close to what anyone would consider as reasonable.
2. People offering general stuff like seat covers but enter a giant list of search terms with every ad, making your search listing end up with pages filled with the same ad. Apart from being very annoying I would personally never buy anything from a pig like that even if he was selling the last piece of bread on earth.
3. Sellers offering specific parts like an E21 316 carb, but entering a whole list of unrelated search terms like E30, 323i, M3, Alpina, etcetera. Also the kind of seller I would not want to transfer a single cent to.

What can we do? Perhaps gather info on these idiots and report them? Long shot I guess but I'm so annoyed by this, think I'm not the only one so that must affect their success. Still I think that eBay could already do a lot against these idiots but I feel they're not very active at screening their ads. Struck by their own success and now they can't control the monster anymore?

One idiot that really should be locked up for offering parts at 5 times the price is this one that keeps messing up my search results. I'm even considering a trip to Germany to tie him behind my towbar:
Userid bmw-m2 Full name Holger Hubel Address Talstrasse 92, 66440 Blieskastel, Germany Phone +49-173-6931281 E-mail master@speedworxs.de and info@m3-teile.de Listing of current items on sale http://www.ebay.de/sch/bmw-m2/m.html?item=111207512671

[croma_man]

ebay is more and more becoming a commercial thing, if you pay for the add, you can do whatever you want.

I'm selling refurbished alloys on ebay and also buying, the best thing I can do is to make a tick SELLER TYPE / PRIVATE on the search results...otherwise I can only find crap and sh** instead of the thing I was looking for.

[uwbuurman]

Fully agree on nr 2 and 3. Those idiots should be shipped to a Russian camp in Siberia. Nr 1 is irritating, but in a free economy it's all a matter of ask and demand. So just shoot those people in the kneecap.

Just a random search of e21 gives me somewhat 3500 results on a inktjettoner.

[polov8]

Always been a fan of ebay, it's hard not to be when 4 of my last 5 cars were found on there inc the E21, and it's turned up some amazing parts gems. But I do agree, they need to tighten up what things can be listed as. I realise the more broad the title, the more people will see it, but there's alot to be said for being specific. It's comical looking down the search list and seeing some of the crap that shows up as "fits E21".

I used to have a mk1 Scirocco and found lots of stuff for that on ebay, but then VW brought out the new model, and coincidentally, ebay listings got worse, and searching for parts meant sifting through endless amounts of crap.

Point 1, people listing things at stupid prices deserve for them to go unsold, and I suspect most do. Those dumb enough to buy them deserve to be ripped off, it's just a shame both parties have to do it where the rest of us normal folk do business.

Point 2, ebay really need to police this better, it just clutters up any search and reduces the chances of you having the staying power to continue your search and find what you're really looking for

Point 3, see point 2, very annoying.

I suppose from ebays point of view, they're raking it in so don't see the point, but despite being by far the biggest, they aren't the only party in town, and people will start using the others more and more. People are fickle.

I'm sure a few years ago myspace thought they had it made........

[Jeroen]

Funny thing is that sellers are shooting themselves in the foot, or that's what I'm hoping for. I add an ever growing list of terms to exclude when I do a search so anyone who's selling E21 parts and thinks adding M3 as well does not show up. In the end you might not find what you're looking for but I wouldn't spend my money with such an idiot anyway.

[arshad76]

Jeroen, I guess I put it down to more and more people on ebay and some just not sure what they're selling. With that said, you're right - there are definitely a lot of chancers out there. While it is wrong, I see ebay doing didley squat about it. It's like the moron selling that Alpina manifold for £1,500. End of the day, ebay get their listing fee, a healthy final value fee if anyone is foolish enough to buy it, not to mention kickbacks from Paypal.
This is the reason I don't use ebay as my sole buying site now. Gumtree, word of mouth and forums are all options now. Sad really for everyone and perhaps when sales are impacted and some bright spark at ebay notices these through some kind of analytic tool they might step in.