qbansmokr Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 I long for the days when I could do a search on Ebay for stuff for the specific year and model of my car and get some pretty spot on results. That is IMPOSSIBLE these days. That same search results in stuff totally unrelated from different manufacturers through non automotive junk. Wading through the results wastes time and is frustrating. I don't need any Mustang hupcaps or Volkswagon shift knobs for my 56C. Just saying... 10 1 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
60FlatTop Posted March 1 Share Posted March 1 Unrelated? Why, I bought a pair of front rotors for my truck a week ago and Ebay thought I "also might like" 75 more pairs of front rotors. Five items per row and down I counted 5, 10, 15, 20... A brilliant display. And they firmly told me they would hold the vendor's feet to the fire to guarantee the parts would fit. 1 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mark Shaw Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 Ebay has become a bad joke and apparently, they don't care about customer feedback. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jensenracing77 Posted March 2 Share Posted March 2 eBay has become a joke to sell on. I do still buy there now and then but sure is not the same. I agree, searching for stuff brings all kinds of stuff for unrelated models. We need a new platform to sell on. I mostly sell on Facebook these days but it is FILLED with fraud and you have to be careful 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Den41Buick Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 I thought it was me that was doing something wrong. It is difficult to search ebay any more. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Larry Schramm Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 (edited) I have a search for 1912-13 parts and I get all kinds of chrome parts, clocks, SBC parts, etc that are not even close. Just garbage results. Edited March 3 by Larry Schramm (see edit history) 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
60FlatTop Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 25 years ago I would go to my mailbox and pull out a few checks from Ebay buyers daily. Five years later PayPaL handed them directly. And things went smoothly. I rented a couple of storage units to warehouse large collections I would rescue. About a year ago I sold a not terribly expensive Cadillac Cimarron wheel center caps to a guy in Dandy Dave's neighborhood (check the car. I bet he used them). I got an enraged message that was so stupid it made me laugh. Some technicality in the way in the way I clicked option did not allow for their return. Oh, well. As a result I have not listed some parts and thrown away some that did not seem worth the bother anymore. It has not made a big difference in my life and may not seem charitable to those in need of uncommon parts. But in the end, I won't have to deal with it this year and if you see that Cimarron at a Hudson Valley car show compliment him on his stolen center cars. They will be on the car so he can point out the imperfections. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Edwin The Kid Posted March 3 Share Posted March 3 Ebay is more interested in selling advertising space than it is car parts, and the search pages are filled with sponsored listings that get pushed to the top no matter if they are anything near what you are actually looking for. I hate having to search through all the garbage listings just to find one real listing to find it sold years ago. Same reason I avoid looking at cars on craigslist. No matter what I search I get 30 listings for the same car. I much prefer parts hunting on forums like this! 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Machine Gun Posted March 4 Share Posted March 4 On 3/2/2024 at 11:58 AM, Mark Shaw said: they don't care about customer feedback. They don't have to. Millions buy and sell off eBay every day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NTX5467 Posted March 7 Share Posted March 7 (edited) On 3/1/2024 at 7:54 AM, qbansmokr said: I long for the days when I could do a search on Ebay for stuff for the specific year and model of my car and get some pretty spot on results. That is IMPOSSIBLE these days. That same search results in stuff totally unrelated from different manufacturers through non automotive junk. Wading through the results wastes time and is frustrating. I don't need any Mustang hupcaps or Volkswagon shift knobs for my 56C. Just saying... This is nothing new! In looking for specific items in the late 1990s, even with a vehicle model and year in the search engine, it STILL brought up all of the light bulbs and trinkets which did not fit the particular vehicle. Pages and pages of that stuff! THEN, when I did get to what I was searching for, the differences in prices was astounding! Some even more than normal retail, butit was on eBay, so they had the allure of that, I guess. And it's still that way. Have to learn to refine what you put in the search engine as to what appears. Not unlike the earlier days of search engines. Inputting "1958 Buick intake manifold" goes to anything "1958", then to "Buick", and then to "intake manifold" in that order. Putting "Buick" first should pick those items first, then "1958" to further refine the search of Buick items, then "intake manifold" to further refine things . . . hopefully. They have been promoting the "Guranteed to fit your car" issue on their radio ads for the past year or so. I'm sure that if the seller puts "fits all cars", then those items are mixed into ANY search. It can be frustrating! Might use the Google search engine to find items on eBay plus get items for sale everywhere. NTX5467 Edited March 7 by NTX5467 (see edit history) 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smartin Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 I used to have a saved search parameter that was about 60 words long, and would just change the year for what I was looking for. It went something like this: 1960 Buick -fits -bulb -keychain -key -...etc. That weeded out a LOT of worthless items, but some still snuck through. I didn't transfer that link to my new computer this past Fall, but I guess I could dig it back up again. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
B Jake Moran Posted March 9 Share Posted March 9 2 hours ago, Smartin said: I used to have a saved search parameter that was about 60 words long, and would just change the year for what I was looking for. It went something like this: 1960 Buick -fits -bulb -keychain -key -...etc. That weeded out a LOT of worthless items, but some still snuck through. I didn't transfer that link to my new computer this past Fall, but I guess I could dig it back up again. I remember you seemed to not have much difficulty. I recently purchased a project car. I’ll have to try your method. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil morse Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 I agree completely. I started a thread on this topic a while ago and was told by the moderator to stop beating up on Ebay. I was also told that all I had to do was to go to Ebay's "help" page and I could easily figure out how to tailor a search to get just what I was looking for. No so. Ebay has become almost useless to me. Unless I somehow get lucky, I very rarely find what I'm looking for. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NTX5467 Posted March 14 Share Posted March 14 I fully remember the early "search engine days" with slower processors, so the ORDER of the defining items really mattered as to how quickly the search terminated. As mentioned, putting the model year first, then the brand of car, then the model (etc.) really mattered as to what criteria was looked at first, second, etc. In many cases, still does. Many times, I'll start with Google and then move forward to eBay, staying away from Amazon. There are some really good eBay vendors! With eBay as an expansion of their other online website/store. Finding them can be the trick, though. Whatever works! NTX5467 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ChuckMcChuckles Posted March 15 Share Posted March 15 The saved search feature is a great way to reduce the number of listings on an eBay search. Without the feature, typing in "1954 Buick" would result in a listing of 8-9,000 items. My saved search parameter contains 44 specific words. I now get a more manageable listing of 3,200 items. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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