E-Bay Seaches for Se7en stuff

[bsimon]

:rant:

 

It's come to pass that the typical E-bay searches for Se7en related stuff is totally polluted with commercial sellers of generic auto parts. Filters, floormats, carcovers, HID bulbs, etc.

 

The searches I use are "Caterham", "Lotus 7", and "lotus seven"

 

Maybe I'm simply misunderstanding some E-bay search feature that will turn all this crap off. It certainly wouldn't be the first time.

 

Anyhoo, My current solution is to filter the generic mass sellers from the search using the "Seller", "Specify seller", Exclude" feature. I keep a master list of excluded sellers to cut the clutter. I update the list as new crap sellers get established in the different Se7en E-bay categories.

 

If anyone is interested I'll paste the list here. There are some dupes in the list, but E-bay still processes it successfully.

 

Alternatively, If someone has a more elegant solution, I'm all ears.

[Alaskossie]

Bob,

 

I know what you mean.

 

Are you searching eBay UK? or USA? or both?

 

Some of the brand-specific UK sites have been totally polluted with wheel sellers.

 

I have not yet gone to the trouble of the "exclude seller" route, but it may come to that. I'd like to see your master list of undesirables.

 

Tom

[bsimon]

I only peruse the US listings. Here's the list. Just cut and paste.

 

 

 

thecarcover, discountautoparts,discountbodyparts, traderightly, replacementautoparts, carpartswholesale, drautomotiveonline,thecarcover, discountautoparts,discountbodyparts, traderightly, replacementautoparts, carpartswholesale,carpartscanada,covershield,elitecarcovers,coveroutlet,ltluxuries,automotivestyles,stopbyus ,autoarmour-auctions,covercentral,daytodayimports,brightpicks,goods_depots,carcoverman,remartautoparts,1stopautosalon,worldoutletcenter,speed_daddy,drautomotive,brakeoutlet,autopartsnerd,brandnewauto,nextdayautoparts,discountautoparts-usa,autopartstomorrow,gearhead_partsstore,centralcover,tcautopart ,2011emarket,usapowerseller,chart-one-auto,myautopartswholesale,midwest-autoparts,theandante ,autopartsexp,auto_parts_forever,carpartswhse10,baltauto,david bowes

[TheDingo8MyBaby]

I just have a list of disqualifiers that I have in my saved searches. I only search in parts...so you can adjust accordingly.

 

caterham -shirt -print -cover -book -guide -magnificent -magazine -watch -brochure -matchbox -manual -scalextric -model -tamiya -slot

[bsimon]

BTT

 

I've updated the seach strings to weed out the discount auto parts sellers on ebay. These links are quite long, but feel free to cut and edit them for other ebay motors searches that you might wish to purify.

 

lotus seven

 

lotus 7

 

caterham

[twobone]

thanks!

[bsimon]

This last weekend, commercial parts sellers have again overloaded Ebay categories with crap. Here's the updated searches.

 

 

 

Caterham

 

Lotus 7

 

Lotus Seven

[dougf]

Is it possible that someone has written a filter that looks for more than one listing with the same photo and just ignores the whole batch of them?

 

But besides eBay, I'm also annoyed by the automated Google search responses:

 

"Buy 1963 Lotus Seven Steering Parts Online. Buy Online and Save on 1963 Lotus Seven Steering Parts."

 

...where they haven't got the foggiest idea what a Lotus Seven is, and couldn't care less that you might waste time actually looking at their stupid site.

 

-Doug

LSB2072

[speedwagon]

Get a physical location, pay them a visit, very carefully explain to them the error of their ways, be careful to use Braille as they obviously cannot hear or see. Have done that a time or two localy in my youth and it is quite effective, but watch out for the sheriff. but thanks for the pointers, was not aware that sellers could be excluded, and as an after thought this might be a good reason to bid their item up and not pay. might have to have a long list of aliases. usually on feebay searches i use auction only and if i am serious about buying 90% of the time it is available elsewhere for less.

[bsimon]

Unfortunately, the shear volume of shirt-tail vendors makes finding a filtering algorithm rather difficult. I really admire the propeller heads that develop spam filters.

 

Copy one of those links to a text editor and you'll see how many vendors I've already logged. Hundreds.

[jimrankin]

I try to buy from "brick" stores but with some of the stuff we need it's the internet or you just aren't going to find it.

I feel for you on the "clog" of misinformation you get, especially from E-bay, my last resort search.

What my real gripe is has nothing to do with clogged up information, but with the fact that there seems to be no type of regulation of any sort on what a site can say about themselves. Early this year I bought several items for a 2011 Silverado I had just ordered. The site claimed something like 28 Kazillion parts "in stock". I ordered a set of floor mats, window rain shields, a front hood shield and a custom two sided front window screen.

Stuff started showing up a week or two later and each of them came from another vendor, not who I ordered from. Three parts were the parts I ordered but the "window sun screen" actually showed up as a plastic wind guard for a BMW sun roof.

Since all of these items were on a "click on it to buy it" with pictures and everything shown was for a Silverado it wasn't a question of my entering a wrong part number.

It took several calls and emails before I got through to someone and it actually did seem to be some lady in a house with her kids runing around. she seemed to have no idea what to do but said she would check with someone and email me a "return code", which never came. went through this a couple of times with no results and the company that actually sent it to me was more helpful but said just what i thought, they sell it to someone at a discount who then just passes the order to them. So the store with "28 Kazillion" parts in stock actually has exactly "0" parts in stock. I may have to go out and buy another BMW now, so i can use the sunroof wind sheild.