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MG MGA - Ebay - USA

Ebay US has been one of my favourite sites for picking up the odd MGA part but it now seems to have been ruined by the literally thousands of trade ads for things like car covers, plastic wheel trims, pink car seats,etc. none of which the average MGA owner is likely to give a second glance.

Out of the first 200 of newly listed MGA items I've counted 192 for car covers and the repeated ads seem to have been placed by no more than 3 or 4 companies.

They appear under MGA because someone puts 'Fits: MGA' in the title. It seems a bit suspicious that the style of 'Fits: MGA' is exactly the same irrespective of the company advertising so I wonder if it's something that is automatically added by Ebay. Either that or the companies are related.
Whatever it is it's annoying and a real put-off.

Strangely I don't think I've seen a single bid yet on any of these ads!.

Anybody got a solution for filtering out the useful ads? ......................Mike
m.j. moore

Mike,
Yes, i've noticed the USA flood but i have also seen a massive increase in UK based companies or retailers - even to the point of seeing repeated entries for overpriced pieces of felt for the steering column bushes. Likewise one particular company is selling individual nuts, bolts, washers for eye watering prices with hefty postage on top. Switched on sellers soon learn the keywords to use so they get 'hits' but as more items get displayed and have less relevance to us buyers, it actually turns buyers off. E-bay has very little attraction now.
Colin
C Manley

mj, just click on 'auctions only' and avoid all the traders stuff. On the UK ebay 'auctions only' items are down to less than one page suggesting that second hand parts are starting to dry up. Like you I think its a pity because it was always interesting looking at others peoples second hand gear. The 'buy it now' traders stuff just irritates me. ( there's a 3.9 diff on ebay at the moment- currently at £101))
J H Cole

If you select 'auctions only' you'll miss out on many authentic 'Buy it now' listings. You can easily filter out those offending listings by using a seach such as this "mga -(seat cover*) -(car cover*) -(truck cover)".
Andy Bounsall

I agree Colin it's the trade people who are killing it for the private sellers. It's very much like the situation at car boot sales today where the trade has jumped on the bandwagon and spoilt them.
J.H. - Filtering out 'Buy it Now' doesn't always help a great deal e.g out of those first 200 ads not a single one is 'Buy it Now' .
What we need is a Trade/Private filter.......Mike
m.j. moore

Thanks Andy that's a good one - just putting in mga -(seat cover*) knocks out 3000 unwanted listings!!

I still don't understand why anyone would put in all these duplicate listings unless, of course, it's free for them...............Mike
m.j. moore

These types of listings have just exploded recently, and make using EBay a less than enjoyable experience. I appreciate some of the advice about tryig to avoid the ads, but at the end of the day, I still wade through all the worthless stuff in case there is someting I need mixed in somehow. Wish I knew what to do about it. Something tells me that is not an "operator standing by" at EBay waiting for our call to complain about too many ads.

TM Going

Mike,
Yes, i've noticed the USA flood but i have also seen a massive increase in UK based companies or retailers - even to the point of seeing repeated entries for overpriced pieces of felt for the steering column bushes. Likewise one particular company is selling individual nuts, bolts, washers for eye watering prices with hefty postage on top. Switched on sellers soon learn the keywords to use so they get 'hits' but as more items get displayed and have less relevance to us buyers, it actually turns buyers off. E-bay has very little attraction now.
Colin
C Manley

mj, just click on 'auctions only' and avoid all the traders stuff. On the UK ebay 'auctions only' items are down to less than one page suggesting that second hand parts are starting to dry up. Like you I think its a pity because it was always interesting looking at others peoples second hand gear. The 'buy it now' traders stuff just irritates me. ( there's a 3.9 diff on ebay at the moment- currently at £101))
J H Cole

If you select 'auctions only' you'll miss out on many authentic 'Buy it now' listings. You can easily filter out those offending listings by using a seach such as this "mga -(seat cover*) -(car cover*) -(truck cover)".
Andy Bounsall

I agree Colin it's the trade people who are killing it for the private sellers. It's very much like the situation at car boot sales today where the trade has jumped on the bandwagon and spoilt them.
J.H. - Filtering out 'Buy it Now' doesn't always help a great deal e.g out of those first 200 ads not a single one is 'Buy it Now' .
What we need is a Trade/Private filter.......Mike
m.j. moore

Thanks Andy that's a good one - just putting in mga -(seat cover*) knocks out 3000 unwanted listings!!

I still don't understand why anyone would put in all these duplicate listings unless, of course, it's free for them...............Mike
m.j. moore

These types of listings have just exploded recently, and make using EBay a less than enjoyable experience. I appreciate some of the advice about tryig to avoid the ads, but at the end of the day, I still wade through all the worthless stuff in case there is someting I need mixed in somehow. Wish I knew what to do about it. Something tells me that is not an "operator standing by" at EBay waiting for our call to complain about too many ads.

TM Going

All, we have had this problem for some time in the US. If you will key in: MGA -(fits MGA) in your search box it will eliminate most of the garbage. Good luck!
Hiram Shepard

Hiram is using the same filtering device as I do. Just adding "-fits" to the "MGA" search string reduces the hits from 5.8K to 2.3K, the difference being mostly car covers and the like. It can be noted that 2.0-2.5K hits were about the number ordinarily expected before the commercial sites began saturating the site with junk ads, so the filter works about as expected--so far.
Ken Korey

Why is the middle of this exchange duplicated. A possible virus? Or multiple listings LOL.
Peter.
P. Tilbury

This thread was discussed between 18/02/2012 and 20/02/2012

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