# E-Bay did it again!



## ibuildstuff4u (May 13, 2013)

Every week I go to E-bay and search for machines in my area to see if something neat comes up that I can afford.  I use to to go to E-bay in the metal working section and search under Metal working machines and equipment.  I would set up the search engine to look for machines under $2500.00 with in 100 mile radius of my home and it worked really nice.  There would be around 100 listings to look at and it only took a few moments to check them out.

Today I tried to do the same thing and see that E-bay changed the listings and they no longer have that section.  Now large machines are placed with all of the small tooling and they only way to search is to weed through thousands of listings which would take a few hours to do.  

Why would they change this?  If I want to buy a lathe I have to search 6400 listings and there are probably only 150 listings that are for a complete lathe.

Dam you E-bay.  Why are you always changing thing for the worse?  Don't fix what isn't broken.

Dale P.


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## terrywerm (May 13, 2013)

Dale, eBay did make some changes to the layout to simplify things a bit, and I don't particularly care for them either. I create my own searches for specific items and set my location and price limits within those searches. Then I save the searches once I have them tweeked the way I like them. Saves me a lot of time in the long run as I can just launch the search whenever I want to and it runs the same way as last time!


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## aarggh (May 14, 2013)

You could setup your search parameters to also exclude known big items, "-bridgeport -meike -mazak" for example, to help narrow it down.

cheers, Ian


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## /// (May 14, 2013)

aarggh said:


> You could setup your search parameters to also exclude known big items, "-bridgeport -meike -mazak" for example, to help narrow it down.
> 
> cheers, Ian



Yep, very handy. I had been using this for many years on Google, then one day I wondered if it worked with eBay... oh yes!
I wish we could do that with Scumtree (Gumtree), sadly tho it's search engine is very basic.


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## aarggh (May 14, 2013)

I rarely ever use it but didn't realise until not long back that ebay owns gumtree!


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## /// (May 14, 2013)

aarggh said:


> I rarely ever use it but didn't realise until not long back that ebay owns gumtree!



Yeah they bought it a couple of years ago I think.
I very rarely used it before but recently picked up a copy of L.C. Mason's book "_Model Four Stroke Petrol Engines_" in mint condition for $15 posted.
It came up while searching for something completely unrelated (Ceramic Kiln), score.

Gumtree isn't too bad for buyers, but many items advertised are already sold and the seller hasn't cleared the ad.

For selling, I wouldn't bother. It's like the old days of advertising in the paper and then getting 300 phone calls at all hours of the day and night, then dealing with tyre-kickers. I have a few friends that have had nothing but nightmares as sellers, hence the nickname "Scumtree"
eBay is far better for selling in my opinion. Private and easy.


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## aarggh (May 14, 2013)

Ha! I've actually been after an electric kiln without luck, so maybe I better search instead for "_Model Four Stroke Petrol Engines_" to see if any good kilns come up!


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## ibuildstuff4u (May 14, 2013)

"You could setup your search parameters to also exclude known big items, "-bridgeport -meike -mazak" for example, to help narrow it down."

That won't work.  You will still get hundreds if not a few thousands of items to look at.  If you want to buy a South Bend lathe you get a search with lathes along with all of the parts and accessories to go with it.  There is no way to filter out all of the other items any more.  I can get the search for Bridgeport down to 350 items, but 90% of the auctions are for end mills and other tooling.  That's a lot of actions to try to scroll through to find a new milling machine.  Not to mention most bridgeports are clones and may not have the word bridgeport in the listing so the search will skip right over it.

The old E-bay had a specific section for milling machines and you could narrow you search easily by limiting the price or location.  Then you got a small hand full of listings to look at that were all milling machines and not tooling or parts.

Hopefully enough people complain and they make some more changes.   They did this with the outboard engine section a while back and I see that it's now fixed.
Dale P.


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## jwcnc1911 (May 14, 2013)

eBay keeps changing their android app as well.  Just when I get all my searches saved the way I want...

Not to mention it used to keep you logged in on the phone, but now after last update I have to log in on every use.  That's my biggest pet peeve.


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## n4zou (May 14, 2013)

I quit using eBay a long time ago. I don't miss it at all. I found Craigslist was better. EBay sellers usually post on Craigslist before they list on eBay in an effort to avoid eBay costs. this allows you to grab stuff before it hits eBay.


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## mu38&Bg# (May 14, 2013)

Ebay has changed the category structure completely. If you haven't found it yet, look up Business&Industrial->Heavy Equipment-> and then you'll find the machine tool categories along with many unrelated categories.

I think this was done to simplify the fees and categories. I think it's a disaster. The foreign Ebay categories are so much better organized. In the US they can't see to set up category structure that make much sense. I've complained more than once, but they think they're smarter than the people buying through ebay. If you can't find what you want, they can't make money and they don't seem to get it because they still pull in tons of cash.


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## Longboy (May 14, 2013)

You can get steady and only results for particular items in an Ebay search by looking for the right search tools on the left side of screen. Type in "metal lathe" in search window. In the search parameters you will find a price slider bar. Eliminate all the small tooling by price and only metal lathes will show in the search to your high/ low price parameters.


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## aarggh (May 14, 2013)

One thing I quite often get with ebay when using a pc online, you come across an auction your interested in, so you click on "sellers other items" to see what else they have, and ebay comes up saying they have no items for sale! So you hit the "back" button and your in their auction again! Also, the search on the iphone app is crap to say the least, barely anything comes up compared to doing it via a web browser!

cheers, Ian


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## ibuildstuff4u (May 14, 2013)

I found a search engine for Craig's list a while back called Search Tempest and it works really nice.  I still won't ditch E-bay as I'm addicted to it, but hopefully they fix this search problem soon as it's impossible to look for a large machine any more with out going through thousands of adds.  I really want to find a small CNC mill to go along with my CNC lathe and it's hard to do with the new changes to E-bay.


Dale P.


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## Davo J (May 14, 2013)

If you set up your search for new listings, at least you wont be going through the old ones to look.

I know it's not the same and I hate it as well, but it's all you can do.

Dave


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## ibuildstuff4u (May 15, 2013)

Dieselpilot,  Thank you!  There it is, they moved the listings to a really stupid spot.  Why would I look under heavy equipment where items such as backhoes and loaders are listed to find metal working machines?  It doesn't make any sense, but at least I can up date my book marks so I can continue to keep an eye out for more toys for my shop.  Hopefully sellers are finding the moved section so they are listing their machines in the right spot or I'm going to miss them in my search.

Longboy,  If you search for "metal Lathes" won't you only get listings with the words metal lathe in the listing?  I would think you could miss a bunch of auctions.

Dale P.


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## Longboy (May 16, 2013)

ibuildstuff4u said:


> Why would they change this? If I want to buy a lathe I have to search 6400 listings and there are probably only 150 listings that are for a complete lathe.
> 
> Longboy, If you search for "metal Lathes" won't you only get listings with the words metal lathe in the listing? I would think you could miss a bunch of auctions
> 
> Dale P.


 Yes this is true and this is the part of your post I was addressing. If you don't specify particular items in a search you most certanly will get hundreds of hits to sort out.....so if you don't want to "miss a bunch".....you most certainly can't complain about getting that bunch to page thru. The price bar can narrow the results.


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## Lew Hartswick (May 19, 2013)

I think it's called "make work". The (?webmasters) or whatever they are called have to 
keep making changes to justify their positions. The same thing is happening to ALL the 
programs on your computer. :-(  My browser, anti-virus, firewall etc programs take 
longer and longer to load every "up-date" due to the bloating of the pgm. to keep the 
"programers" busy. :-(
  If it aint broke fix it anyway.
   ...lew...


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## n4zou (May 19, 2013)

Lew Hartswick said:


> I think it's called "make work". The (?webmasters) or whatever they are called have to
> keep making changes to justify their positions. The same thing is happening to ALL the
> programs on your computer. :-(  My browser, anti-virus, firewall etc programs take
> longer and longer to load every "up-date" due to the bloating of the pgm. to keep the
> ...



It's not make work. They do this to keep you on the site longer.
They do it for the same reason Retailers like Wal-Mart and Target constantly move products around so you must constantly look for the stuff you need so you'll also look at stuff you never intended to buy but end up buying because you decided to buy it after "finding it" while looking for something that was on your shopping list. Before I quit using eBay I found a spent (wasted) way too much time on it. After I started keeping up with just how much time I was wasting on eBay for this very reason I quickly figured out how much of my time it was costing me. Say you spend 2 hours a day looking for stuff on eBay. Your time is worth something so lets say your time is worth at least $10 a hour (LOL). That's $140 a week or $560 a month or 56 hours a month actually making chips in your shop.


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