Doc’s eBay Motors Sucks Blog

Re-posted from the eBay Motors Discussion Board.

Dear fellow confused Ebay seller, I have a better one for you to chew on….

I have been a member for eight years. I’m not a power seller, I just like to play around with old Cadillacs. I had a 1976 Eldorado Convertible on Ebay about three weeks ago. No reserve starting bid was $6,080. In my listing I clearly detailed that FIRST BID OWNS and that a $500 deposit was REQUIRED with 48 hrs and that payment in full MUST be made within seven (7) days. When the auction was over I sent the high “bidder” a note of congratulations and an invoice for the $500 deposit. Get this his reply was “I don’t send deposits, I’ll TRY to get out to see it in three weeks, IF I can, & IF I like it I’ll buy it.”

I started to investigate what I had to do right away. According to Ebay I had to wait seven days before I could file a non-paying buyer (should be bidder) case. Went through all that exicting process, following all of Ebays requirements. After the non-paying bidder case was closed, Bidder left NEGATIVE FEEDBACK for me. This took my perfect 100% (16) positive feedback rating to 75%. As I said I don’t do it alot.

Then I contacted Ebay about the unjustified negative feedback, Ebays reply “BUYERS are allowed to leave negative feedback” No matter where I send Ebay e-mail, no matter how many times I explain Ebay keeps refering to him as “Buyer” So yesterday I notified high bidder who did not follow the terms of the auction that I will be suing him here in Ohio for breach of contract if he does not remove the negative feedback.

What I find most confusing is that Ebay seems to protect people like the non-paying bidder instead of those of us who follow the rules.

Would you look at and consider buying a classic Cadillac from someone with a feedback rating of 75%? I wouldn’t.

Griff tried to help but, the same thing keeps happening, BUYER CAN DO WHAT HE WANTS, EVEN THOUGH HE BOUGHT NOTHING!!!!!!!!

What ever happened to the good old days of eBay Motors?

Another eBay Member Who Does Not Like The Changes

Hehehehehe..  Yep good luck finding classic cars or collector car parts and accessories.

Wow.. Look at this announcement post about the NEW eBay Motors!

993 Replies and about to hit 1000. Who is going to snipe the thousanth post?

It’s really interesting how eBay could totally louse up a good thing like EBM!

Now they are sending out surveys to the dealers that list on EBM but they can’t even properly program their survey to accept a dealers response to the questions.. LOL!

In the below example someone sent me, eBay thinks the most cars a dealer should list anywhere in 6 MONTHS is 99! Hello Bozos.. Many dealers list and actually SELL 100’s and even Thousands of cars in a 6 month period!

And these clowns are so interested how many cars dealers are actually selling elsewhere, but limit the number to 99! Are they that clueless? Or are they trying on purpose to skewer the results of the survey?

They just don’t have a clue about the car business - and obviously don’t have a clue how to build a website for selling cars, vintage car parts, and anything else automotive that fits within the theme of the site.

Another posible reason for poor sales on EBM is that eBay is limiting what the search engine crawlers are allowed to index on their site. I think this is all about best match search controlling whose items are allowed to be visible on the site.

I have done Google searches for dealers cars listed on EBM by the VIN number and found them on autotrader.com, cars.com, other classified sites, the dealers website, but they do not come up on eBay Motors.

I have also been researching how consumers are finding their next car. The greatest majority of buyers are using search engines like Google to find vehicles close to their location.

Cars.com is doing an excellent job of getting a link to their listings close to the top of the 1st page, in the free standard results. Autotrader.com is also getting their listings in a decent place. I did find an EBM link on page 7 of a recent vehicle search, Ouch! By the 3nd page the average consumer has probably found something to go look at or contacted the seller for further details.

How are your sales doing? Where are you listing your cars for sale? If your still selling on EBM how are you doing?

I have been observing all the pizzing and moaning about the NEW eBay Motors and decided to run it through websiteoptimization.com, just too see just how bad it sucked for myself..

Wholly Smokes! What a big fat bloated pig it indeed is.. Oink Oink.. Snort Snort.. I would be too embarrassed to put my brand on that page!

Here is a link to the analyzer tool.. Have Fun..

Hello eBay.. Is there a decent web designer in the house?? LOL!!

Can’t find what you are looking for on the NEW eBayMotors?

There is a group of eBay Motors Experts who will be happy to assist you.

Please CLICK HERE to go to the thread on eBay Forums.

I was just reading the announcement board.

Looks like eBay is retiring the old EBM and forcing the new site to be the only choice.  I have read a lot of griping HERE on the eBay Motors Discussion Board.

I hear there are Issues with it’s speed and load time - and lots of complaints about the search operation. I am on Road Runner 5mb and have a fairly fast computer - so i don’t really notice the speed issues.  And it seems most of the search complaints are for collector car and vintage parts.  Unfortunately i have no clue about that either - so it would be nice to hear from anyone having problems in that area.

One thing i do know is that Car Sales Suck on eBay Motors! It seems that autotrader.com is delivering both local and export buyers - so it’s not the economy that’s effecting EBM Sales. It is my belief that John Donahoe suspended so many of his long time members for minor selling policy violations. These sellers were also good buyers!

A lot more were suspended when eBay changed the feedback to an annual vrs lifetime percentage.  Like this guy was heard screaming at the last eBay Live - “you put them out of business overnight” Then there was the DSR fiasco that cost more good sellers their membership.

Now i read on Ina Steiner’s Blog where eBay is giving buyers incentive to give sellers bad ratings - by offering a discount coupon for their next purchase.

What are your comments on the NEW & Improved eBay Motors?

This is a re-posting from this thread on the eBay motors discussion board. I thought it was worthy of re-posting since it clearly shows how unfriendly the NEW eBayMotors is to users on a dial up internet connection.  Credit for this content goes to eBay Member INDYTHINGS.

Categories
Parts & Accessories

ATV Parts (83,031)
Apparel & Merchandise (181,033)
Automotive Tools (37,671)
Aviation Parts (7,189)
Boat Parts (35,514)
Car Audio, Video (23,880)
Car & Truck Parts (2,147,180)
Manuals & Literature (96,869)
Motorcycle Parts (365,746)
Personal Watercraft Parts (6,177)
Racing Parts (23,638)
RV, Trailer & Camper Parts (12,991)
Salvage Parts Cars (1,500)
Services & Installation (1,496)
Snowmobile Parts (15,235)
Vintage Car & Truck Parts (134,540)
Wholesale Lots (866)
Other Vehicle Parts (8,976)
Other (20,613)

OK so you want to browse the Car & Truck Parts (2,147,180) click on it and 2,147,329 matches found appears at the top seconds later

Where did the other 149 listings come from? Not the point but curious how that doesn’t show a matching number are there a 149 listings that are not included in a search also?

Now the next step is narrow it down to a specific area. This totally ticks off the browser because now they are forced into the search engine instead of clipping thru a click able category.

Now if they click more a box appears if there java is working correctly

Air Conditioning & Heat (25,401)
Air Intake & Fuel Delivery (113,075)
Brakes (152,016)
Charging & Starting Systems (17,286)
Computer, Chip, Cruise Control (52,987)
Cooling System (70,526)
Decals, Emblems, & Detailing (56,413)
Emission System (2,519)
Engines & Components (73,947)
Exhaust (75,694)
Exterior (434,685)
Filters (21,645)
Gaskets (12,046) Gauges (28,083)
Glass (28,447)
Ignition System (26,484)
Interior (172,796)
Lighting, Lamps & Accessories (443,555)
Safety & Security (31,627)
Suspension & Steering (101,796)
Tires (24,368)
Transmission & Drivetrain (60,088)
Turbos, Nitrous, Superchargers (26,508)
Wheel & Tire Package (8,231)
Wheels (97,317)
Not Specified (51,842)

So then you click the box next to Not Specified 51,864 matches found (hey there’s some of the missing parts or are there even more parts not included in the count?)

OK at this stage of the game, I have 6 cookies loaded and 8.25 meg loaded in my cache with 472 files and haven’t clicked on any listing to view it yet.

Now I notice that I haven’t entered any search term and I’m being sorted by the best match default order so I reorganize the view to time ending soonest to see what I might be missing out on.

51,857 matches found… dang I lost a couple of items 2 more added cookies and I’m up to 8.95 MB of cache 515 files

I’m looking at 50 items per page and at the bottom I see Page 1 of 1038

I select page 2 added another cookie and I’m up to 9.92 MB and 575 files

The default cache size is 50MB. at average dialup connection speed of 41Kbps the toughly 1MB file download took 6.7 minutes on the stopwatch.

bps = bits per second 8388608 = 1 megabyte

8388608/41000 = 204.6 seconds

204.6 seconds/60 = 3.41 minutes if your upload/download speed is 41Kbps, the connection speed is 41Kbps on dialup so roughly half of that is what your loading.

That means for just the two pages of load time your average dialup user has close to 15 minutes involved allowing them to view maybe 8 pages per hour or at 50 items per page, 400 item titles out of what over 51 thousand parts in just one category of “Not Specified” parts

The point being that you used to be able to load more pages faster with a simple dial up connection. Now your supposed to rely on a search engine that has a keyword problem?

Now, I flip on the 4Gig of ram dual core processor machine running XP pro with IE7 and a 2816 Kbps LEO satellite system connection …

I’m loading 1408 Kbps 8388608/1408000 = 5.6 seconds

That translates to the same two pages in less than 12 seconds on the stopwatch.

No problem there. except on rainy days where a backup system is required to link to. enter 4G

Now let’s clean up the dial up machine and go to the old motors site.

Load the first page 40K. Click on parts and acc load 460K of xhtml1 28 files loaded 3 cookies are loaded
a clickable list of category headings is shown

Click other newly listed appears in the search box add two cookies .5 megabyte of xhtml loads in less than a minute stopwatch says 52 seconds

click through the next 4 pages with the same ease.

Explain the difference in load time

So maybe it was just a slow load time from the first vist (new motors) to the second visit (old motors)
verify… change over to new motors click to parts and acc

Wham almost a browser lock up but manages to load the page in 5.47 minutes while not being able to do anything else on the computer while loading that page.

Even though I think I know what the difference is…

What’s the official explanation?

Last year who ranked number one in ISP’s ? SBC = DSL

SBC (AT&T) (business and consumer DSL, U-Verse, and satellite

2 Comcast (cable broadband)
3 Road Runner (cable broadband, both business and residential)
4 Verizon (FiOS and DSL)
5 America Online
6 EarthLink (DSL, dialup, cable, satellite, PLC, and webhosting)
7 Charter (cable broadband)
8 Qwest (DSL only)
9 Cablevision (cable broadband)
10 United Online (counting paid access only)
11 Embarq (DSL only, formerly part of Sprint)
12 Windstream (DSL only, formerly ALLTEL and Valor)
13 Mediacom (cable broadband, dialup, and SMB broadband)
14 CenturyTel (DSL only, no dialup)
15 Citizens (DSL only)
16 Hughes Network Systems (satellite broadband) .
17 Insight Broadband (cable broadband) .
18 Clearwire (fixed wireless broadband) .
19 LocalNet (dialup)
20 Cincinnati Bell (DSL only) .
21 SureWest (broadband)
22 GCI (cable broadband) .
23 ACS (DSL and dialup) .
24 Other U.S. ISPs 24.7% of the remaining market

What makes eBay want to exclude all those customers from eBay Motors by eliminating the one part of eBay that still loads well for them ?

Greetings Everyone..

I came across this real cool website with a flash animation about the really cool cars we drove in the 50’s and 60’s.  The sound is so cool!

Be sure you have your speakers cranked up..

Enjoy The Show! CLICK HERE.. (opens in new window)

DOC

Just like the good Old Days!

Ole H Luis is busy scamming this holiday season.. LOL!

Beware of shady deals that seem too good to be true. If the vehicle is listed on Craigs List and the seller want’s to have eBay handle the payment BEWARE It’s A Scam!

Review my previous scam archive dating back to late 2003 to see what to avoid when shopping for a car on eBay Motors. But also be advised there are a lot of very good deals on eBay Motors as long as you do your homework!

Have a Safe And Joyous Holiday Season..