[Gary]

Ebay have updated all their model railway collector catagories and now list all the original manufacturers that they formerly had for locomotives, coaches and wagons within each of the scale classifications.

Hooray! Well done Ebay for moving quickly on this one and listening to your customers.

Wrenn, Triang/Tri-ang, Mainline and Hornby collectors can all rejoice!

Happy modelling
Gary

 

[Dennis David]

Great!

Now if we could only get sellers to list their products honestly. I hate searching for Minitrix and getting Fleischmann, Kato, Roco, Atlas, et al.

 

[spongebob]

I think they had to act on this one as it was unworkable for sellers and confusing for buyers. Personally i still preferred to search by keyword then manufacturer in order to narrow things down. Here is a list of the locomotives available in 00
Locomotives
Airfix Locomotives(45)
Bachmann Locomotives(95)
Dapol Locomotives(7)
Graham Farish Locomotives(16)
Hornby Railways Locomotives(370)
Hornby Dublo Locomotives(939)
Lima Locomotives(642)
Mainline Locomotives(32)
Peco Locomotives(1)
Ratio/ Replica Locomotives(1)
Triang/ Tri-ang Locomotives(113)
Trix Locomotives(13)
Wrenn Locomotives(18)
Other OO Gauge Locomotives(1495)
As people realise there are now better options for listing i am sure this list will balance itself out in terms of the number of items under each heading. Its still early days but i think I'll get used to it. Have they missed anyone?

 

[spongebob]

Oh and never ever accuse ebay of listening to anyone except when they are having one of their purges and then no one is safe. Whenever i report listing violations it falls on deaf ears whether it be for keyword spamming or paypal surcharging or whatever. Obviously not contributing enough to the ebay profit machine to be noticed!

If you really want to pee them off and waste a bit of their time report all the junk emails they send you to [email protected] (that goes for any dodgy ones too)That really gets their attention and their backs up too

 

[Gary]

Its going to take at least 10 days for the listings to sort themselves.

Does anybody actually list for less than 10 days?

No Heljan, Replica and the old Triang Hornby classification has gone although I always found this confusing and never used it so good riddance.

Happy modelling
Gary

 

[double00]

I note of late, that more dealers are bidding for an item against the ordinary punter. Dealers are actually waiting in the last seconds before placing their bid.
I was interested in a Lima Mk3 coach - seven bids showed repeat bids made by the same punter, while the winner (dealer) name appeared only once and as the last bid.

 

[spongebob]

Heljan used to be there prior to the changes but not replica though i have it as one of my searches and it turns up all manner of rubbish usually the type given away with del prado's magazines. I used to have jouef as a search too but that is maybe under HO now. Another thing i find a bit strange is that they have put a full list of products in ebay shops underneath the ordinary listings. Suppose it is fair but it suddenly looked like there was a lot more for sale when they did it. I loike browsing shops as you can find some real bargains in amongst all the overpriced stock that has sat there for months.

 

[spongebob]

Interestingly they have only expanded oo gauge and none of the others thought this may vary in different countries, after all .co.uk is the only one which lists trains/railway models in collectables not toys&hobbies.

 

[Gary]

From 22nd February stock in Ebay Shops will appear in the search results. However, Ebay Shop fees are going up to a wopping 7%! And with Paypal on top (owned by Ebay) Ebay are now taking 10% of the sale.

The HO market in the UK is far too small for Ebay UK to take any interest in. Out of 27000+ items listed only about 500 or so are continental. Currently there are a lot of Hornby items listed as HO due to the recent change.

Basically from that you can say that only 3% of UK modellers are interested in HO.

Happy modelling
Gary

 

[spongebob]

QUOTE (double00 @ 18 Feb 2006, 18:19)I note of late, that more dealers are bidding for an item against the ordinary punter. Dealers are actually waiting in the last seconds before placing their bid.
I was interested in a Lima Mk3 coach - seven bids showed repeat bids made by the same punter, while the winner (dealer) name appeared only once and as the last bid.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
The action you refer to is called bid sniping and is used quite a lot to ensure that no one has the chance to outbid you,there is software available to enable you to do it some of which i believe requires you to be online at the time and some is done from a remote server for you. It isn't against ebay policy but it is infuriating when it happens on an item you have the high bid on. I have seen some items gain as many as 20 different bids in the closing 30 or so seconds as each one tries to snipe it. A word of advice don't try to counter it with a stupidly high bid as some i have seen have as some git will try to bid you up to the max!

Personally i try to bid my max at an early opportunity if tis something i am genuinely interested in but if i'm less so then i will bid up in smaller amounts. Its usually a case of win some lose some if you do lose then don't worry there is usually another one along soon.

 

[spongebob]

QUOTE (Gary @ 18 Feb 2006, 21:55)From 22nd February stock in Ebay Shops will appear in the search results. However, Ebay Shop fees are going up to a wopping 7%! And with Paypal on top (owned by Ebay) Ebay are now taking 10% of the sale.
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>
I can see a lot of ebay shops mysteriously closing overnight then, that isn't trade just extortion though i wonder how it compares to paying a listing fee,fvf then paypal, plus they can list forever more or less instead of 10 days so i suppose its swings and roundabouts some of the items i come across in shops with multiple lots can go months between sales.

 

[Don]

"The action you refer to is called bid sniping and is used quite a lot to ensure that no one has the chance to outbid you"

Everyone complains about it but sooner or later most people realise it is the only way to get the items they want and start doing it themselves. It's just a fact of life. There are large numbers of people out there with unlimited budgets and they will hoover up everything in sight that's interesting, given a chance. It's no good complaining about it. We are the people responsible for football and media stars, company executives etc earning so much.....and they have to find something to spend their money on. Whether the item is "worth it" is simply irrelevant to them.
The only way to beat them is by stealth. If they don't know someone else is interested they may not put in their maximum bid. At five seconds to go it's too late for them to take out their wallets. Just be grateful they don't want that house or car that you're interested in.
Dealers, on the other hand, are acutely aware of what an item is worth. If you get beaten by a dealer you probably didn't bid as much as you should have!

 

[spongebob]

I am currently experiencing one of those items which seems to attract scam buyers from Nigeria, honestly every time i try to sell anything which isn't railway related do they or possibly the same person crawl out of the woodwork. Hello my friend i am wanting to send this item to my goats best friend in Nigeria i want to pay in glass beads can you please be telling me how much it is costing.
If you get anything remotely like this do not reply, leave negative feedback and report it to ebay.
My main gripe is that in order to complete my registration for broadband i was required to either receive a phone call to my landline or await a letter. Possibly as security against fraud possibly just how they activate the line I don't know but it got me thinking why can't ebay implement some similar type of security check at sign up to keep all the cranks off. No mobiles just from a land line.

 

[Gary]

I get about 10 spam Ebay emails each day.

All non specific and all along the line of "I want to buy your item how much" or "My item has not arrived I am reporting you to Ebay unless you respond now".

Why can't somebody invent something that simply redirects all this nonsense back to the spammer?

You can identify every spammer by checking the properties of the email so surely all it takes is for a programme to do this automatically and send the email back from whence it came.

Or is it simply that somebody has invented such software and I have not purchased it?

Happy modelling
Gary

 

[double00]

Today while perusing through eBay's model railway section - I noticed one seller offering three separate offers for Fleischmann coaches. Starting bid at 99p - with six minutes left, why no offers for any of the coaches - apparently the postage and packing was quoted each time at "£10.00".
Comparing past offers for similar coaches, P&P in this instance was greater than the successful bid price made for coach. Not surprised that this particular Seller received no bidders.

 

[Gary]

That postage con happens a lot and it is against Ebay rules. It is seen as a cheat to avoid paying fees and of course it does mean that genuine Ebayers have to subsidise these cheaters.

Best to report any Ebayer who is spotted adopting this tactic and Ebay will then give them a warning and ban them if they persist.

I have recently seen a 99p items with a postage of £30 and this had one bid on it at the time. The item was probably worth the £31 or more and the seller saves about £2.20 or so in Ebay fee and clearly he was setting a reserve of about £30 in a round about fashion.

Happy modelling
Gary

 

[spongebob]

One other way I have seen to sneakily get people to bid is to quote free p&p dependant on the winner collecting the item from the seller. The real postage rate is displayed as an alternative. The daft thing is if you quote 2 different UK postage rates the higher one is usually displayed on the search page, not in that instance it would seem.

 

[cig1705]

One of the silliest things on eBay last year was a "Thames-Clyde Express" (L/E 1500 with late Brit and weathered Mk. 1s) for £0.95. At the time, they didn't display postage alongside the current price, so I thought "Great, that guy must be stupid!" before realising that "P&P" was £89.95. Naturally, I didn't buy it.

As to sniping, I agree with Gary. Often it is the only way to win items (infuriating though it is...). If I bid when an item is newly listed or with a few days to go, the chances are that this will force the price up- particularly if someone else is bidding on an item, since I have to then bid above their maximum bid, and they then bid above my bid unless I snipe. It is cruel for the chap you are outbidding, but for someone like me with a limited budget for modelling, it means I can buy more stock for less outlay.

Kind Regards,

RM

 

[5696Arethusa]

On the whole I find model railway to be over priced on ebay and much prefer to mooch round a swapmeet. But every now and then you do get a bargain, last year I was looking for a Bachmann A1 to rename Fox Hunter when I found a guy in Hong Kong selling them for about £40 so I treated myself (well if you don't treat yourself who else will) to the donor I wanted and a second for the hell of it and even with the airmail together they still cost me less than the rrp of an A1 in this country, you could say I was "Chuffed"

 

[spongebob]

Saw a guy selling 3 wagons on buy it now at 1p each with £5.49 p&p. Clearly someone else saw it too as he isn't selling them anymore.

I know people who've bought things from Hong Kong but have been unwilling to risk it myself. I know its probably less risky than some UK sellers but its a bit worrying if anything goes wrong.