General non-MG related discussions. No politics here please!!
...anybody else get pi$$ed off at the overwhelming number of car cover, brake paint, seat cover, etc advertisers hawking their junk when you try to find or look for a car part. These guys have page after page of the same ad, makes ya quit looking because they flood the others out...whats going on???
I'm there with you on that. It's gotten out of control. 16" wheels covers for a Midget, yeah right.
You should see some of the junk that shows up under an MG TD search. Things like radio antennas, window crank handles, seat belt covers and a zillion other goofy irrelevent products. It is really annoying!
I would no more screw with FEEBAY than the man in the moon!
You can eliminate certain things from showing up by entering a minus sign followed by what you don't want (no spaces), Example: MGB -hubcap -seatcovers -cover would not return any results with the words hubcap, seatcovers, or cover.
I wonder if there is a way to block ads from certain vendors.
Once I messaged a vendor out of annoyance and frustration at his 15 sequential repetitive ads: i.e. [ WOW!! Modern seat belts for sale]. I stated that I was looking for seatbelts, but wondered what WOW seatbelts were? He typed me back and responded they were ordinary seatbelts, and the 'WOW' was an attention getter for impulse buying. Sheeeeeesh!
It's not just ebay - the whole damned internet is innundated with irrelevant (and irreverent) ads. Often, in my work I have to look up a part for an electical control panel or something related and I need to look in the MANUFACTURER'S catalog for styles, dimensions, electrical characteristics, etc. So a few years ago, I used to type "Square D" or "G.E." on the search bar and the manufacturer's website would be first choice. Now if tried that , it would be buried in thousands of websites that have absolutely nothing to do with Square D or G.E. What I do now, is type in, say, G.E. plus the part number (if I know it) and usually their website will appear on the first or second page of results. Otherwise I get a list of everydamnedplace in the world that sells G.E. - many in China - and a lot that don't sell G.E. but act like they do.
It's getting to be like pre-internet. Many years ago you would go to a store to buy an item. Later you would see a 'sale' sign in the window of that store. Pretty soon you would see 'sale' signs in all the stores. Now, there isn't a day that goes by without seeing a 'sale' sign in any store, it seems stores have perpetual sales. The same is now happening with the internet. So many folks start internet businesses that they are forced to do these kinds of things for fear of losing (or not getting) your business.
Welcome to the monetization of internet content. We didn't think it was going to be free for ever, right? Facebook, Ebay, they have all learned how to track your interests and how to pass that info on to whoever might want to sell you something. Not exactly the "free markets" you were thinking of? Well, I guess we'd better get used to it.
{BTW pass your cursor over "Ebay" in the previous paragraph and watch it change color. If you click on it, it will take you there I suppose, but I didn't hook a link to it!}
Fortunatley for us, our own Steve has weeded out most of the crap when it comes to looking for all things MG. I have this one book marked and recommend you do the same if your'e looking for MG stuff.
http://www.mgauctionwatch.com/
This link works pretty good for MGB parts too:
http://www.mgbparts.org/
Steve is the exception, you won't find what he does on the internet too often. ;)
BTW pass your cursor over "eBay" in the paragraph in the first posting of mine and watch it change color. If you click on it, it will take you there, but I didn't hook a link to it! No, someone else did.