eBay is seductive. I have almost given up expecting to get what is in the photo. I disagreed with a seller last year, and now they blocked me from further purchases. Was going to give the rude seller a second chance. Ironically by blocking me the seller may have missed out on more sales. At best I saved some pennies as I tend to give such parts a second thought.
I do think eBay is fracturing around the edges. They pretty much kinged the market. Still I would like to see someone take them on with features like waiting after the highest bid is placed, then ending the auction if no bids are met inside the countdown timer.
There are lotsa small auction sites. Most regional. So things are what they are for the time being and will probably stay that way.
eBay is in a lot of ways closer to Amazon. Most of the stuff I watch is Buy it now. A lot of is is bulk import from the same sellers what have the same cheap stuff listed on Amazon.
For the watch parts I desire, eBay is pretty much the only option. It is hard to use the marketplace here as I really am cheap and tightfisted wanting to pay the lowest possible. Over the weekend I found what should be a job lot of sweep hands. No one else bid. I also made the mistake of bidding on some chronograph dials, I have been watching all week. No one else bid. It was not till I went to pay for the items that I realized they are being shipped from Istanbul, Turkey. At least it was the minimum bid and the shipping was not out of line.
The old material houses, do not have the staff to index and sort thing. They also are blocked from acquiring new materials, so the stuff is pretty well picked over. I suspect a lot of interesting stuff is going to the landfill as sorting it is too bothersome. Perhaps someone will make an AI system to do this.
The practice I do not like (and what the seller blocked me for.) is splitting the spare parts and selling single parts out of the package rather than the factory sealed un opened package. I have learned to live with that. Most of this material is being handled by estate and consignment sellers. (what can do the handling/shipping overhead.) So mislabeled, wrong, junk and crap parts are the chance one takes. I have literally received floor sweepings in job lots.
The other place where eBay fails is when the seller groups the parts together. When one wants to purchase the part, there is a separate shipping fee for each item. While one can request an invoice, sellers often do not want to go to the extra effort. eBay also seems to treat each item click as a commit to buy contract.
The whole packing and shipping thing is awkward. Small operators can run such as a buisness. Infrequent sellers tend to find it to be a bother. I have things I might list but for having to do the labeling and shipping. I did break down and create a USPS account to buy the label online. I also tend to recycle the packing materials. This seems to be fairly common. A 3 or 4 day wait for tracking to actually move through also is frustrating when one pays within minutes.
Not sure there is anyway around this, so I simply tend to live with it. Ironically I have had some of the better experiences with the 99.5% rated sellers, who do seem to make an effort. eBay really needs to ditch the rating system as is is pretty much meaningless. There are too many out there trying to game the social media algorithms and push their own agenda.
