The EBay Search Blues

[hetek]

I have a search on eBay that simply says "Albin". Yeah, I know... a real broad cast, but I'm curious to see what's being sold. You never know.

Lately, my search results have been all but useless. Why? Some vendor - not your typical private party selling their Albin - has decided to use eBay to sell his plumbing parts. They have a slew of generic heads and pumps to sell and simply put the word "Albin" in front and "Voila"! It becomes an Albin head and an Albin pump!

And they're persistent. Every morning in my email inbox I see 'You have two new search results for Albin". Yup. Another Albin head and Albin pump. Get my hopes up and end up with a buzz kill.

Enough venting for this morning. No, eBay, I'm not interested in looking at another Albin head or Albin pump. I think I'll just go upstairs now and brush my Albin teeth with my Albin toothbrush and get my Albin coffee and go to the Albin store now.

[WillieC]

How did the internet get so stupid? Something is shifting in the cosmos, it seems to get stupider every day.
Jon, you made me chuckle this morning. I needed that.

[hetek]

I hear ya, Willie C. The internet is stupid. And other people just take advantage of it to sell their stupid heads and stupid pumps.

I mean, really... What the heck differentiates an "Albin" bilge pump from a "Searay" bilge pump?

I pity the guy that does a search and buys the Searay bilge pump because it must fit his Searay because it has "Searay" in the name. And then wonder why it isn't the same as the Searay pump already in his Searay.

Albin owners know better.

[DesertAlbin736]

Garbage in, garbage out.

[jleonard]

Slightly related:
I know a guy who gets really great buys on ebay and Craigslist, etc by purposely misspelling items.
For example he might search "Alvin" or "Albim". He does this to lowball the seller figuring they probably didn't get much action because they misspelled their item.
I thought it was a pretty good tactic. And it works for him.

[hetek]

Good one about the misspelling trick!

Well, I've officially ended my "Albin" search on eBay. I had 22 new hits on my search in my inbox. You guessed it, and I should have known better....

Albin electric bilge pump
Albin manual bilge pump
Albin electric head
Albin manual head
Albin oil change pump...

You get the picture.

"Unsubscribe from these email notifications"...

"Click"

[DougSea]

That was fun! Thanks for the laugh Jon!

(You should take your comedy on the road...there's this "Albin" gig in Essex in a couple of weeks...)

[hetek]

Thanks Doug. I just vent my frustration sometimes.

To tell you the truth, I was hoping to take my Albin 25 to Essex, sea-worthiness and calendar-permitting. Looks like I'm running out of time, but no one said I couldn't make a day trip out of it by auto. I still might get there yet!