EBay madness

[Hroth]

10 minutes ago, Northmoor said:

That may be a new personal record length for a hyperlink too.

 

But if you clip out the bit before the ?, ending up with this https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393482002851  it works just as well*. Anyhow, there's a brief "tyre'd" discussion at the top of this page discussing the lot, and the concept of removing the Dunlop branding, replacing it with the Network Rail logo...

 

* All the rest is ebay clickmapping, for their benefit, not yours.

Edited August 6, 2021 by Hroth

[Ruffnut Thorston]

5 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

This one has a touch of Madness about it!

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194203023323?hash=item2d3766f7db:g:LzkAAOSww0ZgyK2S

 

I think I'd wait until Hornby bring out their version...

 

At least the Hornby and Rapido models should include motors! 

[Esmedune]

I first focused on the £2 for a cardboard box, but I'm more interested in the pictures of the river and the cat...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/362569804277

[Rowsley17D]

I cannot believe what he wants for Railmatch rattle cans

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171574066777?

[Darius43]

3 minutes ago, Esmedune said:

I first focused on the £2 for a cardboard box, but I'm more interested in the pictures of the river and the cat...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/362569804277

Indeed - I also note that on the picture of the seller’s shop with the van parked outside, the website on the van has been redacted, as has the shop phone number on the shop sign.

 

Thing is , the phone number on the side of the van isn’t redacted and nether is the website on the shop sign…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[Michael Hodgson]

I noticed this site a long time ago - I have bought a number of things from them and been perfectly satisfied.

Why would they redact their website or the advert painted on the side of their own van?

16000 different listings, I'm surprised they can be bothered photographing them all, but they include photos of their shop in the listings - why not - it's free advertising! 

 

[Darius43]

16 minutes ago, Michael Hodgson said:

I noticed this site a long time ago - I have bought a number of things from them and been perfectly satisfied.

Why would they redact their website or the advert painted on the side of their own van?

16000 different listings, I'm surprised they can be bothered photographing them all, but they include photos of their shop in the listings - why not - it's free advertising! 

 

Agreed, redacting this information is a strange thing to do.  Still, there is is…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

[The Johnster]

1 hour ago, Darius43 said:

but I'm more interested in the pictures of the river and the cat...

It is a rather handsome cat...

[rob D2]

1 hour ago, Rowsley17D said:

I cannot believe what he wants for Railmatch rattle cans

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/171574066777?

Probably because he has included the postage which is costly on rattle cans I think as RM can't take them ?

[Ruffnut Thorston]

11 hours ago, Darius43 said:

Agreed, redacting this information is a strange thing to do.  Still, there is is…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

Ebay can be a little annoyed if people advertise their own websites in their listings. And frown upon those who include telephone numbers, and other means of contact outside of eBay’s own systems…

 

Especially those whose prices may be lower if you go to the seller direct, and not via eBay.

 

It can be interesting to compare prices and postage costs on items sold by the same seller, on eBay and on their own website pages….

[sagaguy]

11 hours ago, rob D2 said:

Probably because he has included the postage which is costly on rattle cans I think as RM can't take them ?

Doesn`t matter who you buy them from,the postage is about £7-8.Royal Mail won`t touch them,they have to come by a courier company.I get mine from Fox and the carriage is expensive.Excellent paint though!.

 

                           Ray

[gwrrob]

22 minutes ago, sagaguy said:

Doesn`t matter who you buy them from,the postage is about £7-8.Royal Mail won`t touch them,they have to come by a courier company.I get mine from Fox and the carriage is expensive.Excellent paint though!.

 

                           Ray

 

Howes charge a flat rate of four sheets for aerosols.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

Especially those whose prices may be lower if you go to the seller direct, and not via eBay.

 

It can be interesting to compare prices and postage costs on items sold by the same seller, on eBay and on their own website pages….

 

In this respect, I found ebay very unmaddenning!

 

I've just "upgraded" my computer system (the old one ran like an uncoordinated snail) and the website of my chosen vendor wouldn't let me order because it insisted on me supplying a mobile phone number, which I was disinclined to supply.  On the offchance, I looked on ebay and found that the vendor also had a presence and I was able to order the system without any faffing about, AND with a recent discount promo considerably cheaper than listed on both ebay and website (identical prices).

 

[Ruffnut Thorston]

Yes, I have found that for some items, the P&P can be cheaper via eBay than the same sellers website, even at times offsetting the sometimes slightly higher item prices on eBay, probably charged to offset the listing and other fees.

 

Promotions can also help.

 

And you can, subject to certain conditions, use Nectar points to purchase via eBay. 

 

It certainly can pay to check both sources before ordering. 

[JDW]

On 31/07/2021 at 11:38, Mark Saunders said:

Hornby are almost as bad now!

 

I'm trying to work out which is more accurate, the model or the mangled English below it... With apologies for being slightly O/T, poorly written eBay ads are one thing but it amazes me that big companies can put out something so badly written... 

[Esmedune]

That is weird???  Is it the fact that eBay OCR pictures and repeated phrases counts as Spam??

[Esmedune]

7 hours ago, Ruffnut Thorston said:

Ebay can be a little annoyed if people advertise their own websites in their listings. And frown upon those who include telephone numbers, and other means of contact outside of eBay’s own systems…

 

Especially those whose prices may be lower if you go to the seller direct, and not via eBay.

 

It can be interesting to compare prices and postage costs on items sold by the same seller, on eBay and on their own website pages….

it is £15.48 on his own site £10:49 for the boxes, $4.99 for 48 hour postage.

[ianmacc]

On 07/08/2021 at 12:41, JDW said:

 

I'm trying to work out which is more accurate, the model or the mangled English below it... With apologies for being slightly O/T, poorly written eBay ads are one thing but it amazes me that big companies can put out something so badly written... 

I could be controversial and say Hornby is not a big company now. They are no longer in the general public’s consciousness and have a smaller budget all round which may have an impact on everything including the pool of text authors 

Edited August 9, 2021 by ianmacc
I am leaving it as “could” but to circumvent the passive aggression I stand by it and I AM being controversial

[Michael Hodgson]

On 06/08/2021 at 20:11, The Johnster said:

It is a rather handsome cat...

At least they don't say "comes from a pet- and smoke-free home" which is completely pointless on so many ebay listings. 

[Michael Hodgson]

35 minutes ago, ianmacc said:

I could be controversial and say Hornby is not a big company now. 

They are a quoted share on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of £70m, albeit not in the FTSE 350 index.

[The Johnster]

57 minutes ago, ianmacc said:

I could be controversial and say Hornby is not a big company now. They are no longer in the general public’s consciousness and have a smaller budget all round which may have an impact on everything including the pool of text authors 

Just as well you only ‘could’ say this and not actually say it, then.  Hornby, whatever their relative size in the overall scheme of things, are the biggest name in 00 RTR, and are the only model railway company whose name is fixed in the general public’s consciousness, though many of the older general public probably mean Hornby Dublo when they use or hear the term.  They are smaller than they once were for sure, because they no longer produce models, instead sub-contracting to Chinese manufacturing concerns. 
 

Nobody in my local pub has ever heard of Bachmann, but they’ve all heard of Hornby.  

[MrWolf]

Maybe the packaging design department in China are using a low budget copy of Google translate.

[ianmacc]

I stand by my Hornby comment - notwithstanding I am an avid supporter of them. They are an SME. A higher SME admittedly but not the organisation they once were. Their relative size in the model railway sector is not the point. 

 

I think the comments about public awareness are based on our mixing with our peer groups. I am a middle aged guy and my peer group accordingly (in general). They therefore have heard of Hornby. Try asking the  under 40s and that awareness of Hornby plummets to near nothing as you get younger. We are the last pre-computer generation for whom a train set was a rite of passage as a child. 

[MJI]

On 06/08/2021 at 19:09, Darius43 said:

Indeed - I also note that on the picture of the seller’s shop with the van parked outside, the website on the van has been redacted, as has the shop phone number on the shop sign.

 

Thing is , the phone number on the side of the van isn’t redacted and nether is the website on the shop sign…

 

Cheers

 

Darius

 

Most likely Ebay made him do it or Character Recognition picked it up while uploading.

[The Johnster]

Well, I'd say you probably have a point about the generational thing but I would contend that most middle class youngsters are aware of Hornby.  None of the 'traditional' pre-Chinese 'manufacture it here' companies, of which Hornby was the largest after the demise of Hornby Dublo, were ever going to be any threat to ICI or BP, and they are smaller organisations now.  Bachmann are of course part of Kader, and have a major presence in the US; Kader are a pretty big outfit by model railway standards, and of course Hornby were at one time a part of the Sanda Kan empire.  Mainline were part of Palitoy, and I'm not sure who Lima were part of if anyone prior to their demise; they seem to have been equivalent to Hornby in Italy, though. 

 

The rest were and are small beer; Peco (who actually live in a small place called Beer), Dapol, Accurascale, Heljan and so on, and the smaller specialist outfits are really cottage industries.  Model railway producers are never going to be businesses to rival Microsoft, or Amazon, and the UK's insistence on the 00 gauge isolates us and ensures our companies have a very well defined top size limit.  And the Chinese, who actually make the stuff for us, are a sort of collection of independent assembly plants backed up by very small component producing outfits in a way which would not work here but which they seem to be very good at, are collectively huge but the individual businesses are quite small; it's just their way of doing things!