I look on ebay for "stuff" every morning. Have scored some very nice parts, some for very good money. This morning the pages were taken over by Ecklersautomotive, 69 pages of their parts! I sent them the following message. I know, to no avail, but I just can't let it pass without saying something.
"You people have lost your ever loving minds! You saturated the ebay pages for 57 Ford parts starting at 22:10 and ending 69 pages later at 09:50 on the 16th. You really think your "take over" of ebay parts listing will go untold? I will never purchase a product from you because of this very reason! Your actions squeeze out those folks wanting to sell/share used parts from classic cars."
X2, good. I buy very little from MACs since they took it over.
When I was searching for parts for my 59 several years ago, EBay was a great place to find those scarce bits and pieces from around North America. I bought a lot of stuff thru EBay, and was quite happy with virtually every transaction. However, a few years ago, things changed, and not for the better. I used to be able to search under "1959 Ford", 1959 Meteor", "Custom 300", etc, and for the most part, that was the items that came up. Now, when you try that, you get thousands of trinkets and doodads that have nothing to do with old Fords. You see crap like tire valve stem caps, seat belt fuzzy covers, mud flaps, fake hood scoops and tacky tape stripes and decals, that show up, because they "may fit a 1959 Ford". Also key words like "59 Ford", get lost in multiple key words when the ads have 1900,1901,1902,1903,etc, along with Ford, Chevy, Studebaker, Rolls Royce, Ferrarri, Volkswagen etc, they blanket virtually every ad with practically every year, make and model of vehicle ever made, so unless you feel like wasting hours sifting thru crap to find a nugget that you can actually use, you give up. As for Macs, it seems that I get several Emails a week from Macs and Eckler Chevrolet parts, even though I have never ordered anything from Macs, or even looked at any GM related stuff from Ecklers or anywhere else. I used to go to EBay Motors every day, now I doubt I look there more than a few minutes every 5 months or so. It USED to be a great site, now it frustrates me to no end, so I stay away.
I bought several thousand dollars of parts from Macs when it was Macs. and shipping was free on large orders. On a lot of the new Macs items the shipping is more than the parts. Ebay is now mostly steering columns and front suspensions and yes not just for our fords. I to bought and sold many items in the good old days. I'm glad I'm as old as I am.
I've bought quite a few things off Ebay over the years with good results. I have to laugh at some of the listings that come up in the 57 parts section. 1949 cast iron waffle iron ( fits 57 Ford ) etc. :003:
I hear you guys on Mac- I wonder if phoning the orders direct and buy a bunch of stuff at a time helps. I found a lot of my rubber through DC and they have a good flat rate.
Nothing grinds my gears more than absurd shipping prices on ebay, even with "Handling", you can tell the seller i more interested in gains within the shipping cost. I have shipped tons a stuff around the world.
Macs was a decent place to deal with before ecklers bought them out. Good prices and service. Now they are
probably the highest priced vendor.
If you need to buy a lot of items and can go to one of the larger fleamarkets most all of the vendors will bring your parts for free.
I asked for a new catalog from Macs and have had an e-mail EVERYDAY since ecklers took over.
Ron.
Quote from: SkylinerRon on 2021-04-19 21:57
Macs was a decent place to deal with before ecklers bought them out. Good prices and service. Now they are
probably the highest priced vendor.
If you need to buy a lot of items and can go to one of the larger fleamarkets most all of the vendors will bring your parts for free.
I asked for a new catalog from Macs and have had an e-mail EVERYDAY since ecklers took over.
Ron.
I asked "Dennis Carpenter" to bring an order to the Street Rod Nationals last year and DC told me that they will no longer bring orders to such events, shows etc.
Since Dennis passed his son has taken over and he is not as friendly as Dennis always was.
Raised some prices and has off shored some stuff, even stopped coming to Carlisle.
Ron.
Quote from: SkylinerRon on 2021-04-24 00:48
Since Dennis passed his son has taken over and he is not as friendly as Dennis always was.
Raised some prices and has off shored some stuff, even stopped coming to Carlisle.
Ron.
Sounds like a mistake to me. Wonder if he is getting ready to sell it off and move on?
I've found you can eliminate a lot of the BS irrelevant parts that turn up in an ebay search by typing "-fits" in the search bar along with whatever it is your searching for. For example, search for "1957 Ford -fits". The majority of the fuzzy seat belts and glow in the dark valve stem crap show up because somewhere in the listing it will say "fits 1957 Ford". Including "-fits" will eliminate much of that crap.
Quote from: Marc on 2021-04-24 07:25
I've found you can eliminate a lot of the BS irrelevant parts that turn up in an ebay search by typing "-fits" in the search bar along with whatever it is your searching for. For example, search for "1957 Ford -fits". The majority of the fuzzy seat belts and glow in the dark valve stem crap show up because somewhere in the listing it will say "fits 1957 Ford". Including "-fits" will eliminate much of that crap.
Thanks, will give that a try next time.
Hi all-First post on here-agree 1000%
Welcome to the forum!
Carpenters is a large family business it would probably bring big $$$$
Ron.