Frequently Asked Questions
1. Question: What’s so special about this site, that makes it different from going straight to the source and searching on eBay?
Answer: I’m glad you asked. We’ve been using eBay every day since the early days to sell and buy, and are very familiar with the eBay services. In order to provide the quickest and most accurate results, we acquired a custom “engine” to do the searching from this site. This tool is more technically named an “applications programming interface” or API, which quickly and accurately interfaces with the main eBay site to pull back current auctions in the category that you requested.
If you were to attempt searching directly, we know from experience that it would take longer, since you would have to key in your search parameters, and also from experience, many searches are formated incorrectly (misspellings included), and would yield misleading or incorrect results. Using our interface prevents that problem and will bring you the most accurate results possible in the quickest amount of time.
Additionally, we have constructed a convenient map of the most common searches done, many of which you might not have thought about, again yielding better results. To access other searches, the side bar on every page of this site is ready for your use. Our visitors find, obviously, that clicking is much faster than typing and then clicking.
Lastly, our API in some situations attempts to intelligently filter out items that would not be of interest to you. For example, if you were doing a query for a “john deere tractor”, the native eBay search routines would return things like salt and pepper shakers, quilts, etc., and bury what you’re truly looking for amidst many dozens of pages. Our API will generally not return the extraneous items, certainly not as many.
Given the fact that accurate results are of utmost importance when researching or attempting to make a major purchase, we feel that our API was money well invested, and hope you agree. Of course, if you ever need to do a customized search that we don’t provide, you can easily navigate to the eBay site from the button that says “View All Items On eBay” and go from there.
Oh, I almost forgot one more thing that this site gives you that you can’t get elsewhere (except perhaps on some of our other related sites). For those of you not totally familiar with eBay, we’ve put together a comprehensive report, titled “Buyers Guide to eBay”, which will help you learn how to use the site, and prevent serious and potentially costly mistakes. It’s a “must-read” before you make big-ticket purchases, unless you’re already an auction veteran (and maybe even if you are!). You can download the report by clicking on the earlier link above, or on the side menu bar on any of our main pages. No charge, we don’t even ask for your email address. You will need to have a free copy of the Adobe Reader on your computer though, most people already have it, if you don’t, you can download Adobe Reader here.
2. Question: What if I’m not registered with eBay? Can I still use your site?
Answer: Absolutely. Many of our visitors are not registered with eBay, and use our site and eBay purely for research in order to come to purchasing decisions, with the purchase being made locally offline. In that case, you have no need to register with eBay.
On the other hand, if you do see something you would like to purchase, you need to be registered with eBay before you place a bid. Doing so is a quick, easy, and free process. Just click on the “register” button on the top of the page you’re on, at the eBay site, and it will lead you through the painless process.
3. Question: Is there a charge to use your site, or to use the eBay site?
Answer: No, to both questions.
4. Question: Are you affiliated with the sellers of the merchandise whose items are shown? In other words, are you giving preferred placement to those sellers, in which case I might be missing out on the real bargains?
Answer: We are not affiliated with any of the sellers. Even if there were a 1 in a million chance that some day we would be listing an item ourselves matching your query, the API that we use has no way of distinguishing our auctions from those of the other 20 million or so eBay sellers, so no preferred placement would be possible.
