We offer for sale a large range of car parts on eBay, as it has been a very popular marketplace for this type of product for many years. And for most of our products, we’re pleased to have fitment details on those listings.
But based on many questions that we receive from buyers, it seems to us that many people don’t understand how best to use eBay’s tools to help find the right part for their vehicle.
For example, we offer for sale a particulate matter sensor that is only specified as being correct for certain BMW models. Yet we get loads of people sending messages along the lines of “can you confirm this fits my Ford Transit” or “does this fit my Astra?”
For many people, the ‘journey’ on eBay either starts with a search, or browsing to the Motors category page.
Let’s say I have a Ford Fiesta and I’m looking for a new starter motor for it. The chances are that I’ll start on either the eBay website, or mobile app, by searching for the obvious terms ‘ford fiesta starter motor’.
That will of course bring up a huge number of results:
So where next? Well the next thing to do is to add in your vehicle details, so the search results can be narrowed down further to your specific vehicle.
You’ll most likely know the registration number of your car, so you can just enter that to get the vehicle details. You can then add this vehicle in your eBay account to ‘My Garage’, to make finding parts easier in future if you’re lucky enough to own more than one vehicle!
At this point, eBay will then filter the search results, to match those listings where sellers such as ourselves have specified those exact vehicle details.
And then amongst those search results, maybe you’ll find one of our listings!
where eBay offers its bold tick mark to show “Fits your vehicle”.
Seems as easy as that!
But…
eBay is very bold with it’s “fitment guaranteed” promise, but there is always a caveat. From our experience “just because eBay says it will fit doesn’t mean it will”.
eBay fitment is a good guide and barometer. But as you can see from the example above, while it can retrieve certain details about your vehicle from a registration lookup, there are certain ‘nuances’ that it doesn’t know about, which can drastically alter the conditions which determine whether that part will actually be correct or not.
For example, some parts might only be correct depending on:
- transmission type, manual or auto etc
- whether the vehicle has air-conditioning or power steering, or not
- whether the vehicle is left-hand or right hand drive (driver position) or which side of the road the vehicle travels on (traffic position)
- whether the VIN or engine number falls before or after a ‘break-point’
So it is vitally important that before you click or tap that ‘Buy It Now’ button or Add to Basket, that you check the compatibility notes, item specifics and description.
Sellers can provide such details either in the compatibility notes and/or item specifics. Here’s an example of an accelerator pedal sensor that we offer for Vauxhall models.
“But eBay said it would fit!” – unfortunately our customer had a Vauxhall Zafira that was right-hand drive AND had manual transmission, so this wasn’t going to be suitable for their car!
So perhaps finding the correct car part on eBay isn’t as straight-forward as you think!
If you have any doubt, all you have to do is click on that ‘Contact Seller’ link, and send us a message with your registration number.
Our customer service team have the tools and the knowledge to look up the correct part for your vehicle using its registration number or its vehicle identification number (VIN), so we can advise you on the right part the first time.
As a ‘reverse caveat’, sometimes the correct part for your car is the one that eBay says “doesn’t fit”, and this is simply down to limitations in the fitment details that are provided to us by our suppliers.
