Look up something popular, say… iPods. Go the actual category for MP3 Players > iPod. Even pick a particular model.

I did this with the nano, as I was considering replacing my venerable one. Searched for items with the “buy it now” option, sorted by price+shipping, lowest. 1,349 items.

The first two pages are all miscategorized items. And of course, ebay makes it hard for you to report those. You might get to some broken ones if you’re lucky. It’s all skins, batteries, adapters — everything that shouldn’t be there. But they can’t be bothered to police even the top-tier categories they spend money advertising on Google with. It’s crazy. Lord forbid people be forced to put their ipod cases in “Consumer Electronics > MP3 Accessories > Cases > Apple iPod” where I might go to shop for those.

It’s like if I went to Target and went to the housewares section, to the toaster aisle, and instead of toasters, there were 900 people trying to sell me bread, extension cords, power adapters, non-conductive forks for sticking into the toaster…. faaaaaaaaaaaaahk, man, it’s just ridiculous.

And now I can’t shop on Amazon, because I’m mad about the whole print-on-demand issue… drives me nuts. Is it really that much easier and cheaper to run a maddening cesspool that drives people like me away that it makes it worthwhile?