On the 22nd of August 2011, Ebay made various changes in its category structure and item-specific attributes in the area of watches. Where earlier the genuine luxury brands like Breitling, OMEGA and Rolex were kept strictly apart from fake brands and cheap Chinese watches, fraternisation now rules! All watch brands now come under the heading of "wristwatches", regardless of how suspicious they may appear. The customer can then filter out their own watch features!

It just seems to be a shame that, on account of the huge range of cheap watches on offer, the genuine luxury brands only appear to a very modest extent. But one would be a scoundrel to consider this a negative situation! But it could also be that the extensive mix of brands tends to force the user to heavily filter the search results, maybe only to purchase a cheap Chinese watch out of pure frustration.

The new category structure may affect some of the serious and genuine luxury watch traders on Ebay quite badly. Obviously they weren't involved in the decision-making process, and now have to come to terms with fewer prospective customers and higher fees. However this probably makes no difference to Ebay, who as usual are making savings with these measures by reducing their personnel costs. In future, Chinese watch traders will not be monitored, and their cheap watches will inevitably end up in the wrong brand categories; for example, in the Rolex or TAG Heuer categories, as has already happened this year. From now on, these watches will be scattered amongst the genuine real luxury watches in order to attract the attention of those not-so-well informed customers.