Best place for a hobbiest to buy small amounts of parts?

Well, you might have to "man up" and enter the modern times of online marketing :-). As stated ebay with paypal or similar gives pretty good protection against problem trades. Also as you are only buying small quantities you will not be risking much. For buying small quantities from several traders ebay makes it easy for you by putting all the purchases in your "basket" with one payment. It's not as hard as you may think and you really didn't give it much of a go with one buy. Most of the asian traders are honest and paypal keeps them that way.

ly you will want to do EBay, at a great expense of money and time, or just rebuild your network of people who share a similar interest.

s.

were selling, how it was of dubious quality, and other failures of their m oral character.

f 5 CPLDs (or similar) for $14 when Digikey will gladly take my $40 for one , yes you read that correctly, ONE piece of that same silicon.

g reps on the phone? Yes, all good things.

one at Digikey asks me for a 5000% markup because they have six assistants and their immediate family as salaried employees... Sorry buddy, I'm going Far East.

p in my area and we do tens of ths of dollars per month on small quantities (dozens of passives, tens of simple chips,

to a point. Then people wake up and go to the manufacturer. Or to someone i n China who's just purchased ten reels of 5000 chips each and is selling sm all quantities for a small profit, instead of at twenty times cost.

It depends what market you're in. I don't mind cheaply sourced simple parts , ie ones one can easily tell if they malfunction. But if you're building m il spec etc, you don't buy from random suppliers. And building equipment wi th 10k parts requires much more reliable parts than if it had only 10 parts for the same rate of faulty product. These days I design for the bottom of the market, and design so stuff should work with floor sweepings, field up diggings and toilet unblockings. Probably some look down at me for it, but I far prefer it. I always disliked the gross inefficiency and endless restr ictions I had to work with at the other end of the market.

NT

A really funky web site is

I've ordered parts from "Dan" and never had "issues". Lots of old descrete parts. It can take a bit to dig through all he has listed. (He definitely does NOT pay anyone to maintain that web site. :-)

Jonesy

Paypal and eBay protection are virtually non-existent unless you lie or the seller really screws up. If they are honest you will get a refund or replacement. But if they are honest, you don't need protection. I've had eBay/Palpal refuse to give me a refund when the item was never delivered and returned to the seller instead. I had to file a dispute with the credit card company. I don't think eBay even had a person look at my case. UPS said it was "delivered" and the eBay system doesn't bother to look at *where* it was delivered.

I remember back when Paypal tried to enforce a provision in the agreement with the customers of no charge-backs. Fortunately the credit card companies didn't go for that.

NEVER buy anything through any of these services unless you pay for it by credit card and make sure you file a claim within two months of the statement the charge appears on. Don't let them talk you into anything but a full refund of the item charge *and* shipping or delay you past your dispute period.

Amazon seems to police their vendors, almost to a fault. It would be interesting to know from the vendor side how it feels to deal with a bad buyer (eg. broke the product, tells lies, etc.)

Ali- rather less so and as you say the shipping cost back works in favor of a bad seller- you *have* to use a method with tracking so not cheap. Sometimes you can get partial (maybe half) the money back without sending it back. 8-(

--sp

Strange, for internationally shipped orders (to UK) shipping is free if the order value is above $50.

ll

er,

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all Europe is like this AFAIK.

Bye Jack

Does Amazon have a way to ask vendors questions about the product? I know I have looked many, many times and not found a link. I know where the eBay link is. With Aliexpress communications is often not very useful as I don't get answers that show an understanding of my question. I've just never gotten a warm fuzzy feeling from Amazon.

Years ago, I got some really bad items from ebay, and it was a real hassle cleaning it up, usually costing me a big chunk of the money I paid, to ship the item back.

Things are now much better with ebay. Last year I bought a used laptop computer with XP installed. The physical hardware in the computer worked fine, but the operating system was majorly borked. It took 5 min to even load, and constantly crashed. The WIFI did not work at all. I complained to the seller. He told me to try a few tests, which I did, but it would not work regardless. He issued a refund and told me to dispose of the computer. I wiped the hard drive and installed XP myself, using an xp CD I alreeady had. I have been using that computer ever since and it works fine.

Then I bought an expensive (NEW) starter for my farm tractor. I installed it, and found it was completely dead. The seller sent me another starter, which arrived in 3 days, and works fine. He told me to just throw the defective one away.

I have been pretty satisfied with my purchases from ebay in recent years.

They're better than ebay, who are unreasonable

It happens all the time. Some people try to take advantage, it's part of business.

NT

I had something not delivered, and the tracking info was inconclusive/contradictory. I waited an extra week, asked Ebay for my money back, and got it. I can't remember whether it was the seller or ebay that refunded it.

A week later the seller contacted me to say the item had been returned to them, and did I still want it? No, I didn't.

I wondered about the tracking info, and whether the seller had even had it in stock in the first place.

Lucky you.

A laptop's disk failed and I tried that with a new disk and the product code on the bottom of the laptop.

The code was accepted, it installed, and on first reboot a Microsoft Dos screen appeared telling me the code was invalid.

Samsung claimed it was MS fault. MS claimed it was Samsung's fault, despite it being an MS "shan't" message.

Resolution was to buy a third disk with XP preinstalled, for the price of the OS, or to install a linux. Guess which happened.

Later MS refused to sell me Win7, so clearly they don't want my custom.

A few more... bgmicro.com allelectronics.com mpja.com

Cheers, James Arthur

Friend of mine has a problem with the delivery people.

He lives at 123 abc Circle. That is off ABC Road and there is a house number 123. Seems the delivery people get on the Road and do not understant the Circle is near the end of that road.

With tracking being fairly good if he orders something, he tracks it and if it is marked delivered and he does not see it, he goes to the 123 abc Road house to get his package.

I have the inverse problem. I live at 3 X Rd, and keep having deliveries for 3 X Close. The worst case was a "delivery" of roof height scaffolding; that company wasn't amused by their incompetence.

Despite it having been there since 1930, it - isn't on most satnavs; they mutate the postcode YYY 9HL to YYY9EA - isn't on google maps; ditto - it is on bing maps, but isn't searchable - it is on openstreet map, since I put it there

I've trapped out all but the most incompetent fools by: - having the other occupant replace the first line of their address with "opposite the supermarket" - 3D printing a brass sign "Not X Close", and fixing it adjacent to the bell

My dad lived at 123 White Farm Road and there was a Church at 123 White Road. He would get a letter of theirs about once a month. The roads were about 10 miles apart. If they ever got a letter of his, they did not report it.

Once my natural gas bill got messed up. Didn't get one for about 2 months and one finally came. Weent to the gas company and somehow after living there for 5 years they han me "moved" to the town next to the one I lived in. Actually I lived about halfway between the two towns out in the country. It stayed messsed up for about 3 or 4 billing cycles.Eahc time I would go to them and they would change something, but somehow they seemed to not makc the correct change.

Amazon has a place to ask quesitons. Usually they're answered by other purchasers but some sellers (and even manufacturers) use it as a suport channel. I make two or three Amazon orders a month but haven't bought from eBay for five or six years (and never AliEx). n

The caveat is that it seems to be surplus, and mostly oriented towards radio type hobbying. So it's good for what he carries, but it's a limited selection. On the other hand, if you need RF parts, you may be more likely to fill out your needs from this one source.

It's worth looking, but it may not work for everyone.

I ordered a time or two, but he no longer wants to send to Canada (or any non-US location I think), which is a shame because it was very convenient to be able to get those RF parts in one place.

Michael

Is this Aliexpress a company in China, or do they just sell China goods?