Christ, it seems like I'm consistently having problems with eBay vendors misrepresenting their products.
No, it's not as if they are trying to scam/screw folks but, rather, deciding that accurately describing their products isn't really *that* important.
E.g., 4 ft power cords that are actually 6 ft (if I wanted 6 ft, don't you think I would have ORDERED 6 ft???)
Or, adapter cables that aren't wired as pictured.
Or, CD sleeves that are functionally different than pictured.
Or, video cards that aren't the models advertised.
Note that many of these things boil down to just taking a photo of the *actual* item and using that in your listing. Esp when you consider that there isn't much else that a customer can rely upon to make a purchase decision!
Of course, eBay has their "guarantee" that makes me whole, again. Except for the hassle of having to reorder the *right* item (and hope!) as well as the trip to the postal orifice to return the item.
Amazon seems to have a better record -- at least in ensuring the items *are* what is advertised!
I have bought many items off ebay and seldom have a problem. One does have to read the description very carefully to be sure you are really ordering what you think you are.
On a sunny day (Thu, 12 Aug 2021 16:50:12 -0700) it happened Don Y snipped-for-privacy@foo.invalid wrote in <sf4c3u$t1h$ snipped-for-privacy@dont-email.me:
I was a big ebay buyer, but have hardly ordered anything there lately. Indeed not always correct. Was reading ebay selling has dropped 2% lately.
I always check several sources for an item if it one that is sold at different places. Sometimes ebay is less,sometimes not.
I was watching an informercial a while back about a Worx product. Checked on it and looked on ebay and found one place that was selling the item for much less than the informercial special price. Other times ebay has been higher.
fredag den 13. august 2021 kl. 10.02.12 UTC+2 skrev Jan Panteltje:
EU recently changed the rule so there are no longer a minimum limit before you have pay VAT for things outside the EU.
until people can rely on the VAT being paid correctly by the seller beforehand so they don't have to pay the ~20€ fee to the postman that are not going to order as much
It's a decent source for vintage baseball cards, model trains, old radios and test equipment, and historical memorabilia and such, but I don't generally go there for things like adapter cables or video cards etc. except in pretty rare instances there are better sources for that stuff.
They do have some 5-disc Nakamichi SCSI CD-ROM changers that are pretty hard to come by anywhere else if you need that sort of thing.
That can be oddly true. I tried buying hearing aid batteries for a friend and found some good prices on eBay. Digging around a bit more directly on eBay I found the best prices were what appeared to be Kirkland brand which is Costco's store brand. Checking at Costco I found they were cheaper still! The best price on the Internet turned out to be Costco batteries resold.
There are more than a few products that are just store items resold. I looked for the trimmer blades for Ryobi and found everything is higher priced than buying in the store. I expected to find Asian knockoffs, but no, you can only find name brand and higher priced than buying directly from Home Depot. Go figure!
On a sunny day (Fri, 13 Aug 2021 22:50:51 -0400) it happened bitrex snipped-for-privacy@example.net wrote in <icGRI.57821$ snipped-for-privacy@fx47.iad:
I have boxes full of SMDs R, C, and chips, adaptors, modules, what not, all from ebay. Batteries, wallwarts, chargers, power-converter modules, etc etc I did get some voltage regulators that were not what was written on it, got money back no questions, Every now and then something was wrong. Ah, multimeters, RF power modules, anything, all OK from ebay. Now indeed with VAT things may get more complicated, but that was already the case when buying from some US ebay sellers, things winding up in customs..
It's not really worth my time taking a risk when domestic US distributors like Mouser and Digi-Key are so quick and reliable. I use Amazon for connectors, cables, power adapters, and mechanical parts sometimes, there's a decent selection of stuff that's at least as good as a lot of the stuff on eBay and it often arrives in 2 days free with Prime. Sometimes less.
Amazon's returns are simple you just dump the widget at the UPS store and they scan a QR code on your phone, done. Sometimes for relatively inexpensive stuff they don't even ask you to return it at all, they just refund the money.
Being in the US I don't think we have to bother with the VAT. I did notice that ebay has started charging tax on many things now. Not sure if they turn it in or not on all the items.
It's good for some stuff from China, sometimes you can find domestic stock at a competitive price and delivery. Like UPS SLA batteries. Expensive to ship by air, they'll stick them in a flat rate USPS box or something.
I could have got the PCB test jig a week or so faster direct from the manufacturer China but it was a bit cheaper to get the exact same product from an eBay middleman in Chino, California.
I had a failing NVIDIA video card in a computer I reserve for PCB CAD- a tested used one was $23 delivered. The dual 30" monitors need dual-link DVI ports so a more modern one was not in the cards.
Which model Nvidia was it? GT 710s are $59 on Amazon, laughable by modern standards for vidya games but a nice boost over the integrated graphics in older PCs, unless it's old enough to only have AGP vs. 16x PCIe:
Typically, a business was obligated to collect local sales tax if they had a "presence" in the state (like a warehouse, sales office, retail outlet, etc.). It used to be that one would only be charged the *state* portion of any sales taxes (not county and city). That has changed.
Technically, one is legally required (in most places) to voluntarily remit any sales taxes that were "avoided" to the state/city (transaction privilege tax, use tax, etc.).
These monitors are often discarded, here. Folks hooking one up (for test) to a generic PC end up seeing a very low resolution image on a very large screen (wrong type of video card or cable).
That's how I rescued all of mine (not worth the hassle of trying to educate people as to what you *need* to drive them).
North Carolina , my state, for many years in the past has a place on the state tax form where one is suppose to report the tax on anything bought through the mail or otherwise should be taxed. Very few people ever bothered with that .
Mine are Dell <mumblemumbles> (sorry, I can't easily access the backs of any of mine to read the P/N with a magnifying glass :< ). Resolution is
2560x1600 IIRC. If you don't have the dual channel cable+GPU, the monitor falls back to something like 640x480 (IIRC) -- atrociously low for a monitor of that size.
[The monitor does not support multiple resolutions; those two are *all*! Also, it doesn't have a built-in "source select" capability whereby you can tie the outputs of multiple PCs to each monitor and use front panel controls to select which source you're viewing -- this is how I share the monitor bank between my EDA and CAD workstations]
They're also heavy. But will support a dell soundbar (which looks puny when installed!)
Google *suggests* mine might be 3007WFP
formatting link
If you find one of questionable quality, disconnect the video cable from the monitor *at* the monitor. Then, power on. It will cycle through solid white, green, red, blue screens so you can verify the inverter and CFLs are intact -- as well as look for bad pixels. If the person you're buying it from thinks it is broken, you might want to be discrete about running that test, lest you reveal it DOES work!.
So, (here) folks would test the monitor (inappropriately) and discover that it was "crap" (low res) -- big, but crap -- and put them in the discard pile for me to "fix".
Realizing that selling them (perfectly functional) would just result in lots of "returns" when folks got home and discovered they didn't have the GPU or cable required, it was easier for us to just toss them out (we don't have staff to spare on things like "returns").
[Of course, I can't bear to see things like this in the tip! :> ]
The drawback is their size. You can't have more than 2 wide (dual monitors) or you find yourself swiveling your neck as you try to look from the leftmost to the rightmost.
And, you can't have more than 1 high (can't stack them) for similar reasons in the vertical axis.
Two (of anything) is a bit unfortunate as there's a "display seam" directly in front of you. But, it's tolerable if you are working on both monitors and not just one.
I opted to move down to 24" monitors on my CAD and ED stations as I'd prefer three wide, there (I add a fourth up top for displaying "reference materials" that I might need to consult while doing <whatever>)
N.B. 2 high x 3 wide is a waste of real estate in virtually any size monitor!
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