On Sun, 13 May 2018 04:53:41 +0100, rbowman wrote:

On 05/12/2018 01:57 PM, Jimmy Wilkinson Knife wrote:
Ebay is much cheaper for everything and has more stuff available, and
you can tell where it's coming from, and they tell you what the shipping
cost is. If I search for stuff on Amazon, the postage isn't included in
the search results, there's less stuff available, I can't tell who's
sending it, it costs more, and their feedback system is unclear.

If it's Prime, it's 'free'. They will often point out that it's cheaper
from other sources but often the shipping costs make up the difference.
Also the third party sources don't have the world by the balls so the
delivery time is a week to ten days rather than two days.

I've gotten some obvious Chinese knock-offs from Amazon sellers; one
email and the problem is resolved. usually they tell me to keep the
crap, refund the price, and kick the seller off their marketplace.

Same here. Especially Li Ion batteries rated at 2500mAh that I tested to be 500mAh. If I try to use them in my camera, it tells me they're empty when they're full, as they have a ****ty output current.

But I can easily tell which sellers are con merchants. The Ebay feedback system is good for this. I can instantly see how fast they tend to ship, whether the quality is good, etc, etc.

Hey, I'm an American and I want instant two day gratification, not
waiting for a slow boat to China so I'll forget why I wanted it by the
time it arrives.

If I need some more of something some time in the future, like some more superglue, I'll get it from China if it's cheaper.

If I need a replacement part to repair something I need to use soon, I'll get it from the UK.

I have gotten some stuff from eBay, generally strange stuff like laptop
keyboards that normally don't show up for sale.

I used to buy large quantities of those for the spare keys, as I worked at a school and the kids would keep pulling the keys off. Before I worked there they used to replace the whole keyboard, replaced by Dell at great expense. But I just started buying second hand or broken keyboards for **** all on Ebay, and using the keys to replace the nicked ones. They seemed to stop bothering once they realised it wasn't causing anyone that much cost or hassle.

Once a kid thought it would be funny to change the code on the numeric padlock to lock a trolley full of laptops. I cut the padlock off with a rather large bolt cutter in front of the class and nobody bothered doing that again.

--
Peter is listening to "DJ Felli Fel - Feel it"