Buying hardware on ebay from china.

rkd29980

Limp Gawd
Joined
Oct 19, 2015
Messages
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I am looking at LSI 9207-8i cards and there are plenty on ebay but they all ship from china wich makes nervous that they may be fakes or refurbished or used and the seller is lying about item quality.

Have you guys had good experiences buying hardware on ebay from china?
 
There is always the remote chance that they are just using China to jack up the shipping calculations, and it ends up shipping from little China in California. I have gotten some packages like this before, the upside it being very quick delivery.

That being said I have bought several small DIY electronic things from China on eBay cause they are practically giving them away and have had zero issues. Have boughten knock-off LEGO minifigs with no problems too.
 
Like any other purchase online from an unknown vendor - establish a risk/reward threshold and see if the price justifies the outlay.
 
Doesn't paypal still side with the buyer? Although if they sent you the wrong item or a broken item things are more difficult since its up to you to pay to ship it back even though it is their mistake.
 
One thing that I found with some of the ebay sellers in China is that they will specify the ePacket delivery, which has tracking available with the US postal service. However, the fraudulent sellers (which seems to be a lot of the ones in China) will ship you a "free gift" by ePacket and they will inform ebay of the tracking number of the "gift" (the gift is basically worthless) so that as far as ebay is concerned, your real order is delivered as soon as the worthless "gift" is delivered. However, the fraudulent seller will ship the real order at a later time and by a cheaper shipping method that does not have tracking. So, the real order takes longer to arrive (sometimes weeks longer) and it has no tracking so if it gets lost, good luck finding it.

If you receive the "gift" but not your real order, then the ebay system will not allow you to file a complaint that you did not receive your order since the tracking shows that it was delivered. So you have to select something like wrong item or item not as described, and then the fraudulent seller may demand that you send back the wrong item, at your shipping expense, before they ship you your real order again. It is quite expensive to ship something to China, even a 1-oz piece of junk. For some reason, ebay often sides with the sellers on this sort of thing. If you leave negative feedback that you did not receive the order, ebay may delete it at the sellers request since the tracking shows that you did receive it.

I do not know of a good way to protect yourself against this sort of thing. I can only suggest to avoid any sellers in China with fewer than 1000 feedbacks, and any with lower than 99.9% positive feedback (yes, I am suggesting avoiding Chinese sellers with 99.7 or 99.8% positive).
 
I go by seller feedback. A seller with 99%+ rating and 12,000 sales isn't likely going to be a rip-off.
 
I go by seller feedback. A seller with 99%+ rating and 12,000 sales isn't likely going to be a rip-off.

Unfortunately, that is not true. 99.0% is not nearly good enough. I have seen and heard about quite a few sellers in China with 99.0 or 99.5% positive that are not trustworthy. They seem to be very good at gaming the system. Obviously, if it were really true that 99% of the customers had a positive experience, then that would usually be a decent indicator that a seller could be trusted. But the problem is that they game the system so that the real number of satisfied customers is significantly lower than 99%.
 
Unfortunately, that is not true. 99.0% is not nearly good enough.

Yes it is. If an overseas seller has 11,880 positive and 120 negative, of which are usually items arriving broken or user error resulting in breaking the item, they are trustworthy. Shit is bound to happen and every business or seller in this world will end up with negative reviews eventually.
 
One thing that I found with some of the ebay sellers in China is that they will specify the ePacket delivery, which has tracking available with the US postal service. However, the fraudulent sellers (which seems to be a lot of the ones in China) will ship you a "free gift" by ePacket and they will inform ebay of the tracking number of the "gift" (the gift is basically worthless) so that as far as ebay is concerned, your real order is delivered as soon as the worthless "gift" is delivered. However, the fraudulent seller will ship the real order at a later time and by a cheaper shipping method that does not have tracking. So, the real order takes longer to arrive (sometimes weeks longer) and it has no tracking so if it gets lost, good luck finding it.

If you receive the "gift" but not your real order, then the ebay system will not allow you to file a complaint that you did not receive your order since the tracking shows that it was delivered. So you have to select something like wrong item or item not as described, and then the fraudulent seller may demand that you send back the wrong item, at your shipping expense, before they ship you your real order again. It is quite expensive to ship something to China, even a 1-oz piece of junk. For some reason, ebay often sides with the sellers on this sort of thing. If you leave negative feedback that you did not receive the order, ebay may delete it at the sellers request since the tracking shows that you did receive it.

I do not know of a good way to protect yourself against this sort of thing. I can only suggest to avoid any sellers in China with fewer than 1000 feedbacks, and any with lower than 99.9% positive feedback (yes, I am suggesting avoiding Chinese sellers with 99.7 or 99.8% positive).

If you get your tracked shipment from eBay and it doesn't include 100% of the ordered goods, always open a case immediately (doesn't match description). In fact, if the seller does anything other than exactly what eBay's policy says to do, open a case immediately. Most eBayers are legitimate, but if you see a red flag like that you need to assume they're trying to rip you off.
 
Yes it is. If an overseas seller has 11,880 positive and 120 negative, of which are usually items arriving broken or user error resulting in breaking the item, they are trustworthy. Shit is bound to happen and every business or seller in this world will end up with negative reviews eventually.

The issue is fake reviews and items being sold. The scam of Ebay is many of the top top sellers are all interconnected and flu each others "stores up", i can;t find the article on it, perhaps it doesn't happen any more but someone had done a really good piece on why %99 sellers are often less trust worthy..
 
i bought 3 cheap stupid ermm power jacks to make my own poercables for my PC. one of them was damage clearly before shipping since it was inside the sealed back and no losse pieces.
i contacted them with a pictures and they offered to give me all my money back.
Note though that i had allready just 5 minuttes before seeing the defetive units give them a positive feedback on their site. i dont know if that factored in that they thougt it was an easy out of not getting bad review.
 
don't know if this is good forum etiquette but here goes

I think i can get LSI 9207-8i from the servers we tear down at work. it will be a used units thought
I bet I could get one for like 80 bucks + shipping

I'll check tommorow
 
Yes it is. If an overseas seller has 11,880 positive and 120 negative, of which are usually items arriving broken or user error resulting in breaking the item, they are trustworthy. Shit is bound to happen and every business or seller in this world will end up with negative reviews eventually.

No, you are falling into the same trap that many naive ebay buyers do, and it is exactly what these unscrupulous sellers are counting on to take advantage of.

As I suggested, if you see a China seller wtih 99% positive feedback, it is NOT true that you have a 99% chance of having a positive experience with them. Many sellers know how to game the system, and I think that quite a few China sellers are experts at this sort of thing. For example, if they do 95% of their business in China with very low cost items that they deliver promptly and accurately, and only 5% of their business with overseas buyers and more expensive items, and if they get 100% positive feedback for their Chinese transactions, and only 80% positive feedback for their overseas transactions, then their seller profile will have 99% positive feedback, but overseas buyers only have an 80% chance of having a positive experience.

That is just one example of how they game the system. They have other techniques as well, such as fake feedback, getting negative feedback deleted, starting new storefronts when an old storefront gets too much negative feedback, and probably many more tricks that I do not know about.
 
No, you are falling into the same trap that many naive ebay buyers do, and it is exactly what these unscrupulous sellers are counting on to take advantage of.

As I suggested, if you see a China seller wtih 99% positive feedback, it is NOT true that you have a 99% chance of having a positive experience with them. Many sellers know how to game the system, and I think that quite a few China sellers are experts at this sort of thing. For example, if they do 95% of their business in China with very low cost items that they deliver promptly and accurately, and only 5% of their business with overseas buyers and more expensive items, and if they get 100% positive feedback for their Chinese transactions, and only 80% positive feedback for their overseas transactions, then their seller profile will have 99% positive feedback, but overseas buyers only have an 80% chance of having a positive experience.

That is just one example of how they game the system. They have other techniques as well, such as fake feedback, getting negative feedback deleted, starting new storefronts when an old storefront gets too much negative feedback, and probably many more tricks that I do not know about.

So after hundreds of eBay transactions spanning back a decade I've just been really lucky 100% of the time. Got it. Thanks for learning me.
 
So after hundreds of eBay transactions spanning back a decade I've just been really lucky 100% of the time. Got it. Thanks for learning me.

How many transactions from Chinese sellers in the past few years, and what were their positive feedback percentages?
 
Many, for everything from magnets and PTFE to car and computer parts/accessories. I have received many ePackets from Hong Kong or the U.K. and while sometimes I forget about the order because it takes so long I always get what I actually ordered.

For me as long as they are 98% or better I am able to read the feedback and determine if they are an honest seller.

Quick list of my most recently used overseas sellers:

http://www.ebay.com/usr/tangtangme?_trksid=p2047675.l2559
http://www.ebay.com/usr/masscar?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/foodfrenzy-japan?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/xtrememicro?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/elec-mall?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/toosell2009?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/stiven-zhang?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/yaolihong2013?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
http://www.ebay.com/usr/green-sum?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2754
 
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Didn't say they were. I wrote "overseas." Also, using "only" to denote 67% even though it's a moot point considering I didn't claim they were all from China is childish. As is this entire conversation at this point. If you have a brain and can read feedback you are fine.
 
Didn't say they were. I wrote "overseas." Also, using "only" to denote 67% even though it's a moot point considering I didn't claim they were all from China is childish. As is this entire conversation at this point. If you have a brain and can read feedback you are fine.

If you read what I wrote, you would see that I was talking specifically about unscrupulous China sellers. I asked how many of your "hundreds" of transactions were from China in the past few years. You have only listed 6.

Here are three China sellers who meet your 98% threshold. Which do you trust?

http://www.ebay.com/usr/friendshops852

http://www.ebay.com/usr/ouyou2010

http://www.ebay.com/usr/4seasonstores
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Pick one? The first one. Only the last one is somewhat fishy since they are only a 2 year member with almost 40k feedback already, although I guess that lines up with the insane amount of feedback the other two have. Nothing sticks out like a sore thumb that any would try to rip off the buyer. It's also dependent on what I'm going to be buying. These 3 examples look like eBay Amazon warehouses of random junk, not a big deal if I wanted to intentionally buy cheap knock-offs.
 
The first one, friendshops852, does the shipping scam that I described previously (as does the last, 4seasonstores). The middle one, ouyou2010, is actually in Hong Kong, not mainland China, and they do not scam, as far as I know. For some reason the unscrupulous sellers seem much more prevalent in mainland China.
 
Probably why I have never seen a seller with as much feedback as any of them while searching for things I want/need to buy.
 
This has all been really helpful. I guess you still can't trust the chinese.

I see what you mean about the deceptive shipping.

The seller "qbtl" has 9255 feedback and a rating of 100% but what is really strange is that this seller has one listing that says it ships from Hong Kong and says free ePacket delivery but also has another identical listing that says it ships from California and does not state free ePacket delivery. What is that about?
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
I guess I just must be lucky too...
worst thing to happen to me was buying something from a Canadian seller and then it ended up shipping from china. :confused:
 
The seller "qbtl" has 9255 feedback and a rating of 100% but what is really strange is that this seller has one listing that says it ships from Hong Kong and says free ePacket delivery but also has another identical listing that says it ships from California and does not state free ePacket delivery. What is that about?

http://www.qbtl.com/

They are a parts supplier, I bet they have warehouses here and there.
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
ps: I just saw this on their store-front: "Our China warehouse is currently in Chinese New Year vacation until Feb/15/2016 we back to work. All orders with item location in China/Hongkong will be delayed to Feb/15/2016. If you can not wait, please DO NOT buy. Thanks. Our US warehouse is still in working. Items with location in US are available for US and Canada buyers"

HC is right they have both. so if you want free shipping and to wait until the end of feb/mar go with the hong kong one otherwise get the one in cali for the extra $10.
 
From my experience i can tell that i bought key for IBM M5014/5015 to enable raid6 from china and there was no problem with the delivery. Key works properly so as Raid 6 :)
 
Doesn't paypal still side with the buyer? Although if they sent you the wrong item or a broken item things are more difficult since its up to you to pay to ship it back even though it is their mistake.
You'd think, but when I bought a $10 combination USB 3.0/SATA 3.0 card that turned out to have only SATA, the seller kept lying to both me and eBay, and despite the product description and photo not ever changing, meaning it was easy to verify that the seller was lying, eBay kept siding with the seller until I spoke with a certain eBay employee. And every time the seller wrote to me, he wanted a high rating (that request was not just part of a form reply).

I'm guessing a controller card is a fairly safe buy, unlike a hard disk, USB flash stick, or SSD. SSDs, even if they're not short of the rated capacity and run at advertised speed, can be made from recycled flash RAM chips that already have plenty of wear on them and not much life left.
 
You'd think, but when I bought a $10 combination USB 3.0/SATA 3.0 card that turned out to have only SATA, the seller kept lying to both me and eBay, and despite the product description and photo not ever changing, meaning it was easy to verify that the seller was lying, eBay kept siding with the seller until I spoke with a certain eBay employee. And every time the seller wrote to me, he wanted a high rating (that request was not just part of a form reply).

I'm guessing a controller card is a fairly safe buy, unlike a hard disk, USB flash stick, or SSD. SSDs, even if they're not short of the rated capacity and run at advertised speed, can be made from recycled flash RAM chips that already have plenty of wear on them and not much life left.

I had a similar experience when I ordered something on eBay and it arrived damaged because the seller "robjcaskey" improperly packed it with the cheapest packing materials available and he would not adequately compensate me or replace the item. eBay and PayPal would not help me, they said it is all completely up to whatever the seller wants to do (or not do) about it.

As for the idea that scammers are selling SSD's made from used flash chips, that is a little more than unsettling, truly the stuff of nightmares. There is a special place in hell for those kinds of people.
 
I am looking at LSI 9207-8i cards and there are plenty on ebay but they all ship from china wich makes nervous that they may be fakes or refurbished or used and the seller is lying about item quality.

Have you guys had good experiences buying hardware on ebay from china?

Aren't you aware China makes most of the worlds circuit boards for computers? Can they knock off their own parts? I guess so.
 
Maybe I've just been lucky so far but I also go by the "numbers". If a seller has 10-15k+, the overall feedback is 98%+ positive and hasn't seen a particularly recent upwards trend of negative then if the price and receive date are good I'll go for it. However if I can find the same merits from a domestic seller or close to the same maybe with a slightly higher price then obviously this closer domestic seller is preferred.
 
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