eBAY PRODUCTS

Thread Starter

dadadiouffy

Joined May 4, 2020
78
Please, anybody bought electronics from eBay? I want to buy some packs for Transistors and Resistors but there is no contact, how can I contact them. I have never bought anything from overseas. Help me to trust eBay...
 

ericgibbs

Joined Jan 29, 2010
18,766
hi dada,
When you buy from eBay, you contact the Seller if you have a problem with the product.

E
Post a link to the eBay product, let us see who is the Seller.
 

AlbertHall

Joined Jun 4, 2014
12,345
If you have problems then ultimately ebay will refund your money. I have ordered plenty of components and modules from China and Hong Kong and I have had few problems with them. Occasionally they get lost in the post and the seller has either sent another shipment or refunded the money without argument (Note that is the seller not ebay). The only times I have needed the ebay refund system was with UK sellers (individuals not companies).
 

jpanhalt

Joined Jan 18, 2008
11,087
I have bought resistors from eBay. I can test them. Have also got partial reels of capacitors from US suppliers that looked legitimate. I would stay away from China sellers as they also sell counterfeit/fake parts. I have had good luck with Malaysia, Singapore, etc.

As for Amazon, it exerts very little control over its sellers. The same junk that is on eBay is sold on Amazon. In fact, some eBay sellers ship from Amazon as "gifts." Most important, I usually find better prices at my established distributors, like Digikey and Mouser, than at Amazon, and one can generally be assured of genuine parts from them too.
 

DarthVolta

Joined Jan 27, 2015
521
I bought lot's of electronics parts from ebay, from China to Canada, without any real problems, except that it's hard to tell from pictures, the quality of stuff.

There's lot's of cheap common parts that are ok to buy from ebay, for hobby use. But I have bought parts that aren't as claimed, and I probably should have complained, but it takes so long to get here in the 1st place, I didn't bother, IDK. It's jst for my hobby parts bin. If I was richer, I'd only buy from more expensive sources.

So far I never had a seller or ebay refuse me a refund when something never arrived. Over about 10 years, I lost maybe 5 little packages, I can't remeber, it wasn't very many compared to how many I ordered, 1-2 I waited to long for, but no real problems money-wise for me on ebay.


Lately I bought some electronics parts/tools on Amazon too. That was all good enough for me too, no complaint's so far.

Usually if I want to buy 10 or 20 transistors, just search on ebay by lowest price and see a top rated seller with lot's of sales, and then just add the to my cart. And overall for common parts that's ok.

But I should start buying better parts for myself, but I already have lot's of cheap parts now, and the cycle continues.
 
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dendad

Joined Feb 20, 2016
4,452
I too buy lots of electronic stuff on Ebay and have had very few problems.
Packaging mostly. A couple of ESP32 boards with LCDs broken but I could not be bothered chasing them up.
A laser engraver with DOA laser module that the seller replaced.
Usually the commercial sellers are very concerned they get good feedback so fix problems.
Ebay uses PayPal and that is a good way to protect your credit card. My card just got canceled (new on issued a couple of days ago) when I purchased some parts on Aliexpress. The stores only took credit cards, no PayPal.
I will probably not go back there!
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
Please, anybody bought electronics from eBay? I want to buy some packs for Transistors and Resistors but there is no contact, how can I contact them. I have never bought anything from overseas. Help me to trust eBay...
Personally, I wouldn't trust many of the people selling electronic components on eBay unless they were selling odd lots of parts they picked up from company liquidations or garage sales. If they have a store and have "regular" stock, I steer clear of them. Sometimes the sellers post pictures that show the product they're selling is clearly counterfeit.

I once purchased some CMOS IC's from someone who appeared to buy large quantity and then repackage to sell in smaller quantity. They were clueless about ESD and put the chips in florist's foam and then put them in plastic zip lock bags. I had to mark all of the devices as "suspect" and put them in antistatic tubes.

eBay and Amazon don't care that sellers are pushing counterfeit parts. I've gotten counterfeit parts from Ali Express, eBay, and Amazon.

Buy parts from reputable distributors if you want to avoid headaches. The most reputable will include letters of authenticity with their shipments (Jameco and Newark). Tayda Electronics doesn't, but they claim to only buy parts from distributors.
 
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rsjsouza

Joined Apr 21, 2014
383
Personally, I wouldn't trust many of the people selling electronic components on eBay unless they were selling odd lots of parts they picked up from company liquidations or garage sales. If they have a store and have "regular" stock, I steer clear of them. Sometimes the sellers post pictures that show the product they're selling is clearly counterfeit.
I am the same. Apart from very specific cases where parts are out of production or are a specific brand/model/type that I can't find anywhere else, the regular parts are better served by either local or online distributors.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
I am the same.
eBay was okay 10 years ago or so. Now it's full of stuff from China; to me, that means likely counterfeit. Especially when they have some hard to find component cheap (like LM3914).

This listing shows a part that's clearly counterfeit:
clipimage.jpg
The leads have been sandblasted and the top has been "black topped". The package color should be uniform (top, bottom, and sides).

They're being sold as new. https://www.ebay.com/c/1670150683
 

rsjsouza

Joined Apr 21, 2014
383
Yes, I forgot about that. The Chinese have been quite good in bringing polish to repurposed old and out of production ICs and parts.
 

ElectricSpidey

Joined Dec 2, 2017
2,758
I buy all my semiconductor, resistors, caps...etc from Digi-Key or other such dealers, but I will buy hardware such as terminals, headers and such from Amazon, eBay...etc.

Name brand stuff I also get from Amazon, but not eBay.

I never buy from aliexpress or any such dealers.
 

Deleted member 115935

Joined Dec 31, 1969
0
Please, anybody bought electronics from eBay? I want to buy some packs for Transistors and Resistors but there is no contact, how can I contact them. I have never bought anything from overseas. Help me to trust eBay...
Note : Don't purchase from anything apart from approved supplies for low stress life.

I a company that had problems with a build batch, turned out the 244 driver IC's they had purchase, apart from the first few 10's on the reel, did not have any silicon in side them, just a plastic case ..

for the cost of a few transistors and resistors, the local farnell / Rs / Digikey is well worth the extra few cents,.
 

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
for the cost of a few transistors and resistors
It's mind boggling what the Chinese will counterfeit. I saw piles of reclaimed surface mount capacitors in a document about Chinese counterfeiting. Since those components are never labeled, you have no idea what you're getting. They just sort by package size.

This is from a counterfeiting report from NASA:
clipimage.jpg

When you buy an 8 pin DIP IC, all you can be certain of is that it has 8 pins.
clipimage.jpg
 

ErnieM

Joined Apr 24, 2011
8,377
I've used EBay for things like resistors and caps, transistors, connectors, and small boards like ESP things. Never had a very bad experience, worst was $15 shipping to return an LCD display shipped in an envelope that cost 25 or 30 bucks.

Lately I do limit my searches to US suppliers knowing many just reship stuff from China.

Mostly these are small orders so free shipping is important. For larger things I use DigiKey or Mouser or such.
 

Audioguru again

Joined Oct 21, 2019
6,674
I always buy good parts from Digikey or Newark.
Amazon, AliExpress, Banggood and others sell "anything", including clothing and shoes from China and I never buy their garbage.
Garbage, yes, ebay sells a lot of garbage.
 
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