Forumite Members › General Topics › Shopping › Electrical › Amazon selling tactics vs. Ebay.
- This topic has 8 replies, 6 voices, and was last updated 6 years, 6 months ago by
Bob Williams.
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September 3, 2019 at 6:44 pm #36395
I just tried to order a simple USB3 to USB2 internal cable from Amazon, £2.59. They would not sell it unless accompanied by an “Add On” for a further £17. Copied and pasted the item description, got it from Ebay for £3 delivered.
This is for my son’s ancient PC, a massive ATX mobo, Gigabyte 990 FXA-UD3. It was my senior grandson’s first ‘serious’ PC in 2011. Then passed to me, then rebuilt for my son, who made the mistake of letting No.2 gson “fix it” when it (apparently) died, with a generic Chinese PSU. Which blew its fan without anyone noticing. I wound up with the Proper Fix Job, took back the original Thermaltake 550 Watt PSU I had fitted and refitted it. Half the internal connections missing, box and manual missing. I downloaded all drivers and a manual. I have it to the point of booting and everything works. I have had a mobo tester for years and that showed all rails and the PSU working fine. Tomorrow I will connect it all, reinstall Windows and hopefully take it back, with an instruction to keep No.2 away from it. The mobo has a Phenom X2 950 which was overclocked to X4 and this was a good old PC for my son, who has no serious heavy duty needs.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.September 3, 2019 at 8:09 pm #36402Happens all the time Bob.
I was looking for a specific James Brown album yesterday, £5 new on Amazon or 99p + £1.83 for postage from Music Magpie in ‘excellent’ condition used. Checked eBay and Music Magpie were selling it for £1.99 delivered, also in ‘excellent’ condition, used.
I would have used my Play store credit but they don’t do the album I’m after, about 60 other ones though!
September 3, 2019 at 9:41 pm #36408They stopped that a few years ago, but have brought it back in again now. I don’t think it applies to Prime customers, but you obviously pay for that priviledge!
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
September 4, 2019 at 9:35 am #36422I don’t think it applies to Prime customers
It should not, but it does I’m afraid. In the same vein ‘ next day delivery ‘ often does not apply. Many Chibay providers hide away on Amazon Prime, and do not provide next day delivery even for Prime customers but they do fly in their products.
September 4, 2019 at 11:03 am #36423I only buy direct for amazon, and usally filter by prime. Alot of the cheaper items are “add on” items. But given I use it almost daily, if something is classed as an add on, I just drop it in the basket until I next visit.
September 4, 2019 at 2:42 pm #36425I am on Prime Steve and I see what you mean about dropping it into the basket for next time. Unfortunately, I needed this item for my lad’s desktop. I need to get it done and gone, as I have limited room in the spare bedroom/my office/device repair & rebuild room and I have to disconnect and move my own desktop. Don’t want granddaughter to stop sleepovers, but it’s inevitable that at 14 that will soon happen. Then I have a workshop/office. But I will take the opportunity to strip and clean my PC and transfer everything to an SSD. Been meaning to do that for ages: I may be offline for a bit.
Just found out it’s on its way and the seller is about 20 miles north of me, near Grimsby! Sent me an email to say he posted it this morning. Had I known, I would have picked it up myself, I was up there briefly yesterday.
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
I'm out.September 4, 2019 at 7:46 pm #36428It should not, but it does I’m afraid. In the same vein ‘ next day delivery ‘ often does not apply. Many Chibay providers hide away on Amazon Prime, and do not provide next day delivery even for Prime customers but they do fly in their products.
Add on items I can see, but I thought Amazon had once again removed the free postage option for under £20 of items for non Prime members?
"Everything looks interesting until you do it. Then you find it’s just another job" - Terry Pratchett
September 4, 2019 at 9:47 pm #36433But I will take the opportunity to strip and clean my PC and transfer everything to an SSD. Been meaning to do that for ages: I may be offline for a bit.
If you can, disconnect the old drive and just do a fresh install on the new. Once it’s up and running, copy over whatever you need and keep the old intact as a temporary backup. It’s what I just did with the laptop, and it made it a lot easier for my dodgy memory 😀
September 8, 2019 at 5:49 pm #36523Thanks Ryan, I was going to do it that way and then decided to clone the spinner with Macrium and copy the whole clone to the SSD. Macrium used its Trim process to copy and it was all done within an hour. I already back up to a NAS, so I will install the spinner as music, video and photo storage. Those are the biggest space hogs now, and growing exponentially. Both drives will then be image backups to the NAS. Redundancy!
I have been offline for a while due to another PC problem: my son’s desktop, which kept shutting down. Initially No.2 gson “thought it was” the Thermaltake 500Watt PSU I fitted some time ago, without any testing, and replaced it with a cheapo generic item. Son then ran the desktop without noticing the cheapo PSU fan had died. I tested both PSU’s with my power tester: generic was indeed dead, probably soon after fitting. Thermaltake was fine, all rails good. Starting the PC revealed a message in the lower right corner “This copy of Windows is not genuine.*” After installing an old but legal Win7/64 Home that I had possessed for a few years, it ran happily through all the zillions of updates since SP1 and died again. Atm, I have just stripped out the PhenomII X4 CPU, cleaned it, replaced the crumbling thermal paste and refitted. My last step will be to clone his spinner and copy it to a 1TB Hdd. But before the thing last died, I had noticed a new message in Device Manager, that the USB Controller had failed. I will download this from Gigabyte UK. If it’s still dying, it’s time for a visit to WEE and a new Bundle: nothing too fancy.
*He’s a very naughty boy!
When the Thought Police arrive at your door, think -
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