[sdiy] High Grin Factor

[Tim Parkhurst]

Wow, what a crappy ebay experience! My only bad ebay was some guy with a
handle of "sevenfreshkitty" who screwed me out of $13 on an ARP sequencer
service manual. Shoulda checked the feedback more carefully. Moral of the
story: NEVER buy from anyone who hides their feedback, or who has less than
99% positive.

Tim Servo

"Don't worry about people stealing an idea. If it's original, you will have
to ram it down their throats." -Howard Aiken

********************************************************

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glen [mailto:mclilith at charter.net]
> Sent: Monday, August 11, 2003 1:22 PM
> To: Tim Ressel; Synth-Diy
> Subject: Re: [sdiy] High Grin Factor
> 
> At 04:34 PM 8/7/03 , Tim Ressel wrote:
> >Hey all,
> >
> >I just received my latest eBay score: A pair of HP3455
> >6.5 digit voltmeters. One works great, one needs its
> >brain unscrambled. Not bad for $60!!
> 
> Inspired partly by your recent successes with HP test equipment on eBay, I
> bought an HP 5328A Universal Counter. I sent my money order payment via
> UPS
> overnight delivery, to make up for waiting through a weekend to mail it.
> When the UPS clerk discovered that I was paying for an eBay transaction,
> he
> started telling me his personal horror story about getting ripped off
> through eBay. I couldn't help but get a bad feeling at this point. It just
> seemed like a jinx or a bad omen or something--as silly as that might
> sound
> to some of you.
> 
> The seller took about 4 days to send the package after getting my money
> order. It's not like I sent a check and he had to wait for it to clear his
> bank.
> 
> FedEx Ground literally got lost and delayed the delivery for 4 days, while
> trying to find my house.
> 
> It finally arrived today.
> 
> It doesn't work.
> 
> Despite what the seller claimed, it is nowhere near fully functional. In
> fact it won't make the first measurement of anything, though it does
> "light
> up" and the display "responds" to the various control settings. Speaking
> of
> controls, all the slide switches and even the main power switch are
> horribly dirty. I'll have to replace the power switch. It's just too
> unreliable.
> 
> He also sent a different unit than what he pictured in his listing. While
> that might be fairly common for eBay, he stressed in his ad to "LOOK at
> the
> PICS!", as proof that I would be bidding on a nice piece of gear. There
> would be no reason to stress this, if the unit in the pics was not the
> unit
> being bid on. Either he had several of these things sitting around, and
> sent me the wrong one, or he simply ripped me off.
> 
> I've never been burned on eBay before. It doesn't feel very nice. At least
> it wasn't for thousands of dollars. (I doubt that I would ever want to buy
> a rare synth, for big money on eBay, for fear of something like this
> happening.)
> 
> Tim, if I bid on another piece of HP test equipment in the future, could I
> *please* borrow your lucky rabbit's foot?    :)
> 
> Come on, I know you have one.   :)
> 
> 
> later,
> Glen Berry



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