2014-12-01

Why do I buy on Ebay from Chinese sellers?

Ebay is an interesting place when it comes to shopping for electronic parts. You can find dirt cheap components from sellers on the far East, but you can also buy a reel of metal slugs instead of real ICs. Having had some bad experiences with shady sellers and long shipping times, I generally try to buy from US sources. The prices are not that great, but at least I don't have to wait 4-6 weeks for delivery, I tend to trust US sellers more (even if they sell the same Chinese crap), and I prefer to shop locally instead of pumping extra dollars into the Yellow Dragon's economy. However, there are days that I just want to say "fuck the political correctness" and go ahead and stuff the shopping cart with parts sold by all the Liang Mings of Ebay. Just like today.

I was looking for a few small, simple, ON-ON DPDT switches. As usual, I restricted the search to North American sellers. I didn't have problems finding more than enough sources, at decent prices, however if I didn't know exactly what I was looking for, I'd have no idea what they were selling. Why? Let me show you an example of an item description from a US source:
Can you see the problem? No? Ok. Let me show you an example of the Ebay page for a similar product from a Chinese seller:
Now, can you see the difference? That's the documentation.

Of course, you will start yelling at me that there are US sellers who put a lot of work into preparing the descriptions and there are Chinese sellers who don't give a fuck. Sure, you're correct. However out of over 10 US sources I checked (one with 28k+ feedbacks), just one page had approximate dimensions, and nobody bothered to post a screenshot from the PDF with documentation.
On the other hand, 3 out of 4 randomly chosen Chinese sellers offering such switches had detailed drawings with exact dimensions.

If you are a seller who runs business in America, and you stumbled upon my little rant, please stop whining that yellow competition is killing your business. Instead, stop treating your customers like idiots and put a little more effort into the preparation of the description. Good things tend to come back to those who do them. In this case they will came back in the form of green Presidents, left in your store by happy customers.



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