Back in 2005 before moving I sold 2 computers I really did not want to sell via E-bay because I needed to pay up to replace the transmission in my Truck as it blew a week before leaving.....a Compaq Deskpro 386, but the kicker was the Micro Configurations Corporation 0A XT clone that I sold....which also had a shit sandwhich GETTING it to my house about 2 years earlier...

(2 years before)

I "won" the PC on an E-bay auction for about $35.00 (total about $49.00 incl shipping) and it shipped to me and took about 2 weeks to arrive. When it did arrive, I had a UPS guy carrying it up to my house in a broken box filled with foam packing peanuts - leaking all over our front lawn - and held together by 2 plastic straps.

Between 2003 and 2005 - I upgraded that computer considerably, adding a 2nd Hard Disk, a Adlib card, a EGA card, IBM Model "F" 83 Key keyboard, Serial mouse, and IBM 5153 CRT Monitor. When it came time to sell it, I sold it as a complete, working setup. Here it is.....

(March 2005 - Sold on E-bay for more than I paid for it, with monitor, mouse, and keyboard......)

Let me just say, Fuck You UPS! You bring me this thing in a box that looks like you hit it with your truck, then I ship it out, packed in multiple boxes of the right size, wrapped in bubble wrap, and EVERYTHING, in it's own box, properly packed to hell and back, got destroyed - EVERYTHING....I'm not even going to look at the pictures again, it made my heart sink and still does to this day. To this day I really try as I might to avoid using UPS as a courier for any computer item or product that is high dollar or that I care about for this reason.

CPU case was bent where the flip-top hinges were, drives were flung out of their slots, faceplates for the hard drives were ripped of (irreplaceable), the hard disks were for sure toast, it looks like it got some rust too - what The FUCK did UPS do to this thing!?!?!? Recipient said it would not POST, so who knows if they damaged any cards or the motherboard in transit too (starts getting mad).....

And the United Parcel Smashers must have also done one HELL of a number on an IMMACULATE IBM 5153 CGA RGB Monitor - I mean that monitor was slike brand fucking new when I shipped it out. Now it was broken open, I can't remember if the CRT was damaged or not (neck of tube broken off?), but I remember the user saying he was scrapping it because it was hazardous and useless.....Useless Penis Shippers!!!

Not even the IBM Model F Keyboard survived - just what the FUCK were these guys doing with the hardware I shipped? Playing racketball with it? Did the UPS truck get a flat tire and they figured an XT Clone would make a good tire chock!?!? I refunded the guy his money and wrote quite a nasty rant about it on Vintage Computer Forums at the time. This paired with FedEx leaving the case that is now my 486 on the elderly lady's doorsteup up the street for about a week before I figured out those idiots can't read really fueled my hatred. It made shipping the IBM EduQuest I sold afterward in a KDS monitor box with enough wrapping to protect a newborn baby in transit at 60Mph up a rocky incline in a rock crawler truck through USPS harrowing until it arrived to it's new owner - unscathed.

God, I don't miss selling computers via E-bay. heck, even the recent upgrades with me receiving parts through E-bay has me in worry because I still get the occasional mess-up by United Parcel Smashers, Federal Executioners and Dummies Handling Logistics messing things up every so often. This is why I support my local PC recycler businesses more often now - at least from RE-PC or PC Recycle, I don't need to fear some postage handler throwing a rare and expensive Beige case around like a helium filled balloon and then delivering it to the bratty stoner teenagers downstairs.

Yeah, you need to assume the parcel will be tossed about in transit. Consider using a wooden crate or even a pallet for large and fragile items.

Errius wrote:

Yeah, you need to assume the parcel will be tossed about in transit. Consider using a wooden crate or even a pallet for large and fragile items.

Or an FAA approved Anvil Flight Case with a Parchute!

So recently I bought a motherboard that arrived both damaged do to bad shipping and poorly repaired and was no good.
In fact the board still had a lot of flux on it.

So I open a SNAD case stating the damage and poor repairs. The seller then goes on about how it was me that repaired the board and non existent warranty stickers. Being that this was eBay I stopped talking to the seller and waited for eBay to step in. But the seller jump the gun and *iched to eBay stating that I altered the board when I never said such. I appealed the case and it was denied.

Now eBay contracted me via email stating that there sorry for my bad experience and want to make it up to me.
So for the 90$ I'm out they gave me a 15$ off a item priced 30$ or higher.

So I lose 90$ and they give me a 15$ off coupon that requires me to spend 30$ or more?
Sorry, and I don't swear much, but that's fucked up.

But I payed via credit card. Charge back wins the day. 😈

Jade Falcon wrote:

So recently I bought a motherboard that arrived both damaged do to bad shipping and poorly repaired and was no good. In fact th […]
Show full quote

So recently I bought a motherboard that arrived both damaged do to bad shipping and poorly repaired and was no good.
In fact the board still had a lot of flux on it.

So I open a SNAD case stating the damage and poor repairs. The seller then goes on about how it was me that repaired the board and non existent warranty stickers. Being that this was eBay I stopped talking to the seller and waited for eBay to step in. But the seller jump the gun and *iched to eBay stating that I altered the board when I never said such. I appealed the case and it was denied.

Now eBay contracted me via email stating that there sorry for my bad experience and want to make it up to me.
So for the 90$ I'm out they gave me a 15$ off a item priced 30$ or higher.

So I lose 90$ and they give me a 15$ off coupon that requires me to spend 30$ or more?
Sorry, and I don't swear much, but that's fucked up.

But I payed via credit card. Charge back wins the day. 😈

Mmmm that's my first time hearing a seller winning a case. Usually ebay is quite biased on the buyer side.

@Creepingnet: sounds like they ran over your package with a truck. Check for black marks next time something like that happens.

Worst I've had was a parcel (not containing electronics thankfully) that arrived half-crushed, with that same half soaking wet as if it had stood in some standing water for at least a day, the whole held together with loads and loads of "We've opened your package"-postal tape 😵 , that also had clear traces of getting stuck under a cart. Filed a complaint about that one with Dutch Post, never received a reply to the complaint 😠 Fortunately the book in it was wrapped in lots of plastic before shipping...

Another time I had a parcel with a clearly foot-shaped hole in it. 😐

I've not had too many bad buying experiences, probably worst was UK royal mail leaving a package outside in the soaking rain. When I open it, it's that rare book that I ordered that's now totally ruined..

For selling, my worst was a Creative Decoder/Amplifier, quite rare and expensive. I packed it up very carefully. I started getting messages from the buyer in a rage swearing saying he's going to report me and get me banned from eBay etc., turns out Royal Mail once again decided to smash my parcel in the exact place where the only sticky out part was (the volume knob) pushing it back into the unit and breaking the PCB. Funnily enough most of the functions still worked except the LEDs below the volume control and the control itself obviously. Apparently because the unit had been opened previously (for cleaning) then he was convinced I sold it to him that way, and despite the big crunch in the parcel exactly in that space, he refused to accept it could have been damaged in transit. That was quite the nightmare to sort out

Haha that reminds me. Not eBay another company. I ordered a vinyl 7" single once and the postman folded the package in half to fit it inside my mailbox. 😵

Not a selling experience... but I just received a GPU naked in a thin cardboard envelope with no packaging material of any kind -- envelope was ripped and weathered. The best part is they charged 17$ shipping.

Generic Pentium 75 system, packed in a box with minimal packaging. Opened it, the CPU was hanging by a few pins and dangling, the CPU cooler was absolutely decimated and the PC speaker was completely disconnected and damaged. Everything worked fine and thankfully the CPU was not too damaged; I got a partial refund and didn't really have any issue with the guy who seemed genuinely nice.

I did, however, get a cheap ARK 1000PV card in the tower, which was a nice addition 😀

The two problems I've had ordering entire computers are broken bezels and loose internal fans. The plastic bezel is the weakest part of the case, and when the box is tossed off of trucks, planes etc. it usually breaks unless the packager really knew what he was doing. Also, fans have a tendency to come loose when the box is rolled about in transit. The CPU heatsink/fan in particular can come loose and smash against the motherboard and other delicate components. The solution to this is to fill the case with bubble wrap or some other padding.

worst buying experiance on ebay:

Hardware: A2386SX25 PC-Board for Amiga 2000 seller: *****

Frist one does not have all chips, I sent it back to the US, got a new one that freezes the A2000 after loading the drivers.
Some specialists could not fix this issu. 2 years gone, seller (azcolor) has quit from ebay...

lots of shippingcosts, repair approches and the card itself is much more expensive than buying a tested and functioning board.
I spend about 500 Dollars for everything and have NOTHING!

Thats ARGH!
Doc

I don't sell much on eBay, so my worst buying experience was when I bought an old Apple Macintosh Performa 5200CD.

Seller was taking the absolute piss with postage time, I had to keep bugging them for weeks. When it eventually turned up, nearly a month later, the plastic case was smashed inside the box. There was literally bits of plastic everywhere, I'm guessing the seller KNEW the state it was in, hence the delay. I ended up keeping the system and repaired it as best as I could, seller got negative feedback. It survived for quite a few years, but the initial damage must have weakened the plastic and combined with being stored in a warm environment, the case went brittle and literally disintegrated in my hands when I tried to move it from storage. 😠

dr.zeissler did you just name a "bad seller" in your post?

No. No, you guys are not doing that.

</moderator>

Errius wrote:

The two problems I've had ordering entire computers are broken bezels and loose internal fans. The plastic bezel is the weakest part of the case, and when the box is tossed off of trucks, planes etc. it usually breaks unless the packager really knew what he was doing. Also, fans have a tendency to come loose when the box is rolled about in transit. The CPU heatsink/fan in particular can come loose and smash against the motherboard and other delicate components. The solution to this is to fill the case with bubble wrap or some other padding.

Actually, the real correct way to ship stuff like that is to remove the heatsink and package it separately so it can't mess anything up. The same goes for heavy add-in cards and also for anything else that is not held in by screws.

Leaving a heavy heatsink attached is an especially bad idea as it can cause major flexing to the board and damage the socket.

Jade Falcon wrote:

I probably have everyone beat here.
So I sell a i7 6700k a ways back for around $380, the guy that buys it says he put it in a alienware and it did not work. Having worked on alienwares I asked him what model it was and lo and behold he needed a bios update but he refused to do so he filed a fake NAD case and retuned it.

That'll teach him 😀. That's a pretty bad one. I was thinking about selling of an extra i7-6700K as well but you got $380 for it that's a good chunk of change. I think it cost about $300 plus tax on sale when I got one of them. I guess I'm not going to risk selling it after hearing your story.

lazibayer wrote:

That reminds me one time a buyer returned 486sx + mobo combo with CPU rotated 90 degrees. Luckily I spotted that out before running any tests.

🤣 I didn't know it could be rotated sideways. Thought it was the wrong direction only. Always look for that corner.

Jorpho wrote:

I traded in my Nintendo DS Lite, and figured I could sell the box and manuals on eBay. Some people like that sort of thing, y'see. I carefully listed an auction title along the lines of "Nintendo DS Lite EMPTY BOX!" and wrote repeatedly in BOLD that THIS AUCTION IS FOR AN EMPTY BOX.

Item sells (quite cheaply) and I ship it off. A few hours later I get a NAD report. The guy says he bought it because he was "planning to fix it" (as if I said something was broken..?) and he got "so excited" he didn't read to the end of the title.

I would have just kept that box. Too many chances of that happening. The only way I could think of selling something like that would be to open both flaps of that empty box and take light flashing snapshots from both sides and nothing else around the box to mislead the buyer. Then Top and bottom and diagonal shots with the flaps open on both sides.

Maybe in the body of the description in the first 20 lines of text repeated "THERE IS NO DS LITE INCLUDED - EMPTY MANUFACTURER BOX ONLY".

And in case of a mistranslation. Make the sale only to US and North American bidders.

Brickpad wrote:

Last year I sold a Pentium 4 2.8GHz Prescott chip for $5.95 + $2.50 shipping. Buyer bought the chip on a Thursday evening, I shipped out on Monday, since I couldn't get to it right away. Went to drop off, but forgot Monday was a holiday, so I promptly contacted the buyer of the error, and would immediately ship out the following morning.

I put the CPU back up for sale with the same exact listing, and sold it under a week, and got positive feedback from the new buyer.

Wow that's a ton of headache over a P4. Sounds more like the $2.50 shipping cost seemed a bit steep to the buyer. Sounds more like it was a BIN listing so that would be a bit odd to complain about getting that refunded. I would have kept my mouth shut and shipped it the day you would have and probably the buyer wouldn't have known any different. Sometimes you get those time bomb buyers.

lazibayer wrote:

Errius wrote:

The postal price rises of 2008+ really put a dent in profitability of eBay.

What was it like before 2008? I came to the US in 2009 so I don't know nothin' about it.

Back then around 2003-2007 shipping costs were gloriously cheap. I remember getting something 50 pounds shipped and it might have cost like $20-$30 at most. Today it is probably like $60+. Even First Class Mail Packages have skyrocketed. Before you could mail 6 ounces for like $1.50 or so. International Shipping was somewhat expensive then but nowhere close to what it is now. As buyer the best deals were buying computer software and getting the seller to ship it USPS Media Mail. Later USPS forced it so you can't classify it as Media Mail anymore so now everything is basically Priority Mail. Good deals those days were. Tons of vintage software for the cheap. Shipping costs today kill most of the great deals.

lazibayer wrote:

Just got my hard drive returned from the buyer. Not via ebay, though; the transaction was made on Amazon. I took the photo right after I opened the box.
Thank god (or maybe Seagate) the drive is still alive.

What the... How did you originally package that drive for the buyer?

candle_86 wrote:

I sold an FX5900XT Pixel Link Proview Limited Golden Edition to a guy back in 2006, it was working fine when I shipped it, was in an anti static bag, surrounded by bubble rap in a box, that i then put into another box with packing peanuts and shipped it off. The guy went insane, it arrived but wouldn't post, I offered to refund him, and he demanded i pay him extra because of his inconvenience, tried to file mail fraud against me, which I found out when I got interviewed, because he claimed I was intentionally cheating people out of their money by selling broken merchandise on purpose and listing it as good.

Sounds like good packaging method used. Did you ever get it back? Usually you just have it return shipped out of your pocket. Oh Jean-Luc... There are... FOURRR LIGHTS!!!

creepingnet wrote:

Back in 2005 before moving I sold 2 computers I really did not want to sell via E-bay because I needed to pay up to replace the […]
Show full quote

Back in 2005 before moving I sold 2 computers I really did not want to sell via E-bay because I needed to pay up to replace the transmission in my Truck as it blew a week before leaving.....a Compaq Deskpro 386, but the kicker was the Micro Configurations Corporation 0A XT clone that I sold....which also had a shit sandwhich GETTING it to my house about 2 years earlier...

(2 years before)

I "won" the PC on an E-bay auction for about $35.00 (total about $49.00 incl shipping) and it shipped to me and took about 2 weeks to arrive. When it did arrive, I had a UPS guy carrying it up to my house in a broken box filled with foam packing peanuts - leaking all over our front lawn - and held together by 2 plastic straps.

Between 2003 and 2005 - I upgraded that computer considerably, adding a 2nd Hard Disk, a Adlib card, a EGA card, IBM Model "F" 83 Key keyboard, Serial mouse, and IBM 5153 CRT Monitor. When it came time to sell it, I sold it as a complete, working setup. Here it is.....

(March 2005 - Sold on E-bay for more than I paid for it, with monitor, mouse, and keyboard......)

Let me just say, Fuck You UPS!

Yeah. What you said... Wow I think your experience takes the cake. Now you got me curious of the Aftermath photos of how it ended up returned. You even had an authentic IBM monitor. No!!! I kind of cherish those things. The keyboards were nice mechanical click 5 pin Din but oh were they heavy duty. 😊

Only bad exchanges I've ever had selling something was offering free shipping without realizing international buyers got it too and started the bid at $0.99 and some bidder from Venezuela won. Wouldn't you know it was the Atari 400 E.T. cartridge. The same one that got mass dumped by Atari in some land fill. The Express shipping cost with tracking was like $23 and I told the buyer about it and said it was on its way as I didn't want to deal with negative feedback possibility on a clean 100% feedback record. Although back then retaliation feedback could be done by the seller unlike today. The guy offered to pay for the shipping cost after I told him I had paid for it but sometimes you got to eat the price and learn from it. 😠

95DosBox wrote:

lazibayer wrote:

Just got my hard drive returned from the buyer. Not via ebay, though; the transaction was made on Amazon. I took the photo right after I opened the box.
Thank god (or maybe Seagate) the drive is still alive.

What the... How did you originally package that drive for the buyer?

Definitely not in the same condition... Packed inside a antistatic plastic bag, wrapped by bubble wrap, and I made sure it didn't wobble inside the box.

lazibayer wrote:

95DosBox wrote:

lazibayer wrote:

Just got my hard drive returned from the buyer. Not via ebay, though; the transaction was made on Amazon. I took the photo right after I opened the box.
Thank god (or maybe Seagate) the drive is still alive.

What the... How did you originally package that drive for the buyer?

Definitely not in the same condition... Packed inside a antistatic plastic bag, wrapped by bubble wrap, and I made sure it didn't wobble inside the box.

If I were trying to sell that drive or at least try and package and ship it to someone. Say it was a hard drive filled with family memorabilia photos, videos, et cetera. If I had to use that shipping box I would also find a much smaller box for the laptop hard drive. Use the anti-static gray bag like you did then tape it shut. Then thick bubblewrap around that anti-static bag with 3-4 layers. Then place that into a small sturdy shipping box and then fill the empty space inside if any with foam peanuts. Then put that small sturdy shipping box into that bigger box you have in the photo return shipped which I assume was your original shipping box to the buyer. But also refill the empty space inside the larger shipping box with maybe newspaper rolled into big balls and foam peanuts combo and then seal up to go. I ship it like a tank because I expect the du**a**ses to drop kick this at least 20 times before it gets to its destination. It's a shame the "Buyer" didn't respect you enough to return it with the same protection you originally provided for it. 🙁 At least we have SSDs now so no worries about going that far. 😲