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Thread: i love eBay...

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  1. ... just picked up a excellent condition 6" milling vice for £34 and a brand new swivelling 4" millng vice for £20...

  2. ... and a set of 10 pairs of 1/8" x 6" parallels in excellent nick for £15

  3. #3
    Nice one Irving! gota love the bay !
    .Me

  4. #4
    I too love fleabay.

    I just bought an MPG ( one of these ), a four axis version form a guy in deepest darkest Hong Kong. He seemed personable enough, always replied to my many questions promptly but always started his replies with "my good friend". Now where I come from, when someone refers to you as "friend" like that, doesn't always mean they are your friend and quite possibly you are in for a duffing so I was a little apprehensive. After much mulling, I clicked the "buy it now" button and sent my money off, fully expecting never to see it or my MPG alive again. Four days later a parcel arrives from Hong Kong, marked as "present" so as not to attract the feds, tee hee, and inside was my MPG and a little note saying that, sorry, they had run out of four axis and had sent a six axis one instead (selling on the bay for 60 quid more than I paid)and they hoped I would not be dissapointed. Dissapointed? Moi?

    I learned two things.

    1 NEVER judge a book by its cover

    2 I can get things from halfway around the world faster than I can get them from the UK and at sensible prices. They don't ignore you and service seems to be pretty high up on their list of priorities. (MD take note)

    End of rant. (feel better now)

    Oh yes and the MPG is built like a brick outhouse, very high quality but my God the instructions are written in Chinglish, anyone know what a "Patulous" is because I have to be careful to wire it in so the original sculpt is in no way anti-interferetiaiai.

    Jeff.

    PS, Irving I am not in any way whatsoever jealous of you getting those vices
    Nothing is foolproof......to a sufficiently talented fool!

  5. #5
    Generally speaking, I've also found that buying from Chinese vendors has been a pretty good experience.

    I purchased some SBR16 supported rails and linear bearings from a Chinese vendor via eBay and am also well pleased. The total price for two 800mm rails, two 1000mm rails and eight carriages with linear bearings fitted was about £154, including postage. The parts arrived very quickly (a week quicker than some other parts ordered from MD at the same time). They were also exactly as ordered, packed well and of good quality.

    I've now purchased about two dozen items from China and so far have always recieved really good service.

    Jeremy

  6. Basically you are dealing with individuals or agents who buy from the local Chinese manufactures and sell at a low margin.
    The Chinese influx is making it hard for UK companies to deal on Ebay, and that is one of the reasons i wont be going back on ebay anytime soon.

    you have made a saving, but not by as much as you think.
    You were most likely lucky and not cought with the VAT and the Duty, if your were the cost would have been higher than buying from the UK.
    This is a risk you take at point of order, and you dont know how much it will cost you till it is delivered.
    Dealing with china is getting better all the time, but you maybe unlucky, if you have a faulty item, because they would expect you to ship it back to them for them to replace, and shipping 10KG and 1 meter long will cost you more than you are willing to pay.

    Quote Originally Posted by Jeremy View Post
    Generally speaking, I've also found that buying from Chinese vendors has been a pretty good experience.

    I purchased some SBR16 supported rails and linear bearings from a Chinese vendor via eBay and am also well pleased. The total price for two 800mm rails, two 1000mm rails and eight carriages with linear bearings fitted was about £154, including postage. The parts arrived very quickly (a week quicker than some other parts ordered from MD at the same time). They were also exactly as ordered, packed well and of good quality.

    I've now purchased about two dozen items from China and so far have always recieved really good service.

    Jeremy

  7. #7
    Gary,

    At the time I purchased these, the only UK vendor I could find wanted more than £400 for the same parts, so I thought I'd made quite a considerable saving even if I did get stung for VAT etc. I now realise that I could have bought these parts from you for around £183 inc VAT, which is almost certainly what I would have done had I known that you sold them, for just the reasons you've given.

    At the moment, having bought quite a few items from China, I'm now prepared for a loss on one before too long, just based on the law of averages with things going wrong. Even so, I have to say that I'll most probably still come out on top, given the good fortune I've had so far.

    I can understand, and sympathise, with UK vendors trying to compete with the Chinese. I doubt many consumers understand the risks, or even notice the often very high postage charges on ebay for goods from China. As far as I can see, the only way to compete with the Chinese ebay vendors is most probably to buy goods in bulk direct from the Chinese manufacturers, ship them by sea to save costs and hope that the quality is such that the return rate doesn't cause you to make a loss. All told a fairly risky enterprise, I would have thought.

    Jeremy

    PS: Now I know that you stock stuff I'll be buying some parts for the Z axis direct from you, as soon as I've finally decided what I need.

  8. One thing i have come to realize is that if you do your research right the quality of products from China or Taiwan can be very good.
    And you are right, for a UK company to compete with the Ebay chinese sellers is to buy in bulk.
    You have to get it in by sea so you have to wait about 10 weeks, and then you get stung with the VAT when you bring it in, so unless you are VAT registered expect to pay £1500 VAT on a £10000 order.
    You also pay the duty that can be about another 5%.
    The cost to get it from china is not a lot, but you get stung with a lot of customs and port charges, and then a masive charge to get it from the UK port to your address.
    This cost from the port is about 4 times the cost from the Chinese port to the UK port. (Go figure)
    My last order cost me over £2000 just to clear it from customs.
    I get asked all the time to add other products to our range, but we cant afford to spread ourselves too thin, because in this induestry word of mouth is the best advertisement, so we try to stock 90% of what we have in our range, with the other 10% either on the sea or in stock at another company.


    Quote Originally Posted by Jeremy View Post
    Gary,

    At the time I purchased these, the only UK vendor I could find wanted more than £400 for the same parts, so I thought I'd made quite a considerable saving even if I did get stung for VAT etc. I now realise that I could have bought these parts from you for around £183 inc VAT, which is almost certainly what I would have done had I known that you sold them, for just the reasons you've given.

    At the moment, having bought quite a few items from China, I'm now prepared for a loss on one before too long, just based on the law of averages with things going wrong. Even so, I have to say that I'll most probably still come out on top, given the good fortune I've had so far.

    I can understand, and sympathise, with UK vendors trying to compete with the Chinese. I doubt many consumers understand the risks, or even notice the often very high postage charges on ebay for goods from China. As far as I can see, the only way to compete with the Chinese ebay vendors is most probably to buy goods in bulk direct from the Chinese manufacturers, ship them by sea to save costs and hope that the quality is such that the return rate doesn't cause you to make a loss. All told a fairly risky enterprise, I would have thought.

    Jeremy

    PS: Now I know that you stock stuff I'll be buying some parts for the Z axis direct from you, as soon as I've finally decided what I need.

  9. #9
    Just to be clear here, I would never attempt to buy anything like a 1m long ball screw from China. I am not stupid and realise shipping chrges alone will be double the value of the item. I would certainly not risk the sort of money I've spent with Zapp on eBay purchases abroad. What gets my goat is when buying from UK companies, you almost think they are doing you a favour by selling you their goods. If Gary stocked a pendant even at 20% more than I bought mine from I would have bought it from him but sad fact is he don't sell 'em and they are as rare and costly as hens teeth when you can find someone who will stoop to sell you one. Even if I had been hit by the VAT, it would still have been MILES cheaper than I could have bought one here. As Gary says, it is a calculated risk but so is any purchase, UK or worlwide.

    Not having a go at Gary at all, service has always been A1 and Zapp can't have too wide a range of stock in these times so he is forgiven for not stocking the exact items I want to buy ;).

    Regards, Jeff.
    Nothing is foolproof......to a sufficiently talented fool!

  10. #10
    I'm pretty familiar with the whole UK transport cost issue, as I've been involved in importing container loads of stuff from the US to here in the past. Like you I have always been staggered at the high charges from handling agents and internal UK transport - it always seems like money for old rope to me.

    Last time I did a personal import by sea (a second-user Mistubishi Pajero from Japan) I avoided quite a bit of the cost by going down to the docks at Dublin and dealing with the paperwork myself. The only snag I had was getting my container down from a massive pile of several hundred of the things and persuading the dockies to put it somewhere where I could open it and drive the car out!

    All told that was an interesting exercise in faith, as I bought the car, sight unseen, from a Japanese auction, relied on a Japanese agent that I didn't know to deal with the deregistration, export paperwork and packing into the container and had the excitement of opening the container doors several weeks later not knowing quite what I'd find inside!

    Still all worked out OK and I even managed to avoid VAT and duty by temporarily registering the car in Eire, driving it over the border to NI, re-registering it there on NI plates and driving it back home to Scotland, where I then lived. At that time second hand imported cars were exempted from tax and duty in Eire, making it the obvious place to bring in goods from outside the EU.

    Jeremy

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