Jeez, some people are stupid!

...or they think I'M stupid.... dunno.

Anyway, bought an 128MB ATI Radeon 9250 PCI off eBay last week. It arrived this morning, well, kind of.

What I've actually been sent is an AGP card.

Not only that, but its not even a 9250, nor is it 128MB. Its a 4MB ATI Rage AGP card - a far cry from what I was told I was buying.

To add insult to injury, its not even as good as the near-identical 8MB ATI Rage I have lying uselessly in my parts bin.

E-mailed the seller to point out his error. With any luck he's just posted the wrong card... but I doubt it.

..can you get your money back?

No biggie if not, it was only £6.

I'd probably get more pleasure from leaving him really cruddy feedback, tbh.

yeah, give him the crud feedback....

That's probably what will happen given two assumptions:

1. Its going to cost me £1.50 to post it back to him.
2. He probably doesn't have the card he advertised at all.

..I thought eBay guarantee that what is listed is what you get, otherwise, all thing doesnt make sense...

I had a problem with extra memory I bought off ebay - obviously wanted to get an exact match to existing 2 sticks, and thought I'd found it for half the price, so thought I'd risk it.

It arrived and was completely different memory so was not happy.

The seller assured me it was an honest mix up, and so I asked him to prove he had the real thing by taking a photo of the real memory I had paid for, placed on top of a printed copy of the ebay page showing that I had bought it. Other than someone faking an image, this is a fairly foolproof way of getting the seller to prove what they're saying.

He did send just such a photo, so I sent the wrong memory back and a week later got the memory I had bought plus a cheque for £5 compensation for hassle and having to pay postage on sending the wrong memory back!

So ebay isn't all bad news. But I'd be wary...

There are a lot of retards on ebay, you just have to learn how to spot them before it's too late.

ebay is generally a pile of crap these days; the scammers have taken over.

This just gets better.

<me> Hi. Think you've sent me the wrong card - the one I received this morning in an ATI Rage 4MB AGP, not the ATI Radeon 128MB PCI I should have received.

<seller> is it not the 128mb, thats what i got told it was

<me> No mate - but I said it was 4MB, its actually 8MB so still 120MB short :) You can check by googling the serial number from the card which is 109-52800-01 - that's how I found out as I don't have a PC available with an AGP slot to try it on.

<seller> ah right im sorry about that, i dont no what to do - as i got told it was 128mb

<me> Given that its not even anything like what I thought I was getting (i.e. its not a New 128MB ATI Radeon 9250 PCI - its a ten year old ATI Rage 8MB AGP) I think the only option is for me to return it for a refund. What's your address? After that I guess you'd have to take it up with whoever told you it was something that it isn't. By the way - five of the pins on the top of the card are slightly bent - probably happened in the post.

(I should add at this point that he posted a graphics card to me in an unpadded brown A5 envelope, with some bubblewrap around it (with all the bubbles popped)).

LOL

LOL what was that saying.... oh yes "caveat emptor" or should that be "caveat venditor".... maybe both.

Good grief.

I've only heard good experiences about people using ebay [/sarcasm]

Follow the usual complaints procedure with eBay to get a refund.

If you didn't pay by PayPal it'll be a bit trickier though.

Dont forget to leave negative feedback.

lol... To return it, just stick a stamp in the top right corner of the card with a sticker for his address over the fan/heatsink! :D

Dabz

I've only had good experiences with ebay, but only bought 26 items over the last 6 years. So far they have all been honest and only one was slower than 1 week delivery.

Same here, when I bought something on ebay I always got what I thought I was getting but that was probably because I hardly ever bought anything with a stock photo, no photo or anything where the seller couldn't write properly. The times when I did it mostly turned out to be rubbish. I usually just bought PC games which I think is a fairly safe thing to buy but I would be more wary of PC hardware components because they're more technical so there's more chance of the seller making a mistake.

didnt someone post an ebay pic of some simms and gfx cards on carpets last year ;)

Yes - me.

My theory is some people are naturally phobic of scary tech stuff. They develop tunnel vision and become incapable of discerning things as soon as they realize that the product they are touching has some relation to a computer. For example, try guiding such a person through a GUI and they will only see things within 5 pixels of their mouse pointer. If they lose the mouse cursor, they are disabled for hours!
That is why we should never have stopped using command line interfaces ;)

With regards to video cards, they of course fumbled hopelessly around the packaging and the first thing they saw was a comparison chart on the back with Radeon 9250 on it.

Wouldn't have thought so since there wasn't any packaging.

The card says "Rage2C" on the top. It doesn't have a fan or even a heatsink, and it has a date "1998" on it. It also only fits an AGP slot.

Now you tell me, how does one get from that, to advertising it as a "New ATI Radeon 9250 128MB PCI"?

Every single part of that statement is untrue. Well, apart from the ATI bit.

@Gfk
you should have taken a picture of the card in it's "packaging" as I could just do with a good laugh right now.

Sounds like a 'bus ride with a baseball bat' to me :)

The 4mb ATI Rage cards were the crappiest of the crappity-crap-crap even 10 years ago. Ugh. You got burned.

I read the first 5 or 6 posts. Did he have an image of the item on his page?

This is not strictly an issue unless the vendor scuffed their shoes around on the carpet to build up a charge and didn't handle the electronics with any anti-static precautions...

AND



hmmmmmmmm......... How to spot a retard on ebay.......

Anywho, eBay is a crap shoot. It's always a gamble on if your actually going to find a deal. Most of the things you buy on there (remove antiques) are selling for a few dollars less than what you can get them for directly from the manufacturer (because everyone has taken to this "Buy direct from a whole-seller and sell it on eBay and make a fortune). Sure, there are some cases where someone is selling their used <insert product x here> however you ALWAYS have those guys that go in and drive up the bids 6 days before the auctions end, thus driving the price past retail anyhow.

Now lets talk about the people that make up the item price in the shipping........ Nope, lets not even go there....

Bottom line is, if you want to save a dollar or two (literally) on a product that is less than 5 years old, but want the hassle of guessing on the sellers morals and ethics, use eBay. That's what they have turned into (not by their choice mind you). The penny pinchers casino.... If you want to pay that extra dollar or two to ensure your getting a quality product with all the pieces in the box, go to the appropriate vendors.