My husband has had a major problem with
Fancycube Trading Co. Ltd on ebay. They also seem to sell as
97k-cube.
He ordered a particular type of
soldering machine for a very fair price, around a hundred dollars. What he actually got was not only the wrong model, it was also damaged to the point that if he hadn't by pure chance opened it up before plugging it in (he heard something loose in there), it could have been very dangerous.
He shows the damage in this video:
We went on to find even more severed and loose wires. And the item, which was supposed to be new, was obviously used, as it had several dings (as he shows).
We followed correct procedure and contacted the seller, who, so far as it not being the model listed, said, and I quote:
"thanks for your email, sorry about this accident , as you are professional
people i think you can know that two model just a bit different of the
screen, we are sorry about that you recieve damaged item , we can give you
total 18AUD as compesation , you can keep it ,is that ok for you ? we can
send the damaged parts to you , please let we know if it is ok for you ?
by the way , could you kindly help us remove the negative feedback ?
best
regards
Jean "
So apparently selling us a different, lesser model from the one they listed and photographed is just something that professional people just do sometimes. You know, despite them saying in the listing, "All items sold by us are being described to the best of our abilities, as accurate as possible, and with utmost conscientiousness on our part. "
And $20 or so is fair compensation if we get to keep the damaged goods which, even if it was in perfect working order, would
still be the wrong item. And so much of it was damaged that to repair it we would have needed to have been shipped pretty much all the internals. There were capacitors and resistors all bashed around on the rear circuit board as well as more damaged wires and connections.
We ended up taking it to ebay, who said that to get an "item not as described" refund we'd need to send it back again, at our cost, of course. We did, but the seller refused to pick it up once it had arrived. Ebay almost refused the refund on the grounds it hadn't been returned, but my husband pointed out that the local post office had received it, attempted to deliver it, and had issued notices to the seller that the item was there, and that we had no way of forcing the seller to pick the damned thing up.
Today ebay agreed, and gave us a full refund of the purchase price (although we're out the shipping, of course), so, the ridiculous saga of the seller who thought that a high-end, working soldering box was the same thing as a lower-end, damaged box has drawn to a close and, having that final resolution, I now feel free to warn you to avoid these guys like the plague. They have a fair amount of damaged items/not as described/never received negative feedback so I guess our experience wasn't unique.