Is it safe to buy parts from China on Ebay

[Mitri1138]

 

1- How safe is it to buy internal hw from the Ebay sellers from China?

 

2- Are these legit parts?

 

I'm interested in CPUs, heatsinks, shell parts, LCDs ect. Even maybe a GPU here and there. All components are for my Alienware laptops that I have.

 

Thanks

 

 

[Eban]

@Mitri1138

If from "China" it says Hong Kong or Taiwan then yes go for it.

 

I have bought cpu for my ranger i7-4910mq, 3 and 4 pipe allcopper heatsinks (Cicichen) and the gtx980m (knowing it was the less than spectacular version)

 

Expect it to take a while to get delivered.

 

A story:

My buddy still is Australia used to have a bicycle shop. He told me if he bought a container of bikes from mainland China then he could expect to throw out up to 20% immediately ... If he bought from Taiwan he wouldnt have to throw anything out. Much better quality control.

[Sandy Bridge]

I'd say it depends to some extent on what you're buying.

 

If you're buying high-end CPUs, there's a risk of engineering samples being thrown in, which fall into the "not exactly legit" category - they might be made by Intel but they were never intended for retail sale, and it's the equivalent of buying a pre-production model of a new generation of car - it may do just fine for what you want, or it may not.  If it's significantly cheaper than buying from a local seller, there's a significant risk the reason is that it's an engineering sample.  Some sellers do list them as such (ES = Engineering Sample) in the listings, so look for that if it seems too cheap to be true.  It may be an ES even if they don't list it as such, however.

 

If you'd buying SSDs, pay attention to the brand, the ones no one has heard of are likely to be of lower quality, slower and/or less reliable.  If you can't find a review of it by a reputable tech journalism site, don't buy it.

 

I've had good luck with WiFi adapters and batteries (and one cell phone).  Shell parts are likely safe, and heatsinks to be pretty reliable too.

 

Read the reviews of the shipper, for an LCD packaging is quite important no matter where it's from, and a well-packed LCD from China is more likely to arrive intact than a shoddily packaged one from two hours up the highway.  It probably is worth doing some research on who makes the LCDs, though.  Do they also make displays for HP, Dell, or Lenovo?  That's a good sign.  We might not have heard of them if they just make laptop LCDs and not standalones, but if our laptops use them they're probably at least halfway decent.

 

Worth noting is that Newegg ships a lot of products "Direct from China" now too, and most of the same caveats apply there.  They sell SSD brands from China that no one's ever heard of that are quite cheap, and I would not trust my data to those drives.  Honestly there's not much more reason to trust Newegg than eBay these days, unless it's either sold by Newegg or sold by the manufacturer.

 

----

 

I guess the other note is that it's eBay, to some extent there's risk when buying products there no matter where they're being shipped from.  I don't think there's a significant difference in terms of the percentage of dishonest or deceptive sellers from China versus the U.S., and if anything the ones shipping from China tend to know the technical specs of what they're selling better.  So I've tried to focus on "if the product is what it says it is, what is there to be aware of?" above.

 

This is consistent with what Eban mentions as well.  The container of bikes from China that is 20% bad isn't because they're being dishonest, it's because the quality control of that brand is pretty poor.

[kojack]

I am going to say buyer beware. I ordered a new bottom plate for my notebook which had cracked from a fall. I ordered the right part number, for my model notebook, and when it arrived it was the wrong color, none of the attachment clips lined up and best part, the seller called me a liar numerous times in our interactions and got on like a child.  They got a negative review at that point, offered to give my money back if I took down the review, but the 50 bucks was better spent letting buyers know what they are like as a seller. 

 

If you can get it locally, or semi locally...do it.

[Reciever]

The main issue with ebay is sellers can get away with selling "in kind" parts and not the actual thing they are listing to begin with. That all being said ebay tends to screw its sellers beyond recognition due to ebay protections which are ripe with fraudulent buyers.

 

Really wish ebay got replaced with something else.

[Hertzian56]

High end stuff no way, but like others have said eb is automatically in the buyers corner almost all the time no matter what but who would want the hassle of being required to mail the item back to china, with tracking, if required. Rather pay for stuff nearby that's more but probably sourced from china anyways. Lots of counterfeit stuff all over too.

 

The bad part about the customer's always right on eb is that if you are a seller and get screwed by a buyer the next time you buy something and have a problem or not you're feeling like the rules are ok to be a bad buyer/you are owed something, so you use it with that in mind. I once sold an m6700 chassis that was almost stripped bare since I sold all the parts separately, and it was clearly marked broken condition for parts, clear pics of it all big fonts red fonts etc and later the buyer comes back and says some BS about this or that, initiates a return. There was no option in eb for me to dispute it, had to call them and get it squashed with no feedback privileges allowed by the fraudulent buyer either but I had to find a number, call in, explain etc Why they don't have automated options to have them look at it is just aiding fraud. And the one way only feedback also helps fraud.

 

Terrible site that has gone way downhill and you've had to pay taxes on used items for a long time now, go to a garage sale no taxes but the various states greedsters will find any way to tax everything and anything, probably an air/breathing tax at some point for "warming" bs. I only use it for things that are hard to find, pretty old not made anymore new/can't find anywhere else and occasional selling of odds and ends.