On the other side of the spectrum... I ordered a few 1 meter long shrink tubes (2mm, 5mm etc) for my lab. They arrived packed inside a 1 meter long cardboard box marked "Fragile"...
Not being too harsh at all! I feel your pain ;) However, not ALL sellers have lost common sense. I too sell on eBay and take pride in EVERY PACKAGE that goes out. I'd say check the feedback (which you probably did), you can learn A LOT about a seller. Also, please leave feedback about your experiences. As a buyer, I read the comments before any purchase, and it does influences my buying. To play the devils advocate, maybe the seller(s) were not aware of how fragile cores can be. As a suggestion, I've had buyers send me messages requesting certain packaging, i.e individually padded, double boxed etc. Hope this helps. Good luck on your projects. Your videos are well done and at a pace I appreciate! Thanks!
Jerry these sellers do not know what they are selling! They are just "moving" product. Heck you might even be buying from the same seller using 6 different names. Yes you have every right to purchase an item and have it arrive properly cared for. Hopefully the seller is refunding your funds?
I specifically checked that they were not the same seller. They were all in different locations so it may be a common source but different shippers although I doubt it. They also were not packed in a consistent way other than always being badly packed. However not knowing what they are doing does not change my opinion of them. Either way they have no idea what they are doing (aka being dumb).
Definitely some idiots on eBay, I recently purchased some vintage EPROMs that were posted loose in a Jiffy bag needless to say they were not in good condition on arrival. I'm convinced it's the Gen z population 😂
This reminds me of the time a while ago when I bought a stick of RAM from eBay and it arrived bent into an L shape - it had been posted in a plain DL envelope. I queried this with the seller, who said that doing it this way "had always been OK before". More recently I bought six cans of Simoniz Tough Paint for a car renovation project I'm doing, and what arrived was four cans in a box with a large tear in the side of it. It was a corrugated box, but one of the thin and very low-grade ones that seem to be quite common now, so it just couldn't take the weight of its own contents and had burst open. Fortunately the seller immediately sent out two replacement cans.
They possibly think they are made from iron, as they are called ferrite cores. Send a note to the seller to individually bubble wrap each core when you buy the next set.
I did buy some time ago via ebay a special type 4p4c socket (only seller i found was in the USA). It was tight packaged without any protection in a stiff envelope. it arrived here (Netherlands) in multiple pieces. I did get refund. I ordered later via a well-known parts website (2 in case of ...). It was well packed. I have now a spare "difficult to get type" 4p4c socket.
Well, i think many people have simply lost their common sense or the ability to imagine something. Most parcel service drivers are extremly underpayed and therefor do not care anymore about the items they are handeling. Even with relatively good packaging i received parcels where the content got damaged because the parcel was obviously thrown on a hard ground or something. One have to take this into account when doing the packaging. The only (hard) way is to reclaim your money and make stress for the seller - for example leaving a bad review. I know: it does not always work. But at least there is some hope, that the seller will begin to pack better. And on eBay in particular i always contact the seller BEFORE paying to request good packaging especially for retro stuff - sometimes even offering some bonus money for that.
Loads of social reasons I guess but I am from a time when the guy in 'stores' had enough pride in his work as to make him think about these matters because he cared. Nobody cares anymore....cheers.
I agree that the population is dumber as a result of social media but I don't think that's the root cause of the ebay issue.. I think the issue with ebay is that a lot of sellers aren't selling stuff they have any idea about and are instead parting out stuff they picked up on the cheap. They don't know what the thing really is so the symbolic bubble wrap is packing it properly to them as that's what they've been doing for all of the other random junk they found at the car boot sale and are flipping.
I'm sure most of the sellers have no idea what they are selling, they look at them and think they are metal or plastic. Mind you, the main UK electronics suppliers aren't exempt, I've have a length of metal studding bent into a U shape to fit in a box and 100 uninsulated tagged 2032 batterys all thrown together in a bag.
If they do not know what they are they should assume the worst and pack them accordingly. You are right that major suppliers can be as bad (they probably employ the same people). I once ordered some tagged batteries from a big supplier who I will not mention except to say that their initials are RS. A well meaning but miss guided employee carefully pushed the tags on each cell into a sheet of conductive foam to stop them getting bent. Needless to say by the time I received them they were all discharged.
At least your purchases turned up, I ordered a LoRa radio and it was delivered to the wrong address and signed for with a signature of a circle. Thanks a lot Post Office.
i know what you mean. We are lucky as we now live in a remote area where the individual posties do a great job but we previously lived in an area where the post office thought it was god and did not care at all about their customers. Unfortunately our main issue now are the 'low cost' couriers. The worst one changed its name a short time ago because it is so bad that its brand had become its main stumbling block rather than an asset. It always amazes me what couriers can get away with. If 99.999% of businesses performed as badly as couriers then the directors would be in prison. Having said all that it is meaningless if the person shipping is an idiot.
@@JerryWalker001 We don't exactly live in a remote area, but we are just outside the borders of a fairly small village, just past where the road out front changes to a 60 zone. We are lucky to have a brilliant postie here, who aside from coming down our drive like a maniac speed daemon, never fails to deliver.... But sadly he sometimes goes on holiday and his replacement is awful. All couriers are awful (though DPD is the least awful in my experience)... and lately now one of the amazon drivers that frequently delivers to us has just started leaving packages under the trees at the corner of our drive on the busy road out front, rather than walking the 20 paces or so to our covered porch.... When we are home waiting for the package to be delivered I expect the doorbell to ring and the package to be handed to me - instead I've been getting a text with a photo showing that the packages are just dumped on the road... Lately I've been ordering ferrite cores from AliExpress... So far none have arrived smashed. The sellers the sellers there at least seem to recognize that shipping to the other side of the globe is rough and unhappy customers are bad for business.. If anything, they over-pack it.. I spent about 45 minutes trying to get into a triple-boxed flyback transformer last week.. A 30cm cuboid box, ultimately containing an 8cm transformer somewhat reminiscent of matryohks dolls with packing material between each later, but at least it was pristine when it was eventually revealed.
I had a similar experience buying transformer ferrites from that auction site. I ended up finding another vendor called Elecify. They take care to wrap the ferrites individually in bubble wrap, and they all arrived intact.
I think that you are right. Dumb is ignorance; you don't know any better. You can learn from dumb. Stupid is when you know better and choose to do the wrong thing. I suspect these sellers are dumb, they look at these cores and see a solid chunk of something. They don't realize they are very brittle - they don't know their product. Regards, David
Yes the irresponsible actions of our incompetent government demonstrated how little they understand people by giving everyone the idea that no one would be held accountable for doing a bad job. Unfortunately the lazy among us still operate on that premise so standards everywhere are still dropping.
I don't think you are being harsh at all. People just don't care. My father recently sent out a twelve board set from a film processor. He asked me every question under the sun on how to pack it, what he needed to do to make sure the boards didn't get damaged (anti-static, etc.) Why? Because A.) He knows the post office/UPS/FedEx all basically suck in terms of handling packages and B.) He's been burned in the past. I've also been burned in the past with smashed radios. I think most E-Bayers either have to be burned, or have an extreme distrust of shipping to not be stupid about shipping fragile items. Sadly, many of them have not been burned and think USPS/FedEx/UPS actually cares.
Yes they think that the items will arrive undamaged when packed like this which is why I think they are dumb. A guy in the US has shipped me many items over the last few years including an HP 9845B along with monitors and terminals etc and he packed them well so not a single item was damaged so it can be done. I work on the principle that it is MY responsibility when I send something to assume it will be handled badly by the courier so I protect it accordingly.
@@JerryWalker001 I take the stance that "Fragile" is a challenge and "This Side Up" means the box will spend the entire time upside down. On a side note: I've been very much enjoying the series on building a z80 computer. While I don't understand half of it, it's still fascinating to watch just how much design went into a machine like that.
I had a friend that once worked in a UPS warehouse. He told me that some of the "workers" would try to see how far across the warehouse they could kick some boxes of goods. Unfortunately, I have to assume that these boxes were marked as "fragile"!
Jerry I know you've always pointed out stupidity and needless waste. I don't think you're being too hard on anyone. More than anything it's helping spread the word, and hopefully the rest of us can find a route around the stupidity. 👍
The way I see it is that if someone needs to be told that fragile items need to be well packed when they are shipped then those people need to educate themselves. You are right that they do not know what they are selling but you should not need to know what was in a glass bottle to know it will get broken if you drop it. This is what I meant in the video when I said that social media is killing common sense.
@@JerryWalker001 I agree, and I applaud the effort to make an historically accurate (as possible) power supply. And this is sadly one of many impediments to that effort.
The same thing happened to me a few weeks ago with two high voltage transformers. Bobbins survived, but the cores were both smashed. At least getting a refund was no problem. I wonder how long it will take until someone further up notices that these items have a 100% damage rate and they only lose money on them.
The main issue is that the availability is reducing. I was hoping to use older type core material so that I could demonstrate the pitfalls but I cannot find any more. There are plenty with more modern ferrite but not the older types. Yes I agree that they are the ones who lose money which is why I think it is so stupid. It also wastes a lot of my time as well.
I have received refunds for some while the sellers for others do not respond so I have to wait until ebay will step in and hopefully I can then get a refund. Unfortunately that does not resolve the problem as I still end up without the parts I need. It also takes a lot of time to find suitable parts and having to keep doing this is a pain, Especially as this is such an easy thing for sellers to avoid it they put their brains into gear.
I've definetely seen a sharp increase of inproperly packaged items, it's awful. I've resorted to now contacting sellers of potentially fragile items beforehand and verifying their shipping method, and sometimes offering to pay more for an extra layer of protection. Even so, the absolute dunces regularly fail to do even that and it ends up broken anyways. A recent example is an IBM CRT that I paid double the original shipping cost for, they put the damn thing face down with no padding, and my "extra" padding came in the form of a single piece on top. They can't even follow basic directions.
I agree and I tried doing the same thing by contacting the sellers before they shipped. The last one was also a CRT and they assured me it would be very well packaged. When it arrived they had packed it by wrapping an old 'T' shirt around the neck and putting it in a single box with lumps of polystyrene and random bits of loose cardboard. Imagine my surprise when it was broken:)
They are not available from either (or any mainstream supplier). I was looking for an older type ferrite material. I have plenty of newer types but I may give up on trying to buy older types although it means that I will not be able to demonstrate some of the things I had hoped to.
I fully agree with you, just common sense would be enough. Sellers too much often doesn’t care the package even for rare piece of equipment! And on top of that we can add the “gentle care” of the forwarders. It’s always a thriller until the pack arrive. I wish you the next supplier will be the right one
Unfortunately I cannot locate any more sellers as the cores I was looking for use older ferrite and they are hard to find. It is a pity that so many sellers are utterly clueless.
@@JerryWalker001 Jerry, what type of ferrite are you looking for. If I make it to the large electronics surplus store in Orlando, Florida anytime soon, I could look for what you need.
@@bobvines00 Thanks for the offer. Selecting the correct type is a bit of a minefield because of the number of variants and odd part numbering. In general I am looking for EC42 cores (42 x 21 x 15) made from PC40 ferrite with matching bobbin. It Must also be gapped at either 1mm or 2mm. The core must have a round centre pole piece. I may just continue with some more modern cores that I have or the project may never get completed. I was hoping to demonstrate some of the pitfalls in designing these supplies but without the cores this will be difficult. Hopefully this helps explain some of my frustration in finding suitable cores only to have them delivered in pieces.
Did you put a link in your comment? RU-vid often removes comments with links. But do you think I was unaware of this? You may be interested in a couple of videos I posted a while ago on how to properly pack items to prevent shipping damage.
@@JerryWalker001 I am very much aware of youtube's harsh comment filtering practices so I am careful not to put any link in my comments. The only thing I did is that I mentioned a YT channel that is a collection of people's not so wiseness regarding automobility. I don't know what you are aware of. I try my best not to assume anything about anyone on youtube.
