[Amps] Buying Stolen Tubes?

Dr. David Kirkby david.kirkby at onetel.net
Tue Mar 13 22:57:23 PDT 2012


On 03/13/12 11:31 PM, Gary K9GS wrote:
> I remember hearing, I think it was a TV news story, several years ago
> that said 60% is stolen.  Seems a little high to me but it may be in
> some categories.
>
> It would be an interesting thing to Google.

Yes, perhaps there is 60% stolen in some categories. I could believe that figure.

Something else I know, is there are a lot of fakes on eBay. There was someone 
selling holders for hard disks which go in IBM servers. (These are generally 
called skeds or sleds).

He had two adverts - one for non-original IBM holders, and another for what he 
said were genuine IBM holders. The difference in price was quite substantial, so 
I decided to buy 4 of the non-IBM ones, see if they were OK, and if they were, 
I'd buy enough for all my IBM servers. They came from Hong Kong or China - I 
forget which.

When these non-original ones arrived, they looked just like the real thing. They 
are diecast metal, and clearly have "IBM" in the die cast. So these are not just 
IBM compatible, they are fakes.

I've got to admit, it did not stop me buying some more. I knew they were fakes, 
but they are 100% compatible, and much cheaper than what he says are original 
IBM ones. I suspect the originals and the fakes are just the same to be honest.

A friend tells me a lot of items are fake on there, but at prices the people 
buying them know they are fakes, so they are quite happy.

I'm aware of a friend who paid £600 for a fake handbag, and made a claim from 
eBay/Paypal. That was a complete joke, as eBay

* Made my friend pay for an expert to examine the goods. The expert was chosen 
by eBay

* When the expert agreed the handbag was a fake, my friend had to FAX documents 
to Paypal. As you know, FAX is pretty uncommon nowadays, but to make it 
difficult, the documents had to be FAXed.

The only good point was that once the handbag was proven to be a fake, eBay said 
it should be destroyed, and not returned to the seller. So needless to say it 
never got destroyed, and my friend got a fake handbag free - apart from the 
costs of paying the expert eBay appoint, and paying the costs of FAXing the 
document.

One might hope that eBay would swallow the cost of the expert they insist you 
use, but my friend never got that money back.

Dave

> On 3/13/2012 2:40 PM, Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
>> On 03/13/12 01:32 AM, Robert Groh wrote:
>>> Amen, Bill.  That was my first and last impression of the ad - why so much
>>> fiddling and f***ing around!  The whole story just raised my suspicion level way
>>> up.  As you said, you don't need a big elaborate story!  Just say you have a
>>> tube which was a pull from a radio station - was running full power (or
>>> whatever) and was just rotated out, blah, blah, blah.  No need for the story.
>>> Very suspicious.  And suspect. Nope, I wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft. pole.
>>>
>>> Bob, WA2CKY
>> I wonder what percentage of stuff on eBay is stolen? Both me and a friend
>> suspect it is very high, though we have no proof.
>>
>> I am aware of someone stealing from a department store, and sticking the things
>> on eBay. He was caught by the store when they became suspicious, so placed
>> something he could steal, with the serial number recorded. After he put it on
>> eBay, someone from the stores security department bought it and paid for it, at
>> which point the serial number was seen to match. He was fired and prosecuted.
>> But I suspect he is far from the only one.
>>
>> I suspect a lot of things stolen in burglaries are put on eBay.
>>
>> It's not in eBay interest to try to stop stolen things being on there. They
>> could do it by for example insisting that all listing give the S/N of something.
>> That would reduce the temptation to put stolen things on there.
>>
>>
>> dave
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>>
>


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