All the somewhat reputable mini vci sellers out

can you contest it on your cc? i thought ebay guaranteed all the transactions?

 

i don't have one, but if you search here, you might find a reputable seller. i haven't seen many complaints

 

The term "reputable" is somewhat fluid in this instance. You're talking about buying a counterfeit product that's bundled with a pirated copy of the dealer software.
Having said that, I got my version on Amazon. I didn't think twice about the reputation of the seller.

 

You can pay for overnight service.

 

I bought mine quite a while ago from

Cheap OBD2 Cable and Connector Free Shipping at UOBD2

But I cannot tell you now which of the many items shown there I bought. The software itself I found on the 'Net somewhere and got it working on a laptop with Windows 7 Pro.

 

Apparently, the intellectual property policing agencies have got to eBay and Amazon.

 

Unlikely. Otherwise more than half of the business from both sites would disappear.

 

Coronavirus didn't affect the suppliers. They always suck on eBay. All Chinese s*** is crap. I have Chinese friends who confirm it. They tell me there's no quality control and there's never going to be. If they can say that about their own country.... It's also my experience. What I think sellers do on eBay is they take down the listing and relist whenever it gets a bad review

 

The only bad experience I ever had with eBay was 10 or more years ago, buying a Motorola flip-phone that turned out to be dead, and the seller gave me the runaround, but I sent copies of all our email exchanges (some from no-longer-existent email addresses) and got my money back. That seller's ID no longer existed, but of course he could have registered a new one.

As for Chinese goods being crap... It depends on quality control. Some big US companies (e.g., Apple, Google) have their products manufactured in China but with strict quality control. And some of those factories are in fact not Chinese-owned: e.g., FoxConn, which produces much of Apple's stuff, is in fact Taiwanese.

 

That's it.

In addition to being world champions at copying, legally or not, cheating at stuff is built into their society. Why? Communism. The individual plant manager over there does not get rich by doing a good job at managing the plant. Communism won't allow it. The only way the individual gets ahead is to cheat. Cut corners, pocket some of the savings, pay some bribes, get some back, and the product suffers.

I have had some amazing Chinese products. Notably, some of the newest Craftsman hand tools are amazing. Some are still bad. The trick is that the specific manufacturing plant is stamped on the parts, so knowing the right number can let you know the good stuff. Craftsman Z-AH corresponds to the factory manager who is keeping things on track out there.

So they can make great things, but they often do not since the system does not inherently support it.


And on eBay, I have basically learned to only buy things I don't need for a long time. First there may be weeks to months to wait for delivery (or not), and then if the product is bad, you're starting all over again. But if you can wait, it can be OK. I have found eBay to (now) be very biased toward supporting buyers, so I don't feel I am at risk of losing my $$, just wasting time if things don't work out.