Chinese e-tailer claimed 14-inch box stretched the size of a 9-inch tablet

WHO, ME? Welcome to another instalment of Who, Me? It’s The Reg’s reader-contributed column in which you admit to mistakes and reveal your escapes! This week, meet a reader we’ll Regomize as “Rohan” who told us that a few years back he worked on the IT side of a warehouse. “Management purchased software that required a large- …

[David Harper 1]

In fairness to the PFY ...

The same thing would likely have happened if Rohan had let the Bean Counters or Human Remains department order those tablets.

[Tim99]

Re: In fairness to the PFY ...

Or worse - They could have wanted to set up a feasibility study, set up the management infrastructure and order 6; with associated meetings, emails, discussions...

[GlenP]

It wasn't our fault, but my then boss needed a new Surface Tablet* PSU at short notice as he was going away. We only buy genuine PSUs so I found one on Amazon (as the only place that would deliver in time), ordered it and had it sent directly to him. What arrived wasn't genuine MS, it was a cheap Chinese knock-off and it didn't work.

The boss managed to buy a replacement wherever he was and we got a full refund from Amazon but I bet they were still allowing the same seller to advertise genuine parts.

*Also not my fault, senior management insisted that's what they had to have. They now all have proper laptops.

[SVD_NL]

Ugh, surface laptop chargers. It has the worst attributes of any type of charger. The worst design aspect of it, is that it magnetically attaches without the actual charger being connected. So if it's slightly misaligned when trying to attach it, it feels like it snaps in place, but in reality it's just sticking out the back.

It's essentially a crappy version of MagSafe. I don't like the proprietary nature of MagSafe, but at least works really well mechanically (and you can still use USB-C as a bypass on modern versions).

[GlenP]

The Surface Tablet charger cables were not very substantial and with the connection oriented vertically they we re always being bent at the connector, leading to intermittent connection then failure. Another bad design.

[MachDiamond]

"The Surface Tablet charger cables were not very substantial and with the connection oriented vertically they we re always being bent at the connector, leading to intermittent connection then failure. Another bad design."

I don't like the Apple version that sticks straight out from the side of the laptop since it has to be routed to the back or front. The 90deg connection works much better.

[doublelayer]

The Surface's one does have the problem they specified partially, or even mostly, because it connects to the screen part instead of the keyboard part, which means it has a short bend because the bottom of the connector is very close to the table. Had they put the connector higher on the screen so it didn't have to bend as far, that would likely be less prone to damage.

[keith_w]

Surfaces do not come with a keyboard, you have to by them separately. Also, they moves the location of the power connector higher on the side (surface 9)

[Noram]

Let me guess the failure typically happens at about month 13, just outside warranty? ;)

I remember MS having a lot of cable issues with the great intelliemouse v3, which if you were using the PS2 connection caused real fun (a friend basically stripped a computer down completely before he discovered the random hangs were because of the PS2 connection getting interrupted at totally random times as the mouse moved and the conductor stopped conducting).

[Robert Carnegie]

My Surface Tablet charger broke, basically as described - the wires broke at the plug. I therefore continued to use it with a USB-C charger in its USB port. It's academic now, as it also wouldn't take Windows 11, so it's out of support - oh, and the screen is cracked. I think I saw on Amazon a third-party accessory which is the Surface magnetic charger connector to fit on the end of a USB-C cord. That does have the benefit of letting you use the USB port for peripherals.

[keith_w]

both of mine work fine on the surface 6 and the surface 9.

[Ace2]

This is how Amazon works now.

They have something called IIRC a single-stream system. For a given item number, they have one box, and all of the third-party seller stock of that item mixes together. When you order that item, you get whatever’s on top of the box.

It doesn’t matter how carefully you vet your supplier. The listing promises genuine items, sure. That seller probably did provide genuine items! But you get whatever cheap knockoff shit some other seller is trying to unload.

[JimCr]

Having read about this kind of thing for over a decade, I always advise people to only buy stuff from Amazon if it's sold AND shipped by Amazon.

[Lennart Sorensen]

Apparently Amazon stopped doing commingling of products in March of 2026. Now you are getting products from exactly the seller you selected. About time.

[Ace2]

Thank you, I stand corrected

[Anonymous Coward]

Too good to be true

I saw an offer for 40 Duracell AA batteries for £15 on Facebook. I thought it looked true good to be true, but though "it's only £15" if anything goes wrong, so I ordered them. The batteries never arrived.

A few months later I was going through my card transactions on the phone with a customer rep while getting a hold on my credit card lifted (blocked for a totally unrelated reason). The rep asked about a charge which I didn't recognise, it was for about £15. He then commented that it was recurring, every 14 days and there had been a total of 9 transactions.

After a bit of checking I found out where the charges were coming from, and a contact email address. It turned out to be an "discount electronics club" based in Malta. They charge £15.00 every 2 weeks and then you supposedly get big discounts off electronic items. I contacted them and informed the, I had never signed up to anything and demanded they refund my money. They responded by refusing to refund anything. I told them either they refund my money or I would report them for fraudulent transactions and issue a chargeback on every payment. They ignored me.

I went back to my card issuer, told them what happened, reported the scammers for fraudulent transactions and requested a chargeback on every transaction. The card issuer told me the chargeback refunds would be done, but held for 4 weeks in case the scammers contested the chargeback. A week later I got an email from the scammers saying the had refunded all my money and asking me to withdraw the fraudulent transaction report as apparently it was affecting their ability to take payments. I ignored their request.

[IGotOut]

Re: Too good to be true

Ugh. Those things used to pop up all the time. It was usually disguised as something like "10% off all future orders" and then in tiny text you noticed it said "reoccurring charge every month at £x per month".

[Tony Carter-Inman]

Re: Too good to be true

I'm fed up of those things popping up after you go to check out of whatever website you're on.

I complain about them to the website every time (that they're scammy, deceptive and literally have small-print) but they never remove them because "it's not the website, just an advert and you can opt out", so I just refuse to use that website ever again.

[AMBxx]

Re: Too good to be true

Yep. It was thanks to the checkout process at Morrisons that my 85 year old dad signed up to gin of the month club.

Instead of mucking about with unenforceable social media bans, the government should be working on these sales practices.

[John 110]

Re: Too good to be true

"Instead of mucking about with unenforceable social media bans, the government should be working on these sales practices."

What, you mean stop their cronies scamming every penny they can out of unwary punters? That sounds like a great idea. I'm sure that would be popular with government...

[MachDiamond]

Re: Too good to be true

"Instead of mucking about with unenforceable social media bans, the government should be working on these sales practices."

Why not both? They often go hand in hand.

The sign up for a recurring thing should require a wholly separate process, not just a tick box on the payment screen or telling the cashier "yes" and they tick a box.

Another reason I pay cash. There's no way they can bill my credit card if they don't have it.

[neilg]

Re: Too good to be true

Sounds very much like Amazon

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

Re: Too good to be true

Back in the day , ie days of 56kb dialup , a friend of mine fell foul of the old "dialer virus" scam

Something got on his PC that would redirect the modem to dial in through a High Charge Rate BT line and his bill correspondingly skyrocketed.

A little investigation of the bill revealed what had happened.

Maybe Most people at that time would probably have taken it on the chin , paid it , fixed it , and made sure it didnt happen again.

I thought he was very brave at the time but my friend however took a different tack which in this day and age is clearly the much more suitable response which was to reply to this demand from BT with something along the lines of , paraphrasing here :

"You can fuck right off if you think I am going to give my money to fraudsters on your say so and I hope you realise you are an accessory in this criminal scam and thereby culpable"

BT duly revised his bill.

Hopefully with red faces but I doubt that was the end of that ruse.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Too good to be true

"I saw an offer for 40 Duracell AA batteries for £15 on Facebook."

That last word is the clue here.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too good to be true

My wife ordered some stuff from AdoreMe (which made me rather happy!). After the order was filled, they started charging $40/month to be in their premier program... which she didn't ask for. Got them to cancel it and refund the money (they didn't fight it). Soon after that they cancelled the program because they "listened to their customers" (i.e. got told off by a regulator)!

[Joe W]

Beancounters...

A pharmacy I know that does lots of lab work - sterile lab work, cancer treatments, heavy pain killers for palliative care, all that stuff, pretty expensive and dangerous substances - had a bean counter fuck with their orders.

Not the meds, thank $(deity).

Lots of the stuff needs to be stored in the fridge within a certain temperature range. So, the fridges need to be reliable. A new one was needed and a purchase order was needed. The beancounter went "you want WHAT for that fridge!?" and started scrolling through the classifieds or maybe ebay (would have been Craigslist if it was in the US), and found a used fridge the approximate size that was needed. A used fridge? For meds? That has to be really reliable? Changing the purchase order from what was actually requested.

Thoughly cleaned (there's protocols for that, and professionals on staff that can do it) the fridge of the approximately correct size was installed, a missing foot had to be replaced, but all went well.

For about a fortnight.

Then, the fridge failed. At night. The head of the lab had fortunately stored the less expensive stuff in that "new" fridge and they do have an alarm system and a person on call all the time, so some poor soul had to drive in at night and cram all the stuff into one of the good fridges. It could have been a catastrophe for the business (those meds are bloody expensive), and the replacement parts for that "bargain" fridge were almost as expensive as a new, industrial rated fridge.

They had several run-ins with their beancounter, like getting them to understand the reasons for buying a sterile lab certified USB cable (they are shockingly expensive but do not shed particles and can handle the cleaning products used).

[lglethal]

Re: Beancounters...

Had similar with a beancounter at a previous workplace (although not as critical as your case). We asked for a special type of connector for a project, the beancounter responded that they were far too busy to search for something like that, we should come back when we had a supplier. So we went and found exactly what we needed, received a quote, delivery time, everything needed to place the order. We then went to the beancounter to finalise the payment.

He apparently balked at the price, then went away and tried to find a cheaper alternative. 2 weeks later when we demanded where our parts were, he came back to us showing how he had found offers for similar connectors for far less. Number 1 - they were for completely different connectors, 2) - from cheap chinese suppliers that would not fulfill our regulatory requirements, and 3 - he had now caused us to be guaranteed to be late on the project.

We refused to accept any of his, he refused to buy our connector (lots of excuses - they are not an approved supplier, they are not in our system, etc.). It took senior management getting involved to get the connector purchased, and even then it was by going around the Beancounter, rather then doing it through the proper processes. (I had it in writing from the senior management that we were allowed to be doing this, because CYA rules always apply!).

The most annoying thing was that the cost for this connector was coming out of our project budget, approved by our project managers, why the hell should the Beancounter give two sh%ts if it's expensive!

[blu3b3rry]

Re: Beancounters...

One of our winners with a beancounter was having our request for a folding trolley with a 150KG capacity being replaced with an order for one that was rated for around 30KG. Apparently it was under half the price.

We needed it to shift around 25KG drums of reagent-grade deionised water as at the time we had no way of moving them apart from carrying the damn things around.

This involved traveling six floors up from the basement in what was effectively a wheelchair lift so very, very slow. Production processes left you no spare time to fetch reagents so multiple trips were never an option.

The trolley was duly pressed into service and repeatedly loaded with four of the drums, as that was the maximum you could safely physically fit on its platform while still being able to thump it over the step into the lift. I think it lasted about a month before one of the wheels literally fell off.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Beancounters...

had a bean counter fuck with their orders

I suspect it's a fairly small club of people who haven't suffered from that. Of course, what should happen is they might query the price and ask for justification, but a non-technical beancounter should not be changing what the qualified end user is ordering on their own.

In my line of work, if we applied that sort of attitude, then we could literally shave £[very large redacted figure] off project costs, but sooner or later people would die - in a manner that no amount of "official secrets act" or D-notices could hide.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Beancounters...

Bean Counters The True Cost Of Savings.

An entire production line(s) of assembly workers waiting on a jig to be repaired - Standing idle.

An entire department of test technicians awaiting sub-assemblies & assemblies - Standing idle.

Rubens Foot - Sitting Idle as having tried to argue (& lost) with a Bean Counter over the fact he couldn't order 10 transistors from RS to get production restarted & the Bean Counter was waiting on a 0.001 penny drop before they ordered 10,000.

He then tried (unsuccessfully) to put his foot through a metal filing cabinet resulting in a broken toe or two (Maybe even the whole foot).

Icon - Due to the expletives Ruben used at the phone calls termination & post kick.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Beancounters...

"An entire production line(s) of assembly workers waiting on a jig to be repaired - Standing idle."

Many years ago I dated a lady that worked for GM. At that time, a production line being down cost the company $125k/hour and the tail back could make that go up faster and faster. I then knew why it might be worthwhile to fetch $1,000 worth of parts via Lear jet at a cost of $10k to keep production up and running. Without knowing what the losses were to have a line down, the shipping on those parts seems wildly nuts. "And now, the rest of the story".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Beancounters...

My dad once chartered a small plane to transport a relay. The relay wasn't expensive, far less than the plane, but the time saved by couriering via charted plane was substantially more than the cost of the trip!

[MachDiamond]

Re: Beancounters...

"Then, the fridge failed. At night. "

Beancounters are shockingly bad at risk. They'll save a few quid at the risk of losing so much more. The backup for my chest freezer cost much more than the freezer itself. If there's any question of the contents being bad from a power loss, it would be a tremendous amount of money going in the bin. If I took the risk of eating the food, it could be a whole lot more in hospital costs. The freezer runs on solar, backed up with battery, backed up with the mains. A full battery will run the freezer for several days and that more than covers any issue that's ever come up.

[Sorry that handle is already taken.]

Re: Beancounters...

Beancounters are shockingly bad at risk.

If they were good at risk they'd be an actuary rather than an accountant...

[MachDiamond]

Re: Beancounters...

"If they were good at risk they'd be an actuary rather than an accountant..."

I suggest they aren't even an accountant

I don't have qualifications in physics, but I have done some coursework. Same with psych and a load of other disciplines along the way to be a more rounded person in the education department. Somebody in purchasing needs to know both a price and a cost. If they can find the exact part from another supplier for less, that might be good, it may also be bad. Yes, it's the same part, but it's going on an aircraft and needs to come with certifications and the lower priced vendor isn't providing them which is why they are less. The person requesting the part may have already done all the leg work and a reason for a higher cost might be that a particular vendor can ship immediately rather than needing to order it in. I hate it when that happens, but I'll still pay McMaster-Carr a premium when they are the closest vendor that has stock and I need a part right away. When I had a manufacturing company, my fastener supplier was a stock-less sole trader. Since I would order large quantities in advance, that was fine. He could get me the hardware in less than a week at a fat savings. He was also just down the road, a friend of a friend and never failed. He'd have no problem coming by to help me work out something for a new product, for a cold drink.

[Andy A]

Re: Beancounters...

One site I worked at had comms racks protected by rack-mount UPSs. Most weeks I would visit these buildings, and while there check the battery status. Should the battery check fail, I would drive the half mile to a shop which had every sort of battery you could wish for. "Have you got 4 of these?" "The ones we have are an extra ampere-hour. Is that OK?" I would hand over the cash, nip back to site and fresh Yuasa batteries would be installed within half an hour of the fault being detected. Then I would submit the expense claim and be repaid a couple of weeks later.

Then a fresh outsourcer took us over. Eventually a UPS battery swap was performed and expenses submitted.

"You can't do that! You have to log a fault call and get thing approved."

So 2 weeks later I logged a fault for the next set of batteries. A week went by and nobody had even put a comment on the logging system. I escalated the call. Nothing for another week. Escalation again. Repeat.

Six weeks after logging the call, a fresh set of batteries were delivered in an APC box, AIRMAIL from the USA. Inside were the exact same Yuasa batteries I could have fitted within half an hour for less than the shipping cost.

[UCAP]

The lesson here is ...

... if something looks too good to be true, then it probably is!

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

This is clearly some strange new use of the term "14 inch tablet" that I was not previously aware of

[IGotOut]

I'm pretty sure many women (and men for that matter) have heard exaggerated length sizes far too many times to recall.

Beer? It's probably part of the cause.

[MachDiamond]

"Beer? It's probably part of the cause."

Well, looking through the bottom of the bottle/glass after consuming said beer could be it as well.

[The Organ Grinder's Monkey]

There's an old joke about not letting women measure up for carpets as they're required to believe that 6" is 10".

[Anonymous Coward]

14 inch? - That's the size of tablet you get prescribed when you have a problem with your gut's macrobiome...

[Yet Another Anonymous coward]

Well originally I swallowed a fly and then it all got a bit out of hand

[Anonymous John]

Width 9in height 5in. Simples.

[Bebu sa Ware]

Chinese e-tailer

The well known Temu transform 14 units in Market Space free reduces to 9 units anywhere else. 14" tablets would be pretty scarce on the ground I would have thought. Boox had >12" epaper devices that could double as monitors a few years ago pretty expensive but not lachrymosely so.

I must admit I have been fairly fortunate with Temu, AliExpress et al but generally the stuff was realistically priced, inexpensive and unavailable in AU. eg an IDE to SATA long after IDE was a thing. Use a prepaid card unlock for the transaction relock afterwards.

[MiguelC]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

The one thing I have to praise AliExpress is their refund policy. Whenever I've had disputes with sellers that hat to be escalated I always received refunds from AliExpress. And recently it was AliExpress themselves that contacted me about a non compliant product I had bough I received a refund without even having to return the item.

[GlenP]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

I had similar with eBay, without even having to escalate the case. The item I received, from a supposedly legitimate seller, was not an OEM item, as advertised, and was poor quality. I raised it with the supplier through eBay, within a few days they hadn't responded so eBay processed the refund automatically and presumably would claim it back.

The truth is the scam sellers just build the refunds into their operating costs and many people don't bother complaining.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

"eBay processed the refund automatically and presumably would claim it back."

Yes, they do deduct the monies from the seller's account. eBay would rather the buyer and seller come to an agreement without them getting involved. Not too long ago I sold an item I got from an estate sale that I thought was in good condition. When the buyer sent me a photo of a scratch that made is less useful, I instantly refunded the money. Now I have a buyer that knows if there's an issue, I will make it right immediately and they left very glowing feedback. Had I ignored them, eBay would have refunded them on my behalf and I would have likely received a negative feedback.

[Not Yb]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

Scammers don't care about customer service, because they're trying to make up for it in volume. Unfortunately it works often enough that scammers keep trying despite losing accounts, etc.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

"Scammers don't care about customer service, because they're trying to make up for it in volume."

The downside on a place such as eBay is the cut they take will be increased if your score drops below a certain point. It's more of a margin than most supermarkets make already.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Chinese e-tailer

Had a seller edit a shipping label after creation to intentionally misdirect it. (The idea was that it would show as delivered, to the right city, so they get paid for shipping an empty envelope to some random person.) Thankfully the USPS had a photo of the label - showing it was NOT the destination address in the USPS computer system!

Apparently that vendor does that about one time in 30 (choosing the most expensive items), and gets 97% good feedback as a result.

[ColinPa]

Whoops wrong size

On one of my many customer visits, there was one group of people who had to carry two laptops around. They had asked for new laptops with big disks so they could dual boot, Windows, Multiple Linuxes etc.

The laptops duly arrived - with "the standard disk". The disks didn't have the capacity, so they were told to keep their old laptops with Windows, and use the new laptops for the Linux etc and their testing. When someone suggested it would be easier to get an external hard drive - this was rejected because they had already overspent the budget.

The person who ordered the laptops said that every one else didn't need such big disks, so assumed the request for large disks was not really needed.

[lglethal]

Re: Whoops wrong size

Yes because one size fits all. That's why we ll have the same sized shoes, right?

[that one in the corner]

Re: Whoops wrong size

Order now from Procrustes Workwear, safety shoes for all your staff: "Your feet, our shoes, a perfect fit every time".

[ChrisC]

Re: Whoops wrong size

Indeed, and the marketing division of Dolman Saxlil thanks you for your efforts in promoting the company ethos in this sector of the galaxy, your reward voucher is winging its way to you now via the sub-ether net...

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Re: Whoops wrong size

So there was no need to send in The Foot Warriors.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Whoops wrong size

one size fits all

Sure I've mentioned this before. Sort of the opposite (to the hard drive debacle) happened at the place where I work; a museum with a lot of interactive exhibits.

The original-fit computers, 20+ years ago, were all 3GHz Pentiums with 7.5k SATA boot discs, a pair of 10k SCSI drives in RAID 0 for the content, a DVD drive, a floppy disc, a PCI network card (in addition to the one on the motherboard) and a dual-output Matrox video card. I think it was simpler to specify 30-odd identical machines than 5 or 6 top-spec ones, 15 mid-spec and 10 low-spec, but I hate to think how much they cost! I don't think the floppies were ever used and I suspect the DVDs were only used to load the initial content.

This was probably overkill even for the most complex of the exhibits, but many of the exhibits are much simpler and didn't need all that expensive kit. Even the complex exhibits worked reasonably from just the SATA disc (should the SCSI discs or interface die), and within a few years my standard replacement machine had evolved through a Core 2 Duo with a pair of 5,400rpm 2½" HDDs and a £30 graphics card to an AMD A8 with a single SATA SSD and using the onboard graphics.

M.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Whoops wrong size

"I think it was simpler to specify 30-odd identical machines than 5 or 6 top-spec ones, 15 mid-spec and 10 low-spec"

It might also be less important if the budget was there to spend. Any computer could be substituted for any other in a pinch and if exhibits were taken down, the computers could be put in inventory as replacements for any other. It's also more likely to receive the correct computers if they are all the same and being custom assembled. With too many options, it could have been a giant mess if the vendor borked the order.

[Martin an gof]

Re: Whoops wrong size

Yup, good point, and since there was no on-site tech at the time, they took advice and it was probably simpler, certainly in the short term, if not cheaper.

I still smart at one particular item of very bad advice though. The original fit projectors were all LCD-based devices. For a 7 day a week, 8 hour a day exhibition the typical lifespan of an LCD panel at ~5,000 hours is woefully inadequate (comes to less than two years) but the specifiers wrote "28,000hrs" in the "MTBF" box (I've seen the email) and as there was no one on-site with the background knowledge to say "don't be stupid!".

So when I turned up a couple of years later and was tasked with sorting out the projectors, there was no budget to work with and we had to jump through all sorts of hoops.

M.

[J.G.Harston]

Re: Whoops wrong size

We had that at one place I worked at. Why does the architect's department want such expensive computer kit? They can get the same office admin stuff as everybody else.

[MachDiamond]

Re: Whoops wrong size

"The person who ordered the laptops said that every one else didn't need such big disks, so assumed the request for large disks was not really needed."

A purchasing department that has no clue what they are doing? Color me shocked.

[Anonymous Coward]

Boeing

That's all.

[Prst. V.Jeltz]

I'd be more worried about the software that demands a certain size screen than the dogy tablet

[doublelayer]

They don't say if the software simply wouldn't work without one or if the software just had enough stuff on the interface that a small tablet would be painful to use. Most software can't tell the size of the display, only the resolution, so it would run equally happily on a 1080P 14-inch tablet or a 1080P 9-inch one, but the users would still notice a difference.

[J.G.Harston]

Have /you/ ever tried manipulating architectural building plans on a 9" screen?

[Anonymous Coward]

Always stick to your guns, when I've been scammed like that I've *always" come out on top, I've got a free laser cutter and various other items just for not agreeing to dodgy half refunds etc. after opening complaint tickets

(The laser cutter arrived smashed up, obviously been dropped and was really badly packed. After the platform refunded me and told me to dispose of it, so disposed of it into pieces and rebuilt it)

[Mark__H]

Owners secretary knows best

Some years ago I needed to get our laboratory temperature meter recalibrate.

This was the master meter used to certify the service engineers meters. Hence to do this it had to be calibrated to 0.01°C. The only sensible laboratory to do this in the UK was and still is the National Physics Laboratory in London. The price reflected this. The owners secretary (later to become his wife) decided that she knew better than a qualified engineer and got it done for less than half price without checking etc. When it was returned she proudly handed it to me with a smile. Thay same day I gave it back with new paper work to get it done correctly the NPL. She complained to the owner who demanded I apologise to her in front of him. When I explained to them both what she had done, that due to the delay caused our laboratory certification was now suspended and 2 engineers had to stop working until it was sorted her smile disappeared. I didn't get an apology which was typical of the owner so I soon left.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Owners secretary knows best

Is that "calibrated to ±0.01 °C" or "calibrated at 0.01 °C"? The latter is reasonably easy; a triple-point cell will do it (and is a lot of fun seeing the water instantly half-freeze when you shake it). The former is definitely outside the realm of most labs.

[FeRDNYC]

Wretched hives of scum and villainy, those "marketplace" platforms. I never shop NewEgg anymore without ticking the option to restrict product listings to items sold BY NewEgg, and if I'm on Amazon any listing that's not at least fulfilled by Amazon is likely to get passed over. I didn't want to wait 3 weeks to receive a poorly-packaged, not-as-advertised piece of junk from some rando overseas.

[The Oncoming Scorn]

Unlucky For One

When Newegg got hacked some years ago, one of my colleagues personal details was included on the file that surfaced on the dark web.

To add further insult to injury a reporter used a screengrab of the file as his part of his reporting the data breach story, which included his name & partial address.

[BartyFartsLast]

"fulfilled by Amazon" will also get you all sorts of fake shit, the whole marketplace is a minefield of scams

[Mimsey Borogove]

"fulfilled by Amazon" will also get you all sorts of fake shit

It took me 3 tries to order Amazon accessories (chargers) for Amazon devices (Fire tablets) from Amazon. First set was the wrong size, 2nd set fit but didn't work, 3rd set, ordered after about a half-hour consultation on their chat help line, finally worked. You'd think going to the manufacturer for accessories for their own kit would work, but not with Amazon.

[Catkin]

Back in the before times of 3D printing*, when original Ender 3s made sense**, I bought an oddball clone with a mixing head (2 filaments into 1 nozzle). Unfortunately, after over a month of getting new parts to fix the poor QC on the mechanical bits the main board fried at the first power on and I demanded a refund. They danced around the issue for a further 6 weeks before finally authorising return shipping to China (at my expense).

It turned out their next trick after messing around with replacement parts was to 'lose' the customs paperwork. Fortunately, by this stage, the payment processor were willing to process a refund and, 3 months later, the broken printer turned up on my doorstep. I suppose Chinese customs didn't know what else to do with it.

*by my standards, I realise some here might have been mucking around with Mendels

**I will still defend the Ender 3 as a cromulent printer for its time, it's just not a good first printer for those who are new to home manufacturing

[Giles C]

Years ago ho we’re notorious for shipping tiny components in huge boxes, a box big enough for a laser printer would contain a license form as an example.

I wonder what this seller would have done with that…

[Anonymous Coward]

Assuming HP: they got in the news for shipping license forms as 8.5x11 sheet of paper in a set of 8.6x11x0.75" boxes, all contained in a larger box.

[Giles C]

Oops autocorrect sneaked in there. Yes it was HP, where you had to go through the packaging carefully to find the item delivered…

[MachDiamond]

Knowing what to look for.

I can imagine the seller listing the "shipping" size which would include the packaging and the purchasing person not having thought that 14" for a tablet would be an odd size.

A friend gave me a tablet she bought at an estate sale since the battery was flat and it would be too expensive for her to have it replaced and still make money selling it. I bought a battery, fitted it and proceeded to configure it. It turned out to not have BT which I needed for the application I had in mind. WTF? Why wouldn't it have BT? The lengths a Chinese company will go to shave a few pence off can be amazing. Since then, I always take the time to check all of the specs before spending money on tech items. It's the time more than the money since they can take a couple of weeks to get so if there's a problem, it could be a month or more to get it all sorted. I also find that name brands are just better value for money unless I really need something done as cheaply as possible. At that point, I'll try to find a name brand second hand since I won't need the latest top-spec device and certainly won't take on anything that does and also has to be done on the cheap.

[Not Yb]

Re: Knowing what to look for.

Fairly sure one of my old not-so-cheap tablets didn't have BT either. Battery lasts longer that way, and in some niche applications, BT wasn't considered necessary for a tablet.

It is NOW considered almost mandatory, but before BTLE and other BT radio tweaks, the battery life hit was quite significant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never mind the quality

Feel the width.

[J.G.Harston]

Errr.... that *IS* how you measure a device with a display screen.

[PRR]

>....would end up owning a tablet it couldn’t use, for just $60.

Happened to me last week. There is doubt about my blood pressure. I ordered one of the higher-price better-reviewed models, like $80. It was worse than cheaper ones! How did they have so many good reviews?? I posted an honest review except I gave it three stars instead of the <1 it deserved. The seller sent a *POSTCARD* offering $20 gift card to take down my review. I did, they didn't, they said there was a problem with gift cards. I'd say the name except I think they will change name to avoid the shame.

[Mimsey Borogove]

$20 gift card to take down my review. I did, they didn't

I hope you re-posted the original review!

[[e-mail]]

Quantity over quality

I did an apprenticeship at a pipeline company in the Algerian desert. The company choose the Renault 4 to drive around in the desert, as for the price of a Range Rover you could destroy several R4s, which could be easily repaired locally (ex French colony).

An R4 is also much easier to unstuck that a 4 times heavier Range Rover.

The management drove around in Range Rovers, and stays wisely on more or less paved roads.

[Kuang]

I just make the decisions. It's up to you to make them work.

I remember coming into work on a Monday to find a 3ft high pile of slim brown boxes on my desk, about 30 in total. One of our managers (who had nothing to do with IT) had somehow gone to an IT show over the weekend (missing, presumed jolly) and been talked into buying a stack of digital notepads which I now had to get working.

These looked like black plastic clipboards, but with 'special' ballpoint pens, i.e. they had a magnetic ring around the nib and were presumably impossible to replace. The idea was that you would write on a normal sheet of paper and the pad would capture a digital copy based on the pen's movements. There was a tiny rocker switch on the side with a 7 segment display that let you flip between one of 99 page memory slots. You couldn't see if that slot had anything *in* it, but never mind. If you tried to put an actual pad of paper under the clip it was too thick to register anything.

Nobody has a use for this product. You already have the paper copy of your notes so why not just use a notepad? 'But what if I want to send my notes to someone?'. Have you ever sent someone a scan of your doodle page complete with all the little spiderwebs in the corner, showing exactly how little you understood about the talk? Didn't think so. 'But it has a thing where it turns the notes into a word Document'. I can more or less guarantee it doesn't.

As expected, the bundled OCR software reeked of dodginess. It used a weird installer I'd never seen before where most of the notes were in Chinese, and when we tried it in a sandbox it demanded full admin access before it'd work. We copied in a test page from a pad (which was barely legible as an image file) and what we got back looked like a random memory dump.

I presented my findings to the buyer along with a query about the cost, which was denied, and a refusal to let the software loose on any machines.

Can you guess whose fault it was that they were useless? For a bonus point, can you guess who was reported to the beancounters for wasting money by refusing to use an already purchased resource?

[trevorde]

Saving too much money

Worked at a company where the purchasing manager was notorious for screwing suppliers, even after engineers had agreed the price. He saved the company thousands. The suppliers quickly got wise to this and factored this into their quotes. We then started losing millions of dollars of jobs on price. The problem was quickly traced back to the purchasing manager who was then put under strict instruction NOT to renegotiate the price. His nose was a bit out of joint but we started winning jobs again.