About 15 days ago I made 12 separate orders from 6 different Chinese sellers, 3 things have arrived so far:
...
All ittibity orders, most likely all from ebay.
There's a world of differemce between buying a few standard parts from eBay (which does have a reasonably
working way of seller rating), and buying substantial amounts of higher-value parts from a vague Chinese broker.
You really cannot upscale hobby activities to serious business and assume things will work the same only with
a higher quantity.
I also have bought hunderds of 'free shipping' items from HD/PRC based eBay sellers with no problem.
I also have bought for many 10's of thousands of dollars from brokers. Again, small orders seldom a problem,
but when the amounts go over few hunderd of dollars, problems rapidly increase. No deliveries, bend pins on
connectors, refurbished parts, preprogrammed OTP parts, etc.
Occasionally, I still purchase the broker way, but only for parts that are very difficult to get in smaller quantity, or
when there's an unforseen superleadtime on the official channels which would kill my production and subsequent
delivieries for a long time.