Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Here is a graphic example of how companies are over estimating their delivery times so they can claim that they have a good record of "over delivering on their promise", my 3468A ordered from the USA on the 25th August and here are today's tracking information on it, T1 to T4. According to the original date I still have another 19 days to wait before TEA begins again 

[bd139]

That's not bad.

I fucking hate eBay. Just got my sellers fees due this month. £118  (and that was with the seller £1/3 discounts)

[Terry01]

Ohya! I thought mine were bad at £38! 

[tautech]

That's not bad.

I fucking hate eBay. Just got my sellers fees due this month. £118  (and that was with the seller £1/3 discounts)

Our NZ Trademe is no better, 2 new scope sales = ~$140 NZ in fees ! 

But I do jack the prices to cover the fees. 
I list my company name too, too bad if buyers can't use Google. 

[Specmaster]

I got mine through as wel land I've shifted shitloads of stuff, £11.58. bd139, you must have sold truckloads if you listed it all on the £1 listing offer???

[bd139]

Yeah I've got 4 eBay accounts selling different things (I don't just do test gear)

[tggzzz]

That's not bad.

I fucking hate eBay. Just got my sellers fees due this month. £118  (and that was with the seller £1/3 discounts)

It is, of course, easy to completely avoid all sellers' fees (and the associated income tax).

So stop whining

[bd139]

It is indeed but then you have to put up with a limited market and limited competition for the items which drives pricing down to non-profitable levels.

I will still whine at paying average 8% for this.

80% of profitable exercise is based on taking a commodity item and introducing competition or scarcity into the equation. The rest is creating new things, but that's hard hence why I leverage the scarcity of humans to take advantage of that as the day job. Finger in every pot

Edit: Me IRL

[tggzzz]

It is indeed but then you have to put up with a limited market and limited competition for the items which drives pricing down to non-profitable levels.

I will still whine at paying average 8% for this.

You can also easily avoid limited markets and non-profotable prices

You could also look at the costs of using traditional auction houses, and weep.

[Specmaster]

I sell anything I think will sell with enough of a margin on it to make it worthwhile, small items are the best, delivery is less expensive.

[bd139]

It is indeed but then you have to put up with a limited market and limited competition for the items which drives pricing down to non-profitable levels.

I will still whine at paying average 8% for this.

You can also easily avoid limited markets and non-profotable prices

You could also look at the costs of using traditional auction houses, and weep.

Oh yes those are even worse. But the Internet is a wonderful tool to run the race to the bottom on pricing so I'll be damned if I'm not going to stop whining until it's a lot cheaper

I sell anything I think will sell with enough of a margin on it to make it worthwhile, small items are the best, delivery is less expensive.

This is true. Small high value items are good. Medium items are ok as well (scopes etc) as the scarcity of decent ones means people are willing to come fetch them, at least if you live in London thus solving that problem.

As I found recently, cars are bastards to shift. Especially broken ones.

[med6753]

This is true. Small high value items are good. Medium items are ok as well (scopes etc) as the scarcity of decent ones means people are willing to come fetch them, at least if you live in London thus solving that problem.

As I found recently, cars are bastards to shift. Especially broken ones.

I use EBay to buy stuff but I've never used it to sell items. I can't be bothered with the fees, the shipping, and the BS. In the rare instances where I do sell something it's via my local Craigslist. And I've had 100% success with it..

Would you care to go fetch this for me? It appears to be in good shape and the price is decent. One problem. It's in mid-town Manhattan. No fawking way am I driving down there and fight that grid lock. I could take the train from here to Grand Central and then perhaps cab but a 465 would get damn heavy after a while. I'll pass. 


https://newyork.craigslist.org/mnh/ele/d/tektronix-465-oscilloscope/6683250336.html

[med6753]

Sometimes you just can't have nice things. Someone is gonna come along and destroy it. This is the retaining wall in front of my place. The road takes a very sharp curve at that very spot. It's been hit before, the last time was about 4 years ago.

Last week the landlord painted the wall the gray color you see here. This past Saturday, during the day in clear weather, this old fart in a brand new Acura fails to make the curve with the result as shown. Messed up his car real bad. It had to be towed. The speed limit on that road is 35 MPH. He must have been really flying. Karma got a dumbass. 

[bd139]

That takes some skill to fuck up like that.

[Specmaster]

Perhaps the landlord should have painted the roadside of the wall in a bright colour so it was obviously not the roadway?

[bd139]

There's a perfectly good line there that says "this is the edge of the roadway". Thus the colour of the wall isn't important.

[med6753]

Perhaps the landlord should have painted the roadside of the wall in a bright colour so it was obviously not the roadway?

Or painted a target on it that said "Hit me!" 

[med6753]

Anyone else notice that notifications from the blog quit working? Been that way for a few days now. I tried "un-notify" then "re-notify" and it still doesn't work. Is it just me?

[Berni]

Gmail has started putting emails from eevblog into spam lately.

[Ero-Shan]

I hope my situation will serve as fair warning to those who are not yet consumed by the affliction - run while you can.

The photos of your benches might indeed cause a withdrawal from TEA. My collection suddenly looks so terribly feeble. 

But I can't run, I was always bad at running ...

[bd139]

Just a random “fuck you UPS” comment. Just had a box arrive with some cable and PL259’s in it and there was a fist sized hole in it and half the PL259’s were missing. 

Supplier are sending more out via Royal Mail but that’s just shit. They’re probably rolling around on the floor in their Tamworth warehouse at the moment.

[med6753]

Gmail has started putting emails from eevblog into spam lately.

That's exactly what happen. It's all sitting in spam. Fix that. Thanks! 

[mnementh]

I sell anything I think will sell with enough of a margin on it to make it worthwhile, small items are the best, delivery is less expensive.

My selling excursions on fleaBay long ago devolved into a simple equation... "Is it worth several hundred dollars?" if not, "Will it fit in a flat-rate USPS box?" and if both are false, I usually use it until it sells locally on CL or it dies, then off to the Goodwill with it.

Half the good parts taken off my PT Cruiser when I facelifted to the 2006-2010 body style went that way. eBay marketplace is effed-up; I got $40 for a set of aftermarket foglights that cost me $25 (I had installed RGB halo rings); but I couldn't give $90 worth of perfectly serviceable (I'd been using them for 7 years) headlights with all bulbs away for cost of shipping. Got $30 for them locally 15 minutes after I posted.

mnem
Simplify.

[Specmaster]

We don't have CL over here, we have Shpock or Gumtree and I have never had any success with these platforms, it seems to be flooded with idiots who like to do nothing else but waste your time with not answering messages and or not even turning to collect the items.

Ebay on the other hand has generally been very good.

[mnementh]

Sometimes you just can't have nice things. Someone is gonna come along and destroy it. This is the retaining wall in front of my place. The road takes a very sharp curve at that very spot. It's been hit before, the last time was about 4 years ago.

Last week the landlord painted the wall the gray color you see here. This past Saturday, during the day in clear weather, this old fart in a brand new Acura fails to make the curve with the result as shown. Messed up his car real bad. It had to be towed. The speed limit on that road is 35 MPH. He must have been really flying. Karma got a dumbass. 

I dunno... I'm with SpecMaster on this one. Painting that barrier wall grey, especially in today's batshit crazy world of constant stress, electronic leashes and jobs where they expect you to keep in touch and actually complete tasks while driving... It's like deliberately placing a booby-trap on the side of a busy highway. Sooner or later some booby is going to come along and get caught in it; the busier the highway, the sooner and more often. 

Look at the scene from this smaller perspective; at first glance, it looks like just a shoulder on the highway. We paint curbs on divided highways yellow for the same reason; I see this as being no different.
 
If too many distracted drivers hit it like that guy, the owner could be sued for creating a public safety hazard. People are going to hit that camouflaged wall, and no matter whose fault each individual accident is, that retaining wall is going to get smashed until it caves in.

Bottom line is it was a fuckwit stupid poor choice of color, but it won't be especially expensive to fix. Much less expensive than rebuilding the retaining wall.

 
On the flip side of that argument, when I was a teenager I had to fight with my local highway department over a 200-year-old hickory tree and the hand-laid flagstone retaining wall and stone steps that led up to the farmhouse I grew up in; they came in with a whole fleet of trucks and heavy equipment, thinking they were just going to bulldoze it all down as it was a "safety hazard" to fuckwits on the highway that ran between the house and our barn. The chief engineer (or whomever the hell drew the short straw) they sent up to get my release signature on this "very important public works project" tried to mansplain it away to this dumb hick country boy that they didn't even need our permission, as everything in question was on their "Right of Way"; in retrospect the scene was very much like the opening of HitchHiker's Guide.

I explained that this entire property was owned (even the mineral rights) with just-researched title history dating back to the early 1800s; it predated ALL local government by half a century and therefore was grandfathered before any new regulations, and he could shove his release forms right up his docket. I then parked my OWN bulldozer and two huge tractors in their way, and immediately called my grand-dad's solicitor, who gladly took the case on contingency.

I'm proud to say that construction was held up for two months while they wrangled it out; eventually they were forced to leave the tree and the entire stone structure alone as it was required to keep our historic home from sliding down the hill onto the highway. The solicitor made buckets of money, and the Highway Dept was forced to put up overlapping guardrails in front of all of it to retain the usability of driveways, sidewalks, family mailbox and stone steps.

They DID paint those guardrails with reflective Federal Yellow paint, however.

mnem
*ignorant asshole*