"untested" and "sold as seen" items on ebay. What's the possibility of working item?

londonTiger

Have my eye on something that's sold as senn and untested. It's a grpahics card that ususally goes for £100 used. But the sold as seen item is probably going to sell for £15.

May possibly try my luck at that price. I see it as a gamble and for £15 the gamble is worth taking.

I'm just wondering through, what are the chances that sellers just state "untested" when they know it's faulty and doesn't work and just say untested to try their luck?

I vaguely remember buying untested out twice before and they worked out fine, but they were from private sellers who are having a clearout.

In this case it's a powerseller whose job is to sell stuff on ebay so I would have thought they'd take the time to test and maximise their profits where possible.

Cotta

londonTiger wrote: »

Have my eye on something that's sold as senn and untested. It's a grpahics card that ususally goes for £100 used. But the sold as seen item is probably going to sell for £15.

May possibly try my luck at that price. I see it as a gamble and for £15 the gamble is worth taking.

I'm just wondering through, what are the chances that sellers just state "untested" when they know it's faulty and doesn't work and just say untested to try their luck?

I vaguely remember buying untested out twice before and they worked out fine, but they were from private sellers who are having a clearout.

In this case it's a powerseller whose job is to sell stuff on ebay so I would have thought they'd take the time to test and maximise their profits where possible.

I've had a mixed bag with such items - question is can you afford to take a risk a lose £15? If so then go for it.

Uxb

londonTiger wrote: »

.

In this case it's a powerseller whose job is to sell stuff on ebay so I would have thought they'd take the time to test and maximise their profits where possible.

I would have though the opposite is the case.
These power sellers getting umpteen hundreds of stuff though as surplus office stock or ex-out of PC's and do not have time or indeed the all the varying equipment to test each of what they get.
Even then there is testing and there is testing.
Do you fire it up once and say it works or do you run it for 24 hours to prove it really works. Do you check every single option say for a printer?

The power seller has not got time - which is money of course.
Nor in many if not most case do they even know how the item they are selling is supposed to work!

They need a rapid turnover of stuff to make the profit - that's what it is all about
So put it on cheap, say you have no idea if it works....your risk as buyer.

JJ_Egan

Reminds me of buying from Computer Fairs .
I soon realized that pulled not tested meant pulled and it does not work .

anotheruser

Buy it and test it.

You can swiz ebay to get you a refund even if the seller has it listed as "no refunds". Ebay ALWAYS work in the buyers favour.

spacey2012

Who does not have the time to turn £15 in to £100 ?
You would have to be the worst business man on earth.

Johnmcl7

We can only guess although my thought would be the reason they're selling it that cheap is because they know it's not working. For the sake of £85 you'd think it would be well worth the time checking to see if it works or not.

John

paddyrg

So how do you check? You have to get a PC, open it up, insert the card, stick a monitor on it, install drivers, run through all the setup options, probably with more than one monitor, etc. It's a good few hours work to be sure, and then leave the card running for maybe 48h to soak test it...and all you have is an apple laptop so it's going to cost you money to test!

Easier to buy it for a tenner, sell for £15 and not mess around with refunds/returns/debugging/fault-finding.

techspec

Many HAVE tested (and failed) and then just put that to get rid and hope for speculators.

But some are genuine. I bought a £99 phone call monitor (truecall) for £7 untested - and it worked great.

bingo_bango

Used to get that all the time when I repaired family ipods.

I would look for one that had a working part I wanted, and buy something with a different fault listed, or as untested.

Get it, take the part I needed, then sell it on as not working. Usually cost me about £1 for the replacement part I wanted after ebay fees etc.

Only once had something which was completely DOA.

AshleyPomeroy

"Have my eye on something that's sold as seen and untested. It's a graphics card that usually goes for £100 used. But the sold as seen item is probably going to sell for £15."

My guess is that it works, but the fan is on its way out.

An IT supplier selling used graphics cards probably has a couple of PC chassis sitting around that they can test the cards on - they have to test the "sold as working" cards anyway. It would be a matter of sticking it in, booting up XP, perhaps finding the drivers, and if it boots to the desktop then shut the machine down and sell the card in working condition. That's about twenty minutes of work tops for an extra £85.

Yes, a more thorough test might spot faults - but the seller isn't IBM, he's on eBay. He's gambling that only a tiny minority of the hundreds of buyers he sells to (a) will notice long-term faults (b) will be bothered to send it back (c) won't just take it out of the box, post positive feedback, and then spot the mistake, etc.

In my experience if it's an item that the seller is selling "on behalf of a friend", or it's something that he could easily check - "I don't know how to turn this camera on" - then run a mile. They're also gambling on you assuming that "no returns" means just that, whereas as far as I know the seller absolutely can't refuse returns.