Buying "Good" Parts that are not...

bteeter

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Time to vent a little. I am a small time operator. I bought an existing business about a year ago and have grown it steadily since.

I now have about 70 machines. Mostly older machines from the late 80's and 90's. I have a few machines made since 2000.

So, naturally, I have had to do a lot of repairs. The previous owner didn't do any for years so I have become good at a lot of common repairs, lcd screen swaps, etc.

I've bought a fair number of parts from here, ebay and other places. I gotta say. There are a LOT of scammers selling arcade parts.

Just tonight, I took parts off a 2nd Centipede cocktail, one at a time, to try to diagnose what was wrong with a Centipede cocktail I've been working on for ages. When I bought it, I knew it had a bad game board.

So, I bought a "good" one from here at KLOV. Installed it, and it mostly worked, but the video was really bad. Since the previous board didn't work, I figured bad monitor. Replaced the monitor, no luck, just got a really bad faded picture. Replaced the connector, same. Checked power, did all the standard troubleshooting - found nothing. Replaced the monitor and connector with a custom connector, VGA Converter, LCD monitor - still same crap picture.

On a whim tonight, I swapped game boards with the one from the 2nd cocktail I picked up last week. Bingo it works.

So, basically, I got sold a broken Centipede PCB for like $100 from a user here. Nice.

A week or so ago, I was sold a "working" DDR disc and security key on ebay that showed up and did not work. Before that a "working" CD-ROM drive to replace a dead one in another machine. It showed up dead too.

Last year I paid a dude here on KLOV to repair 3 Asteroids main boards, something close to $300. Got them back. 1 worked, 1 worked then glitched and stopped working, 1 was DOA - worse than when I sent it. Got a "sorry" but no refund or offer to re-repair.

I could go on and on. I'd say I've had a least a dozen experiences like this in the past year buying parts.

Surely its not just bad luck. It seems to me that there are a lot of scammers out there selling old broken stuff, hoping that no one ever realizes. I'm saddened that tonight I realized I've been sold 3 sets of stuff here on KLOV that did not work. I've probably only done 5-6 transactions here total, and I'm under 50% of getting what I paid for.

So, what do you guys do to avoid this? Is there any more reliable sources for older parts, or do you all just deal with this and hope to get good stuff more than not?
 
I think for the most part, people deal with the people that have good reputations, and the assholes that deal the bunk goods or outright rip people off get squashed pretty quick.

I only ever bought one bad item off KLOV, and the seller refunded half the money.

there's a lot of buyers out there that try to screw sellers too. for the most part I know who all the "good" people are here, since I've been an active poster for like 4-5 years now, helps me eliminate the BS from the onset.

if your dealings were somewhat recent, I would start reporting all of those fuckheads in the Negative Feedback section so other people don't get dinged (this is why I say they get squashed quick, but can only happen if people talk about it)
 
Last year I paid a dude here on KLOV to repair 3 Asteroids main boards, something close to $300. Got them back. 1 worked, 1 worked then glitched and stopped working, 1 was DOA - worse than when I sent it. Got a "sorry" but no refund or offer to re-repair.

I just had a similar incident with a local repair guy. I don't think he is on KLOV but was recommended by other members. He repaired 2 U5000 monitors for me. One was repaired by another guy previously but it kept blowing HOT. The previous guy didn't know what was causing it so he didn't charge me. This latest guy told me he could fix it and it was a shame I wasted my time with the first "if he didn't know what he was doing".

Needless to say $347 for 2 monitor repairs later and 2 months of time, I finally got them back. Looking at the receipt he gave me it looks like he only did partial caps on both and charged me for 7 hours of labor! Fired them up and one monitor is still working after very limited use, the other monitor blew HOT after 20 minutes. The response I got was about the same as yours. Got a "sorry" with an offer to re-repair at my own cost because "he can't predict when electronics are going to go bad"!

On the flip side I have bought boards and cabinets from 3 different KLOV members and have had nothing but great experiences with them. I guess it simply comes down to the fact that there are great people in this hobby and there are scammers. Unless others have had experiences with there is really no way of knowing.
 
You are not alone. I can't explain how many times I have received; printed items on wrong material or bad printing, electronics don't work, chips are DOA, lamps are dead, wrong items, missing items or bootlegs.

Nearly every order except for a couple of places (couple of members, Atari Sales & Service/B&C Computervisions and a place in Texas) have been messed up in some way. Careless to say the least.

Fortunately most have been resolved.
 
Keep in mind that most of the stuff is very old and temperamental. Shipping anything is always a craps shoot.
 
Keep in mind that most of the stuff is very old and temperamental. Shipping anything is always a craps shoot.


Ya, I get that. But, I've not yet received anything in damaged boxes and shipping packing has been quite good. The 3 asteroids boards I referenced above were ridiculously well packed wrapped in multiple layers of bubble wrap, for instance.

I'm not sure how to solve this problem. But its super annoying especially out here where you can wait a week or more for a part to arrive, only to find its DOA and that you're unlikely to get a fix or refund.
 
bought a "100% working" x-men board from a klov'er/frequent poster, got it and the sound chip was the most leaked/damaged d ever seen. plug it in and sure enough sound doesnt work at all. still have yet to receive any kind of refund.
 
After reading this I feel lucky and priviledged that all the people I have dealt with have been so upstanding every board I have bought has worked as advertised. I think for the most part the members on here are outstanding a little strange at times but I think thats a requirement to collect in the first place. :)
 
All I can say is, if you have done business with me and aren't 100% satisfied, I expect a PM... as far as I know, I don't have any unanswered issues.

Hell, even on my web site I say all parts sold as-is since I don't know what you've done to them... but in 6 years I had 2 people say a part didn't work, and you know what? I shipped 'em replacements anyway.
 
Don't get me started. Many questionable items from eBay, a couple from here to simple bad service, items or improper descriptions from "large, well known" sites, most discussed often here.

Last January, I did multiple orders from multiple vendors in a month time period. It was amazing how many errors there were. Items outright forgotten, wrong lengths cut, damaged new items (not from shipping), repro items that wouldn't even fit the cab they were 'designed' for, items delayed but no indication in box or online order status indicating, long waits for "processing", etc...

It was very maddening. But if I was to post every little incident I'd look like a whiner; but in fact, something goes wrong with almost every other order in some way of new stuff, and about one of every 4 orders of used stuff (with significantly lower expectations). Last January was the culmination of everything going wrong from every place at once!

Luckily I've not been outright screwed by a horrible seller in a long time (last significant one was a Q*bert boardset (CPU, Filter, Sound, Power) I got form eBay 6 years ago still mounted to the backboard, shipped in no more than a tight wrap around set of 2 pizza boxes worth of corrugated cardboard...obviously snapped off every thing taller than an IC: e.g..caps, heat sinks, connector posts, etc... all with no compensation). But then again I filter eBay query results to not see stuff from many known bad sellers such as "bil* burg*" and the like.

On the other front, had better than expected service from the likes of Mark Capps (arcadechips), Braze, and a couple others here.
 
On the parts that aren't as advertised thing, I think a lot of that comes down to people selling things that just aren't the familiar with how things work. When you mess with a lot of games, or see a lot of games and work on a lot of games, you start seeing the same problems over and over again and know what to look for.

Like for instance on that Xmen pcb. If I was selling an Xmen pcb you can bet your ass I'd be sweating bullets about whether or not the sound was working since that's a known issue. If I was selling... a centipede pcb or something, while I'd test the sound I wouldnt' pay too much attention to it because you never see a centipede that the sound's screwed up, etc... but sometimes chips go bad on centipede where the trackball won't control right.

So I think a lot of times when people sell things that end up not working right, it's not they're defrauding somebody, it's just they don't know much about what they're selling and don't really have any idea if it's working like it should.
 
I bought a chassis that was supposed to work and need nothing it didn't work, I bought a good working pcb it works great if you consider a blue screen working. I bought another working tested pcb, it worked but one of the buttons wouldn't work looked over the pcb and the traces on the connector were ripped. All of these were on klov and I have been on here for about 6 months. I don't think anyone intentionally sold me bad or broken stuff but it is frustrating. I have had more positive transactions then negative though.
 
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I also tend to shy away from "untested" stuff unless I know the seller. It seems like "untested" is just code for "doesn't work but gimme your money anyways". I know there are lots of honest sellers out there but there are also lots of scammers out there.
 
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