i understand the need for a little caution. but no start-up China eBay seller would have a chance of making it if we all shopped like Sanity Bleeds, even established ones would probably crumble!    LoL

anyway, took a chance and ordered IF EX-42 from yongtao_83, and was stoked to receive it yesterday! woot

 

wow nice...how much time did it take you to received it?
tks

 

took 15 days from date of shipping to my door, sent by SpeedPak. hung out and didn't clear customs for 5 days when landed. i had placed my order maybe a week before it was released so had to wait till seller had it in hand. considering circumstance, it was surprisingly fast.

posted more photos in the thread:
Iron Factory IF EX-42 Heat Death

meanwhile, my 2nd back-up order from bababobo maybe a week after the 1st hasn't even been shipped out yet.  

 

Yeah, not a fan of giving Paypal 45 day zero-interest loans on unknown sellers who mostly hock garbage to build up enough of a feedback score to suddenly start listing lots of more expensive collectibles in quantities even major sellers can't acquire. I've gotten scammed my fair share of times and learned to spot a fair number of them in the process, so I try to help others do the same, but I'm sure we'd all love for you to volunteer yourself as guinea pig on a variety of unknown sellers that pop up so none of us has to gamble our time on them.

 

LoL, no worries. you do you… and i'll do me.  

i actually made a few bucks here and there from the scams on eBay. they were pre-pandemic purchases and exchange rate increased 10% by the time i got my refund. not good for buying now for me, and of course it could have gone the other way. but oh well… c'est la vie. as long as i get my refund, i'm all good.

and those that did pan out, like the IF-EX42 i just got, i save a few bucks on those compared to other sellers at the time of purchase.

i wouldn't be in this thread if i didn't care at all about being taken for a ride. i'm here to reduce that risk, but i'm also fine with taking some chances once in a while to get a good deal. and i think a lot of ppl in this thread is in the same boat given they are buying from China retailers on eBay.  

 

I sent him a message about if I could get a photo of his stock. Still no reply a few days later .

 

Anyone buy from seller newdaystart?

 

The only things at all TF related I'm seeing in their listings are just a couple KO Perfect Effect upgrade sets, mostly just specific to Bruticus at that. While they look like a completely legit operation, their feedback kinda makes them look like just a glorified sales catalog to help move tons of random products for a distributor. I imagine you'd probably get what you ordered, but the condition might be questionable, due to them being cheapo KOs as well as likely having zero post-sales support for anything broken, missing, or defective.

As far as items like that, given the original releases are now fairly rare and cost-prohibitive, I'd recommend maybe spending a couple bucks more with a more specialized seller like johosontony/cbyg3016 (Uncle Billy) who have excellent post-sales support and are much more knowledgeable on such items they offer.

 

johosontony is actually the other seller I was looking at for this set. Might just spend the $10 more and go with him. Especially now after talking to newdaystart and him selling the silver version (jp) as the us version meaning he doesn't seem to know much of the products he is selling. BTW I always appreciate your knowledge and advice on this stuff  

 

Did a check on Johosontony's own website, but it doesn't look like they have any of those sets listed in stock there, but then, their own website seems to be a little neglected compared to their eBay storefront.

 

It's been almost 2 months, but one of my items finally got updated on tracking. Has anyone seen this note before?

2020-05-15 11:22
Zhengzhou City, Zhengzhou International Processing Center has been exported directly sealed

2020-05-15 11:22
Zhengzhou City, Zhengzhou International Processing Center return, note: security return

2020-03-26 20:23
Zhengzhou, delivered to air transport


Seeing the security return, I thought it meant it was going back to sender, but then the "exported directly sealed" would seem to mean it was sent? Any ideas?

 

Hey Magnus,

I’ve seen that note on tracking. One of my two remaining orders from China has had that slapped all over it multiple times.

That place in China is a bottleneck for outgoing parcels just like Shanghai. Check out the tracking info on my IT Megs.

No further updates since 1st May. The figure was ordered around 11th April.

The tracking information makes no sense. I’ve given up checking it. I’ve messaged the seller to provide me with an update and they are equally as clueless.

Within that list of info, it says the parcel has been exported. Then it says it’s back with the processing centre and some bus terminal. No idea where the parcel is.

 

Yeah, that's really confusing. I was just surprised to see an update on this. I had given up on one of my ebay orders as it was supposed to be here at latest last week and hasn't had a shipping update in over 2 months. I messaged the seller and they were happy to refund it. So that wasn't too bad. Seems like a real crap shoot at this point if anything will ever show up with some of the weird cryptic messages these packages get and their shuffling around to different locations.

 

I've been monitoring his feedback for weeks, waiting to see when it would start to go bad... It just did. Two negative feedbacks just got posted this morning. I'm sure there's more to come, because NO ONE has 28 copies of Sovereign which they're selling for $211 right now.

 

Well if people have that attitude I won't bother listing all mine then  

 

I was majorly shafted by qintianyu-ming on eBay recently, avoid this f*cker like the plague! Thanks for the Lego-man you douche!

Either that or Fanstoys standards have slipped of late   That said, I had to laugh when the Lego thing arrived.

Only got my refund three days ago after endless weeks of jumping through eBay hoops, oh well!

Is there a list on this thread names can be added to?

 

Me too brother! More fool us, but hey you’ll get your refund eventually

 

Me too, he has ghosted me in messages, created a shipping label but never shipped the item, disputing it on eBay but contacting PayPal now

 

Seems the advice on here is to bypass eBay and go direct to PayPal - if that’s the case, I’d have saved myself about a fortnight!
Can anyone comment if that’s the case?