I am going to start off here by admitting that I am partically at fault in this fustercluck, as I did not make fixing the problem with this ebay vendor my number 1 priority.   In any case, here is the situation.    I needed a couple of managed routers for a network.  I found a vendor on Ebay called e-wasteharvesters, out of Phoenix, AZ that had some units at a very reasonable price.   So…I purchased three of the  HP 2424M routers they had listed  and got them rolling in my direction.   I bought three, in spite of the fact that I only needed two of them, because I thought that having a spare would be a good thing.  It is, after all, used equipment, and, could have problems.

     The units showed up in reasonable, if a bit slow, time, and, while they were packed into a box with bubble wrap, I cannot say it was the best job I have ever seen.  The thing that concerned me most, though, was that when I opened the box, I smelled a strong smell of smoke from a building fire!   Upon further testing (which ate up several days), I found that the units had apparently been taken out of service because they had pumped a lot of smoke from the aforementioned building fire through their guts.   The sockets were corroded enough that, while a short cable would work, any length longer than about 15 feet meant that the routers could not been seen at all.  The signal was just that degraded.    I spent a bit more time doing some cleaning to see if I could get the units back to functional, but, alas, the corrosive nature of the fire smoke had damaged them enough that not only could I not trust them to be reliable, but, even after running for a couple of days, they were pumping out enough stink to pollute a 1100 square foot house.

     I finally gave up, and, contacted E-wasteharvesters and explained the situation.  At that point in time, they, reluctantly, agreed to take back the damaged units and refund my payment.   They did, however, refuse to pay for shipping the units back to their facility and did require that I ship the damaged equipment back to them before they would refund anything.    At this point, it had been several weeks that I had invested in trying to get this junk working.    Then, a couple of issues in my life flared up, and distracted me from getting the routers packed back up and shipped off.    Some of the complications had to do with my health, and some had to do with my having to scramble around and find alternative routers for the network.

     Finally, though, I got the three units packed up and shipped off.  I will say, too, that I packed them a WHOLE lot better than they had been packed when I received them.   The packages arrived at their facility about 28 days after they had said I had 30 days to ship them back.    Today, a week or so later, I get a short email from them saying that it had been too long and they were not going to refund anything.    Now, they may have a legal right to do this, although I would argue that I had returned the items to them within the time-frame I had been given…just at the very limit of it.   However, there are a few  things that torque me off a bit.   First,  had I known they were not going to refund anything I would not have gone to the considerable expense of shipping the routers back to them.   I would have just walked away from the issue.   Secondly, they are still selling these pieces of crap, and, so I know that they are going to take the units I shipped back, put them on the shelf and sell them to some other sucker.   Finally, while I know that margins can be thin in the business, I suspect they have nothing in these units, and, since good customer service is important, it would have been far wiser to refund at least SOME of the payment they received from me.  I know how computer equipment works (I have been working in the field for 30 years!).   I would not even have bitched had they dinged me with a 20% “restocking fee”.

     However, their actions were reprehensible, and, so, I am going to end up by saying that, if you are purchasing computer equipment from Ebay, then, avoid ANY listings by E-wasteharvesters!   From my experience, I am left to believe that they are selling equipment that needs to be run through the shredder and recycled, and, if you have any problems with it, your chance of getting any money back is, essentially, zero.

     Pleasant dreams;