Amiga.org
Amiga computer related discussion => General chat about Amiga topics => Topic started by: ElPolloDiabl on August 08, 2010, 01:27:29 PM
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Hi,
Tell us a story about when you bought something, but you felt ripped off or the product didn't seem worth the money.
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Every trip to the fuel pump..
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Independence day (The Movie).
Three of us went to see it at the cinema.
We all felt mentally violated and utterly robbed by the experience.
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For a movie? Pearl Harbour for sure, though considering the hype, Avatar was a close second
For a computer? My first pc (16 megs ram, win 98 and it basically couldn't do anything)
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Wait, I think ElPolloDiabl was referring to Amiga (not movies, etc.), since this was posted in the Amiga General Chat, not the Coffee House forum???? My only regrets have been some eBay purchases of vintage equipment that didn't work properly. But these several purchases have been offset by better-than-expected Amiga purchases. Win some, lose some, I guess.
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I've had terrible luck buying sega controllers and having them not work at all, due to being old pieces of junk
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I've had terrible luck buying sega controllers and having them not work at all, due to being old pieces of junk
I've had the same with CD32 pads, keep getting ones that are scrap even though sold as 'tested' :furious:
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Hi,
Tell us a story about when you bought something, but you felt ripped off or the product didn't seem worth the money.
When I bought FinalWriter97. Amiga magazines praised it but I found FW97 was only huge disappointment. Never trust Amiga magazines ;-)
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I had a quickshot joystick bought new for my A500 (back in the day), broke within a couple of days. The metal strip that controls direction broke.
For the PC I bought a racing wheel and pedals for $100 (maybe a bit more can't remember). It had lousy sensitivity and made racing games nearly unplayable.
Nowadays if I don't like something I'll take it back within the week and get a refund. One of the problems of buying online is that you don't get to inspect something close up. Close up pictures or a refund policy are a good substitute.
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When I bought FinalWriter97. Amiga magazines praised it but I found FW97 was only huge disappointment. Never trust Amiga magazines ;-)
I really like FW97 but its the only Final Writer Ive used, so not sure if it was any improvement over the previous ones or not.
As far as ebay goes, I've lost track of the "Guaranteed to work!" which turns out to be "20 years ago, I plugged it in, and Im pretty sure it worked, all sales final!"
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Pretty much anything you buy on eBay... even if the product is in reasonable shape, it never is quite what you expected.
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An Epson Stylus Colour 600 printer I bought on ebay about 8 years ago, it had most of its insides stripped out and half a brick sitting in it, to give it some weight... :(
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Pretty much anything you buy on eBay... even if the product is in reasonable shape, it never is quite what you expected.
That sounds so much like something you get when you purchase an item from DealExtreme! :)
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An Epson Stylus Colour 600 printer I bought on ebay about 8 years ago, it had most of its insides stripped out and half a brick sitting in it, to give it some weight... :(
These days, if you buy something from Ebay using Paypal to pay for it and it is THAT far away from its description, you better file a complaint and request the Ebay issue a refund.
In the past, I've been foolish enough to go back and forth with a seller and then accepted that fact that I've been ripped off.
But it doesn't have to work that way. Unlike a lot of you, apparently, most of the purchases I've made on Ebay have been good buys. Now I haven't always liked what the items I've posted for sale have brought, but the items I've received were usually in good shape and cost a fraction of what they would elsewhere. Even items I've purchased from Chinese vendors have arrived and worked to my satisfaction.
You guys must be doing something wrong. First, never deal with a seller with bad feedback. Second, pay via credit cards or Paypal. Third, if in any way the item you receive does not match its description, you're obligated to at least contact the seller and try to work out a solution.
But that obligation is only for one week. If you still feel that you've been taken advantage off, then move right on to a complaint.
Ebay and Paypal are taking the idea of buyer support very seriously now. As long as you've paid via an electronic method that can be charged back, if you've been defrauded you'll get your money back.
Frankly, I've found this forum to be a better place to buy than dealing directly with the seller like you might on Craigslist. I worry when I see posts like this as they give the general impression that a purchase on Ebay is as good as flushing your money down the toilet. My experiences would lead me to believe that either you weren't reading the listing carefully, making sure you were dealing with someone who was reasonably trustworthy (decent feedback scores, not a new seller), or that you didn't realize that a proper complaint would get you a refund.
I've seen Ebay do this out of their own pocket if they have to.
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Forgot to mention that I did get a refund from ebay for the stylus printer, The guy I bought it from was a new seller and he quickly disappeared form ebay after that.
Even buying from seller with 100% feedback does not guarantee you that the item is alright. 3 Weeks ago I paid £399 for an iMac G5 that was supposed to be in perfect condition. However when i got it and opened it up to put in a bigger HD, I was shocked and amazed to find that where the HD should be was a tiny little 160GB laptop HD, stuck to the metal shielding with BROWN PARCEL TAPE. Its only took me about 5 days to get my money back after I complained to ebay & paypal and reported it to Trading Standards.
If your buying stuff off ebay you should only use paypal and as well as complaining to ebay report it to Trading Standards as well, it's a sure fire way to get your money back when you have been sold something dodgy.
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Hi,
Tell us a story about when you bought something, but you felt ripped off or the product didn't seem worth the money.
FusionPPC, very expensive and no good support.
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I have never heard anyone bash FW97 before. I upgraded from version 1, and still use FW97.
I guess I have good luck with Tech/computer/electronic stuff - BUT I am careful where I buy from. I am even quite happy with eBay (just buy from sellers with 100% feedback).
My gripes are at the gas pump and at the food store.
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Anytime I bought an IBM/Windows product.
A brand new car.
A 28 year old home.
Most all modern Hollywood films since the mid 90's.
Most all "remastered" audio CD's ever.
Most all new music from the mid 90's to current (1-2 songs are good, rest suck).
Most all new consumer electronics manufactured since the late 90's.
Just about anytime I patronize a restaurant.
Same with going to see a live concert.
Driving on the toll way.
Shopping at the grocery store.
Paying the electricity bill.
Purchasing new clothes, shoes and belts.
The pump as someone else already mentioned.
College.
Anytime I've made an "upgrade" to a new OS on an older computer, with exception to AmigaOS 3.9 (mostly talking about Mac's and IBM's).
The $150 I spend a month on Cable TV/Internet/Phone.
The $900 I recently spent on my cat that needed 3 stones removed from her bladder, despite the fact I raised her on "the thinking persons cat food": Wysong, but I'm glad it's done. She's still a "bitch" though. lol
Anytime we pay the property taxes. OR most taxes - period. But property especially. What a crock of legally organized crime that is.
Health insurance premiums and the "healthcare" you receive today by monkeys.
Anytime we purchase fertilizer or grass seed and try to distribute it evenly on the yards. Note to self: drop spreaders suck - must try broadcast spreader next.
When I was younger, I'd purchase the occasional "ready to assemble" pieces of furniture be it computer desks or entertainment centers. Haven't for the past 15+ years, but if I did - I'd certainly complain about its value.
The $50 a month my newly found employer is going to pay for me to have a cell phone, despite the fact I have e-mail and a land-line in my office, for "emergencies". Not to mention the $100+ I'll spend in getting an iPhone + "activation" they'll ultimately reimburse me for. Screw the "droid" phone at $159 (after $100 rebate) or otherwise. Apple products clearly still have the best value for buck ratio going on as far as I'm concerned. Cell phones in general though. Pffttt... I'm going to feel like a major "me too" schmuck if I have to carry one of those damn things around. I resent the things and peoples attitude about them big time.
And to recap - yes... I know the difference between costly and rip-off for the money. Value was the question here. ALL of the above I have a problem with. Very little "value" if any in todays goods, products and "services". Period. I frickin' HATE these times we're living in.
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Ditto!
anytime i bought an ibm/windows product.
A brand new car.
A 28 year old home.
Most all modern hollywood films since the mid 90's.
Most all "remastered" audio cd's ever.
Most all new music from the mid 90's to current (1-2 songs are good, rest suck).
Most all new consumer electronics manufactured since the late 90's.
Just about anytime i patronize a restaurant.
Same with going to see a live concert.
Driving on the toll way.
Shopping at the grocery store.
Paying the electricity bill.
Purchasing new clothes, shoes and belts.
The pump as someone else already mentioned.
Anytime i've made an "upgrade" to a new os on an older computer, with exception to amigaos 3.9 (mostly talking about mac's and ibm's).
The $150 i spend a month on cable tv/internet/phone.
The $900 i recently spent on my cat that needed 3 stones removed from her bladder, despite the fact i raised her on "the thinking persons cat food": Wysong, but i'm glad it's done. She's still a "bitch" though. Lol
anytime we pay the property taxes. Or most taxes - period. But property especially. What a crock of legally organized crime that is.
Health insurance premiums and the "healthcare" you receive today by monkeys.
Anytime we purchase fertilizer or grass seed and try to distribute it evenly on the yards. Note to self: Drop spreaders suck - must try broadcast spreader next.
When i was younger, i'd purchase the occasional "ready to assemble" piece of furniture. Haven't for the past 15+ years, but if i did - i'd certainly complain about its value.
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In nineties I made the mistake of buying this piece of excrement:
(http://www.vesalia.de/pic/comp5000.jpg)
10 years later I made the same mistake buying this:
(http://www.richardlagendijk.nl/foto/cnp/CompetitionPro.gif)
:(.
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X1000, oh wait that didn't happen yet...
Is this how time normally passes? Reeeeeally slowly. In the right order.
Doctor Who
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I agree with many of those things especially restaraunt. I've never had real home style cooking at a restaraunt in last ten years, just hastily prepared stuff with supermarket packaged ingredients. Reminds me of National lampoon European Vacation where they put french flags on the Microwave tv dinners.
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Yeah, things are often a disappointment these days, but if you go through life being constantly disappointed with everything you buy, then I don't think it's a very happy life. And you only get the one shot.
Personally, bought a decent camera a few years ago from a big electronics chain's tax free store in an airport in the UK. Saved several hundred Euro in the process, and bought their product cover plan for 5 years seeing as it was expensive kit. Three years later, on holidays and the front element of the kit lens fell out - literally disintegrated in my hands as I used it. Brought it back to a store in Ireland and they said they'd repair it under the cover, but when they didn't repair it (and I was entitled to a replacement), they said they couldn't replace it as that model was discontinued, and they couldn't give me the replacement model because the original was paid for in the UK.
In the end, after numerous phone calls to the head office and visits to the manager, I ended up having to effectively pay the tax I'd saved originally to get a replacement, moving it from the cheapest I could've paid for it to the most expensive.
I had specifically asked when I bought it about the UK / Ireland thing and was told it was absolutely no problem. After all, it's difficult to return it to the same store without buying an airline ticket. But I have to say that even now, over a year on, that experience taints the pleasure I get from using my camera. Especially since I'd never consider buying from that crowd of thieves normally. I never will again, even if it is the best price.
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And to recap - yes... I know the difference between costly and rip-off for the money. Value was the question here. ALL of the above I have a problem with. Very little "value" if any in todays goods, products and "services". Period. I frickin' HATE these times we're living in.
I agree with what you say, but strangely enough I actually enjoy the challenge of fighting back against 'these times we're living in'... :)
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What a bunch of malcontents!
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What a bunch of malcontents!
actually I'm very content (and don' call me mal !!!) :biglaugh::biglaugh::biglaugh:
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Pretty much anything you buy on eBay... even if the product is in reasonable shape, it never is quite what you expected.
True, the A600 I won recently unexpectedly even had a 1 MB expansion in it. :D
On topic: The iTunes coupon we bought as birthday present for our colleague. When he tried to use it, the iTunes store claimed that it had already been used.
Money: 25 €
Value: 0
What a ripoff. 1st and last time I ever bought any i* crap...
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Pretty much anything you buy on eBay... even if the product is in reasonable shape, it never is quite what you expected.
I've never had that problem on ebay
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I have to say I've only had one bad experience on eBay - Plenty of Hi-fi equipment, camera gear, computers, computer parts, lots of electronic parts, car parts, even a car, have all gone smoothly and have been pretty much what I was expecting. I'm not saying there isn't any crap out there (I'm sure it's full of it), but maybe I'm lucky,, or just careful.
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Marriage.
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when I bought a Delphina sound card for my Amiga 3000T
All it does is let me play CD's, which I can easily do through the CD players headphone hack
I won't go into a software rant
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Independence day (The Movie).
Three of us went to see it at the cinema.
We all felt mentally violated and utterly robbed by the experience.
I saw that movie at the theatre and thought it was funny! ;-)
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Ehh...computer-stuff wise:
Cyrix 6x86 Pr166 - ran moderately well doing humdrum tasks. Oh my god don't throw anything in 3d at it (games-wise). Suddenly it's like having a '486/sx-16 again. I was so happy the day I got a real P200MMX I threw that chip in the garbage.
My ISA SB16 clone from the same vintage computer. Once I got a real soundblaster (an Awe32 gold) the frame-rate in flight sims I played at the time actually went up.
Innumerable PC keyboards - until I bought my Model-M's.
A few RPGs and wargames on the Amiga (SSI I'm looking AT YOU x-( )
Winmodems. GAAAH. I went from a ping of 170 playing Quake II on iD Software's servers to a ping of 230+ (and then just quit bothering) when I switched from a hardware, ISA 33.6 to a PCI 56.6 software modem.
DSL. Maybe it was just me, but I never ever* got the speeds I could have/should have.
(*=oh it was way, way faster than dialup, don't misunderstand me)
(oh and ID is cheese - but it's good, fun cheese!)
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Ehh...computer-stuff wise:
Cyrix 6x86 Pr166 - ran moderately well doing humdrum tasks. Oh my god don't throw anything in 3d at it (games-wise). Suddenly it's like having a '486/sx-16 again. I was so happy the day I got a real P200MMX I threw that chip in the garbage.
Not exactly a fair comparison. The chip you've mentioned ran at only slightly more than half the speed of the Intel chip you mentioned.
Intel stopped developing the original Pentium at 233Mhz. I have a Cyrix 6x86 PR333 that will walk all over any original Pentium.
Once AMD decided to move to Socket7 and introduced the K6-2, AMD processors operated up to twice as fast as Pentium processors and benchmarked even better.
The last Socket 7 processors I owned were AMD K6-2+ and K6III+ processors. These would uniformly run at 550 Mhz (with built in processor caches that Intel processors lacked). Some of these processors would run at 600Mhz and I even had one at 612.
In virtually any Pentium compatible board there is a non Intel processor that will work better in it (or can be BIOS modded to work) and these processors best Intel's limited Pentium line.
I inherited one of the P200MMX processors you've mentioned from a customer upon upgrading his system. Every benchmark I made on that processor was, frankly, pitiful compared to Cyrix and AMD processors I already had.
As a former Motorola fanatic, its depressing seeing this kind of pro-Intel BS on an Amiga website.
If IBM had not outsourced all the components of their first consumer oriented computer (the PC), then Intel (a company building processors that had 1/4 the performance per Mhz of their competitors products) would never have gained the undeserved promenance they have.
The original 8088? An 8 bit memory bus verion of the 8086 that at 4.77 Mhz performed on par with a 1Mhz 6809 or 6502.
The 80186? Only commonly found in the non-IBM compatible Tandy 2000.
The 80286? A little improvement, but once Windows3.x came out you needed at least a 386.
386SX and 486SX processors? Intel's brilliant idea of selling processors with disabled features. Want to upgrade your 486SX? That socket you plug your upgrade into totally replaces the crippled 486SX with a full 486DX.
Does anybody remember that the original Pentium processor had a bug (although admittedly an unlikely one to cause problems)?
Pentium Pro? Definitely to be forgotten. Apparently even Intel though so since the next processor was named Pentium II.
I won't abuse the PII or PIII as they were relatively well executed. While they were concurrent the original Athlon and the PIII ran a neat race to >1Ghz (Won by AMD).
Then Intel returned to seriously screwing up - the Pentium IV. I knew there was something wrong when the last Pentium IIIs outperformed higher speed P4s. Intel's misinterpretation of Moore's Law led them to believe they'd be able to get the P4 to 10Ghz.
Netburst architecture was responsible for Intel's product line being outperformed by their competitor's. Until they threw out the entire idea, and introduced a new line branching from their mobile processors the only way Intel could claim to have the highest performing processor was to tack a 2meg Xeon cache onto the P4 and sell it for $1000. Anybody that buys Intel's top end processors must really enjoy pain, because those incredibly overpriced chips will rapidly be rendered obsolete.
So tell me, what was it that made you think Intel was such a great buy?
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So tell me, what was it that made you think Intel was such a great buy?
Be...cause it out ran the fucking Cyrix chip? Because it had real honest to god MMX support that the Cyrix chip didn't? Because it could handle 3d without collapsing in on itself like the Cyrix chip?
No, really, what in my original thesis left you uninformed?
The. P200. MMX. Ran. Faster. And. Better.
And I say that as someone typing this on an Athlon II x64 (dual 3.0ghz cores). ALL CPU manufacturers are capable of producing lemons.
Apparently Cyrix had a run of them. I bought one. It was a poor purchase and I didn't get my money's worth. I stacked P120's up against it and they ran rings around it. But no, I looked at that stupid "performance rating" marketing bullshit Cyrix stamped on there with the same grace and aplomb a ESL flea-market huckster approaches the sale of his grey market electronics with and spent my money there.
The P4 2.0ghz system I had? Did not like. Replaced with an AMD Athlon64. Supplemented the Athlon with a 3.0ghz P4 Toshiba notebook that in terms of raw CPU, matched it.
Now, brace yourself, son: if there's an Intel chip on the horizon that outperforms this one, the one I'm using now? I'll probably build a system around that!
Gasp.
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I guess I can toss in that I paid money to watch the first star wars prequel. I kinda wish I had just spent that money on pizza instead