When did you not get value for money?

[Iggy]

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.

[Iggy]

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?