Joys of buying no-name from Ebay

[alan_m]

I try and keep a small stock of 2 part 5 minute glue for the odd repair.

Before lock-down my local pound shop would have a suitable product at, surprisingly, a pound :)

During lock-down I ran out of stock so ordered some no-name 2 part glue from Ebay. It came all bubble wrapped on a card and I put it away this way for future use.

Wind on many months and today I need to use it. I cut open the bubble pack and observed that the reasonably large tubes were rather flat but folded in such a way to look full in the bubble pack. Sure enough there is a minimal amount of material in each tube and probably only a tenth of the glue that I got from my pound shop purchases!

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

bummer

[Brian Gaff (Sofa]

Its like wine bottles with indented bottoms and giant Easter eggs with just a few sweets inside. The oldes trick in the book. Brian

[Archibald Tarquin Blenkinsopp]

Er. all sold by vol/ weight

[Chris Green]

It's very, very rare to see wine in other than 750ml bottles, the 'indented bottom' is supposed to trap any solid matter left in the wine though that (the solid matter) is rare now. You do get half bottles of course, 375ml and very occasionally you see 500ml bottles of wine. However I don't think you can really claim that the indentation is supposed to fool you into thinking the bottle contains more than it appears to.

[John Towill]

I always understood that the indenture at the bottom of bottles was a safety measure against bursting.

[Dave Plowman (News]

Once made the mistake of buying D cell Ni-Cads off Ebay at a very good price. They turned out to be AAs in a cardboard tube.

If the price is too good to be true...

[Theo]

TBH the capacity of an AA NiMH these days is probably better than a D-cell zinc carbon was a few decades ago. So the better availability of AAs and the lower price for, say, your old 'transistor' radio could make them justified, compared with some 10Ah D cells that weigh a lot and self-discharge faster than you can use them.

Assuming your D cells weren't advertised at 1,000,000mAh, of course. (that must be the new unit of 'ebay-mAh')

...you get what you pay for?

Theo (who bought some zinc carbon by mistake the other day, and wonders why they're still on the market - surely surpassed in every way by alkaline? Beyond being a couple of pennies per cell cheaper)

[Stephen Cole]

Are you having another one of your visions, Jim? Get counselling, mate. Thanks, Jim.

[Dave Plowman (News]

In theory, zinc carbon have a longer shelf life - ie when used in things with a very low power consumption.

[alan_m]

But the scammers are often wise to pricing and will set their price just enough below that of the genuine item.

[Max Demian]

Maplin (RIP) used to sell adapters to convert AAs to Ds. Useful as AA chargers are more available than D ones.

[Andrew]

Farmers used to bash big dents into the 10 gallon milk churns so that when the milk was at the 10 gallon mark, it contained a bit less than 10 gallons. The dairies were wise to this though.

Andrew

[Andrew]

Food manufacturers, notably things like dessert stuff love this trick, so the product on the fridge shelf seems larger than its actual contents.

[Jim GM4DHJ ...]

you think

[charles]

But worse was the Waitrose buiscuit packet labelled "8 biscuits" which only contained 7. The inner plastic bit could only get 7 in.

[PeterC]

Tried a new brand of yogurt, looked the same size as the others, didn't bother to read the label. I have it in 4 portions of approx. 125g - short measure on the last day. The bottom was recessed to give 450g. I treat jars of jam etc. that are under 454g as short measure but I'll accept 450g.

[Harry Bloomfield, Esq.]

John Towill explained :

I thought it was to allow them to stack, or feed into a machine one on top of another. The cork end locates in the base indenture in the bottle.

[Tim Lamb]

In message <rlupss$23h$ [e-mail], Harry Bloomfield <?.?@harrym1byt.plus.com.invalid> writes

Applied mechanics 1962! Hoop stress is twice the longitudinal stress. You need to reinforce the ends in some way.

[Andrew]

To be fair, Waitrose 'essentials' range is better quality than other supermarkets normal stuff.