A couple of times now, I've found a new marketplace seller offering stuff much more cheaply than everyone else. The order has gone through and then been cancelled.
Is there some kind of scam involved? Harvesting emails, perhaps? Or is it just incompetence on the part of the sellers?
They may well be using automated pricing (where a program inspects the price of the same thing from other vendors and automatically undercuts it), but when they come to process a sale, a human being realises they cannot make a profit, so cancels it.
Hmm.. Parallel recent experience searching for stock on Celotex insulation. Sales outlet claiming to have product in stock and good price turned out to be a small office in Hove and the actual stockist from Bedford.
A suppose no worse than an imitation Amazon, but slightly unsettling.
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That's pretty harmless, then.
This sort of thing, where a couple of new sellers have a £30 printer priced at £5.99.
Did I really type OP instead of OT? Sigh, getting older.....
If multiple people are using automated pricing, you get feedback loops, where the price of something either drops to a ridiculous level (probably because they're using a default minimum system-wide minimum price) or sometimes rockets upwards, e.g.;
I need to buy a new Grundfos pump for my central heating system. Some of the prices on ebay are very low and I have been wondering why this might be.
Possibly drop ship selling.
Basically the seller doesn't hold any stock themselves but takes advantage of any low prices they've spotted. You order the goods and pay them, they pay the third party and its the third party who ships the goods to you.
However if the third party runs out of stock in the meantime, then the wheels all fall off.
michael adams
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We needed a new pump; the one I installed in 1989 was playing up. Plumbase is about 3 miles away.
Read the descriptions carefully - they may say in small print Grundfos equivalent or replacement and are made by someone else. If replacing and old pump consider some of the more modern designs with proportional control (+ fixed modes).
Having replaced a CH pump 3 months ago I found that the service valves were initially stuck open and once freed and the pump replaced they dripped afterwards. Check if you buy replacement valves at the same time that they are the same length as the old ones or you could find the pipes too short :(
I replaced my pump with a DAB Evosta
Replacement cross reference and manual can be found on the DAB web site
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