Rip-Off? Don't judge by web domains.

I have just purchased two little clock kits from China, on ebay

Whilst looking for the datasheet for Atmel AT89C2051-24PU

I came across this: **LINK**

https://uk.homerfever.com/homedecor-c-6/1pc-c51-4-bits-digital-electronic-clock-ysz4-3v6v-c51-4-bits-digital-electronic-clock-electronic-production-suite-diy-kit-diy-p-119927.html

Which bears a striking similarity to the ebay item ... in everything but price !!

Explanations would be welcome [but let's not get too political]

MichaelG.

Don't be coy Michael - how much were the eBay ones?

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**LINK**

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-Bits-Digital-AT89C2051-Electronic-Clock-Production-Suit-Set-DIY-Kit-BSG/122893972391

Why is the title of this thread "Rip-Off Britain?

The link Michael posted was to "Homer Fever" whose address is given as:

1206 xinhan street, HnaJiang, Fujian, China.

Brian

Edit:  uk at the start of an address isn't a .co.uk or .uk domain.  Then again, a .co.uk doesn't make it British any more than .com makes it US based.  The only domain names you can trust are .eu as the EU requires registrants to be in the EU.

Edited By Brian G on 16/09/2019 18:35:22

thanks for the link Michael that is exactly what I have been looking for, never thought to build from a kit.

cheers Brian

And a Hong Kong phone number: +852

Whack!

My curiosity is piqued far more by this ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Neil

(P.S. don't take the trout seriously - I pressed ctrl-v and it appeared at random, as I'd copied it a couple of hours ago! - I thought it was vaguely appropriate)

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I was looking for the datasheet [*] because I had just bought the clocks

MichaelG.

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[*] **LINK**

https://www.mouser.co.uk/datasheet/2/268/doc0368-1368963.pdf

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Edit: and here is the kit info.

http://www.icstation.com/product_document/Download/1765.pdf

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 16/09/2019 20:22:20

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Well it's priced in £

... and the thread title is reasonably ambiguous, I think

MichaelG.

Well, the UK version appears to be assembled, and the Chinese one is a bag of parts, how can that be a rip off?

What would worry me more is the kit of parts in the first link shows 2 resistors but the built up ones shown have four

That would be a rip off if you did not get all the parts.

Edited By JasonB on 16/09/2019 20:36:38

Old mart scroll down the page and it shows the parts and says "kit" in the description

I must admit, I do like these clock kits. I'm not into the electronics side, more the soldering and assembly. They are great fun to build, and out of 4, from differing suppliers, I've had one bad one.

https://ebay.us/aM9wjD

They are available from banggood too.

Oh, and a cheap USB power plug from poundland drives them just fine

Edited By Lainchy on 16/09/2019 21:05:02

Edited By Lainchy on 16/09/2019 21:05:12

There isn't a UK version

Brian

Wow! Big price "reduction" from £46 to £16, quite a fair old "come on"

I like the ebay price offer, buy two and get 5% off the second one. Good deal.

I get this all the time especially with Arduino stuff , i can buy one from here in OZ for around $30 au for an Arduino nano clone from a local electronics supply store or pay $5 from China off ebay - only thing is i have to wait for it to get here but for the same $30 i get five units .

I have also been looking at an ESP32 board and they are also around $30 - $40 from the same local supplier but ebay and banggood both have them for $8 so i can understand where MG is coming from as it is not a few dollars difference its five times more expensive ! Sure i can understand a supplier having to pay freight and the need to make a quid etc etc but seriously do they need to mark it up that much ? I suspect they would be paying a couple of dollars each for them so if they need to be that greedy i’m happy to wait a few weeks for my stuff to come from China and the local guy can sit there watching their overpriced items collect dust .

Absolutely, XD. I wrote about these kits in Practical Wireless a year or so back. (Details when I wake up) I bought a handful of them for a quid or so, and use one as a workshop clock. just because the asking price is ludicrously high does not make it 'rip off', in that one is free not to buy it.

A book I was interested in is priced on ebay at about £52, another at £40+, I bought it brand new, from a routine bookseller, for £16,99, yes, it's still in print!

The UK(?) vendor is trying to mislead some purchasers. They show a kit which has been fully built up, while actually supplying it only in component parts without making it very clear that the pic is the finished project after being built by the buyer..

Some will, invariably, assume the fully built up unit is a clock in kit-form and as such requiring that module as part of a complete clock - the rest being the housing which could be purchased separately or made from scratch by the model clock builder.

Savvy buyers would not have ‘the wool pulled over their eyes’ but some will, no doubt, not get what they thought they were getting. That is not the way to get subsequent orders, I would suggest, as there will be a lot ot disappointed customers who may not have the soldering skills and would bin the item when either they could not build it or when it doesn’t work when finished.

Just sharp practice. I, for one, would not buy anything from a supplier that ‘hides’ facts, even if the are actually in full view. Legal? Yes. But still a sharp practice.

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It's actually a little worse than that ^^^

Jason mentioned the different quantity of discrete resistors; but the circuit boards are also [appropriately] different.

MichaelG.

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Edit: But, addressing your other point ... 'Homer' does list the kit as:

Home >>  HomeDecor >>  1pc C51 4 Bits Digital Electronic Clock YSZ-4 3V-6V C51 4 Bits Digital Electronic Clock Electronic Production Suite DIY Kit DIY

Edited By Michael Gilligan on 17/09/2019 08:41:08