General Cycling Discussion - I gotta laugh

I was just searching ebay when I came across a Bianchi Umbrella, looks cool, would be nice for my wife while she is in the sun waiting when I am out on a charity ride or something, so I see the price and then go to bianchiusa to check the price versus the sellers price and he has it starting at $10 more than what I can buy it from bianchiusa..(ebay $69.99 + $14.00 s/h - bianchiusa $59.95 + $7.96s/h)
So I send him an email saying how nice the umbrella is and then i give him the link to bianchiusa LOL.
do people think cyclist are dumb, do they not know that we know where our cycling links and stores are???
Makes me laugh when i see something like this.. just thought I would share this with everyone ..

eBay is like the TV Shopping Network. People buy stuff they don't need, that has no value. 100% genuwhine diamondes anyone?

eBay is like the TV Shopping Network. People buy stuff they don't need, that has no value. 100% genuwhine diamondes anyone?

that very true...i see people bid on stuff that you know they will regret once it get to them in the mail.
that reminds me i should go bid on my Crimex watch:D

The only times I've ever bought something through eBay was for stuff I simply could not find anywhere else at even close to a reasonable price. Here's my short list.


SunVideo SBus frame capture board - This was discontinued back in 1995. I wanted to play with video conferencing on my workstation. Sun had some old cards in stock but wanted $800 each for them. I got one off eBay for $53. You can read about my setup here (http://www.neebu.net/~khuon/spycam/) if you're interested.

Speakerbox for my cellphone's carkit - I broke the one I had and then broke it even more trying to repair it. A new one was around $120 from Nokia. I found one on eBay for $12 because some guy bought a truck and this thing was in it but he didn't have a Nokia phone to use it with.

Fantray and controller board for an old Sun SPARC StorageArray model 110 - After a power failure, my 30-drive SSA 110 which I originally found in my old lab at work being used as a doorstop was faulting and refusing to boot up properly. It seemed like the fantray which I had already repaired twice before with new fans was the culprit. Unfortunately, I was out of town and I tried diagnosing it over the phone with my wife. When I got home, and tested the tray, it tested fine but was still showing a fault. I then began to suspect the controller board. I called up Sun as well as some resellers to see what they had in stock. This thing hadn't been made since the mid-1990s yet I was getting price quotes of around $700 to $1000 for a controller board with the serial optical fibrechannel interfaces. I hunted around on eBay and came across someone selling some old SSA supplies for $50. He was offerring both a fantray and controller board (minus the GBICs but I had those). I placed my bid and won the auction. However, that night, I decided to swap the power supply on the SSA with a spare one I had lying about and to my surprise, all the fans spun up and everything was happy. Still I don't regret the eBay purchase as those parts are obviously hard to come by and now I have spares for if/when the ones I have in service decide to die.

I have bought a bunch on ebay, but as I said before I ALWAYS check the retail price on the web or elsewhere... I am not anti ebay, but I just think some of these people dont realise that we have access to the internet and can check prices, it makes me laugh everytime I see this one guy who sells bianchi look pedals, the guy starts the bid off at $45 yet you can buy them from bianchiusa for $35
I laugh when someone actually buys them for more, or I send them an email with the bianchi link after the auction is over LOL