eschlwc

spoke too soon. ichigear will not refund return shipping, so i will follow up through ebay's resolution center.

coolkat

I bought one of those Sunrace freewheels a month ago, and it died after 45 miles. Had to go for an expensive IRD one.

eschlwc

^ odd.

so i finally got the last component, a shiny new freewheel, on the bike. it took weeks, 'cause i had to buy three of them. usps took its time too. the first brown one was routed to the wrong coast. the second brown one was routed to the wrong zip, and the last one was ... just right.



ebay wouldn't hold the second seller to pay for return shipping, but did give me a $10 coupon i used on a new chain. it always seems to work out.

top506

Hasn't been my experience at all.
With 13-25, 13-28, and 13-30 in the fleet (several of each) the SunRace freewheels have been going strong, in two cases for 10 years.

Top

Narhay

I purchased a 6 speed Sunrace and it lasted 30km before making a horrible grinding sound. My aesthetic sense was violated when I replaced it with a Shimano Tourney one (brown cogs with black largest cog).

It does work well, so far. I'll give it that.

eschlwc

i've never had a freewheel 'die.' one stopped coasting properly when walking alongside the bike...

i'm really surprised these sunrace freewheels (that work perfectly for me) are so inexpensive. seems shipping is half the cost. good fo us into c&v.

ThermionicScott 

I've noticed incorrect pictures on a lot of ads for freewheels/cassettes, eBay or otherwise. Niagara Cycles -- whom I otherwise love -- does that a lot: Components - Drive Train - Cassettes - 7 speed - Niagara Cycle

It's annoying, but I guess the sellers figure that the description is what matters most, and it's easier to use one stock (and possibly outdated) image to represent a bunch of products in the same category.

Perhaps it might be a good idea to see if the seller will take a separate photo of the one they currently have in stock? If they were willing to do that, you'd know exactly what you were getting, and I'd give them the best feedback in the world after the deal, just because they were cool about it.

eschlwc

^ i specifically asked the second seller (ichigear) about the material of the second fw i purchased (as written in this thread). that didn't help. they still sent the wrong one even after replying that it looked like the one in the photo.

the first seller was using the wrong photo, but their communication was great, and they sent me a return shipping label.

upon later buying another fw for another bike, i used this same 'good' seller. beforehand, i again asked about its description, and they made a note on the purchase order for their shipping department to verify color/material before packaging. it worked perfectly.

himespau 

Probably some of them can't get actual photos because they're just drop shippers and never have the item in their possession.

I've run into a similar issue 3-4 times recently in the past month. Several times got the item and it was in much worse condition than pictured/advertised. All those times, they didn't ask for pictures or even for me to return it to them before refunding my money, so I kind of had an idea they knew they were sending me junk. However, they didn't hassle me about getting a refund, so I wasn't sure how to respond. So far, I haven't bothered to leave feedback either way. The last case, I won an item (a jersey) as the only bidder. They sent me a completely different jersey. After a week of them claiming to not be able to find the jersey that I'd actually bid on and me being too busy at work to get down to the post office to ship the other one back to them, we settled on a partial refund that ended up with them getting about 2/3 of what they'd wanted for the jersey that I didn't really want, but fit well enough and didn't have time to return and me getting the rest of my money back. Of course, 2 days later, the jersey that I'd originally bid on, showed up on eBay again. I still wanted it, but this time paid a higher price as I had competition from someone else who wanted it. So in the end, I got the jersey I wanted, but paid a fair bit more than I had planned when I won the auction the first time and the whole experience didn't sit well with me. Don't have any specific evidence that they'd done anything wrong, so I just haven't left feedback for them either.