I am sure it will eventually become invalid , so I am not going to post a link to it here, but I am going to post a picture of it while it's still active and explain why is it a fraud and from there, how many eBay listings in the "electronics>parts" category are fraud.
Here is the listing (click to see full screen):
This listing is definitely a fraud!
First, the specified buffer boards have been manufactured in 2006/2007 and because they go bad so often (as I've written before) at some point in 2010 pretty much all vendors here in USA exhausted all their availabilities. There was a period of time during which the boards could simply not be found and we, like some others, had to rely on repairing the original buffers.
Repairing the old buffers did not prove to be cost-effective (for reasons explained in the above referenced article) , but luckily Samsung has responded in a fast manner (for a company their size) and produced the new batch of buffer boards , which now have 4 buffer ICs (100 bits each) as opposed to the original ones that have 6 ICs with 64 bits.
Granted, this is a logical argument, not a proof that the boards listed here are old and used.
But wait, there's more!
All OEM buffer boards of this kind come with a revision model stamped on them.
The oldest ones are revision A1 and the latest ones (of the 6 - IC model) is A5; every TV sustain set we have seen here that has never been opened before (and we've seen easily hundreds) comes with buffers that have A1 to A5 on them.
Oddly enough, buffers sent to parts distributors come without revision label on them. I am talking about the ones that were in the distribution network before they got exhausted.
I don't know if that is on purpose or not, but again all the old style replacement buffers we have seen have never had revision label on them.
This, by itself, is still not a definite proof that the listing is a fraud, but you have to agree it adds up to the logical conclusion.
The final argument is probably the weakest one, but I'll present it anyway since it does have value to me.
As I've blogged before, we are not new to importing from China.
My conclusion working with various electronic components vendors is that they are not so much committing fraud on purpose as they are simply not at all understanding what are they selling.
Perhaps someone in the supply chain there is clearly aware what they are doing , but it's usually not the dealer you communicate with; those dealers are often willing to learn and provide feedback back to the chain so that they do not lose your business.
How well does that work is another story.
But my point here is that based on experience I can easily guess that the seller doesn't even know that what they describe is, well, a nonsense. They probably offer it in good faith hoping to earn some valuable American dollars.
Looking at their other sales and the listing's description only adds to that theory; oh, and referencing the boards by their pure PCB IDs instead of the assembly ID (LJ92-XXX) or the marketing component ID (BN96-xxx) is yet another strong indicator that they have no clue what are they selling.
Bottom line?
Beware what you're buying...or you'll get what you deserve :-)
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