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I had three Osborne 1's... Now I only have 2... Ebay cancelled mid-shipping and then upped the shipping price. Where else can I buy old CPM computers?

It's not that they prevent non-US people from seeing US items - it's that they are excluding specific US items from showing up in search results when searched for.

The reason is most likely to prevent them seeing what happened to the product they were denied shipping for, but as Ebay don't openly acknowledge the business practice, there's no way to know what reason they would give, or how they would explain their position on this.

I don't think it's for nefarious purposes - or as least I've seen no evidence of that - but it certainly appears to be intentionally deceptive.
 
Ok, this only happens for searches. My bad. Still seems odd, as you'd think they would want everyone to be able to search for anything. So something odd here.
 
Complete vintage computer gear tends to be bulky, heavy, and fragile. That makes shipping a complete unit a pain for all concerned. I've seen eBay sellers mention they no longer deal in complete units. Instead, they strip out the cards, sell them, and scrap the chassis.

We've all seen the horror stories on this site. CRT's arive with the neck snapped off. Plastic shells like on vintage monitors pulverized. And sitting on my shelf is a Heathkit H27 with both drive doors broken in the middle.

Sad, but that's where we are.
 
Ive seen it before. There was this item being sold by an italian seller. No matter what I did when I logged in, I couldn't view the item. Only when I was not logged in with my internet cache cleared.
 
Complete vintage computer gear tends to be bulky, heavy, and fragile. That makes shipping a complete unit a pain for all concerned.
I sell complete systems internationally ALL THE TIME. Heck I had a buyer in Japan who bought 7 complete vintage computers from me over the years. This was the first time one of my computers was absconded away from me.

The issue isnt shipping them or peoples bad packing.... The issue is they are being TAKEN.....

Yes I know the pains of having stuff arrive broken. It happens all the time and I have shared plenty of photos on this forum. And honestly shipping fragile items is not hard if you are willing to take the time and money to do so. Most people are lazy and stupid in these practices.. And Cheap, as they intend to pocket as much of the shipping fees as they can. That was meant to be harsh because its sadly true.
 
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Ok, this only happens for searches. My bad. Still seems odd, as you'd think they would want everyone to be able to search for anything. So something odd here.

It's definitely a questionable practice. I've caught ebay doing illegal things in the past, and even initiated government action against them one time, but the problem mysteriously vanished and I was compensated for what they described as an unplained occurance, so the agency dropped the matter.

If I had to pick a specific term to describe their behavior this time around, I'd say that they are acting in bad faith - They clearly give the impression that the GSP will ship items internationaly, and actively move to discourage other legitimate forms of shipping, claiming it will provide better costs, then appear to gouge the customer when they do deliver the service, and intentionally mislead both the seller and buyer when they do not. As has been pointed out, it's difficult to ascribe much more than this as they are so secretive in their actions and provide explanations that appear to be intentionally false or misleading.

But it's not unreasonable to assume a key motivation in their activities would be profit.

And it's definitely not anything personal - I am just one of many victims of this latest practice. There have been individuals targetted by them before - eg; https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy...-stalk-and-silence-couple-that-ran-news-site/ - But that is not the case in this instance - mostly I find ebay helpful when I do contact them, and I used to love the GSP, but lately I'm questioning it.

Saying things can't be shipped to a country though and seizing them and reselling them without providing an opportunity to address the reason is just wrong. Hiding the activity does make it look a lot worse.

There's a lot of posts on this topic when you go looking -


It appears that members of this community are disproportionally targetted by their practices - and it's not like they won't ship an item. If the description makes it appear worth less than it sold for, and the extortionate GSP fees are paid, it will make the trip.

Sorry to hear about your experience @DDS - this is exactly where GSP should be useful - with shipping insurance and the like to make sure the seller and buyer are both protected, and if not for the random siezing of collectables, I would still be happy to use GSP.
I found a company called JAUCE That seems to operate like Ebay does, with other computers, but only from Japan, and apparently with a lot of happy customers... Ebay could take a leaf or two out of their book. I only wish they had a US equivalent.
 
So my 2.5 Osborne 1's arrived, and subsequently, nearly all Kaypro's and Osborne's from the US are excluded to Australia, with the exception of just a few high priced units with very high shipping costs, that as far as I can tell were all available to Australia prior to the recent changes.

It's flipped from being just about everything in the US on GSP to none of the larger stuff on GSP :(

So it's getting very hard to get anything out of the US anymore :( Even a thin book now costs $50 to ship from ABEBOOKS. Seems like the shipping companies have all turned to gouging while they can.

I guess this is their next strategy. Maybe they are not making enough margin out of a monitor sized box when they can ship books and other small items in it's place for 10 to 100 times as much.

Given that Ebay interfere with other shipping methods, it's pretty despicable. I don't know if the US is seeing the same problem with stuff from outside the US costing a fortune to send :(

At least I recently found a nice Kaypro II to add to my collection... But local computers are rare to show.
 
OK, this has officially gone from Conspiracy Theory to Conspiracy Fact this morning. I nearly didn't get the Kaypro.

Rememeber I loaded up 2.5 x Osborne's into multiple orders? Which they combined and shipped together? It would probably have hurt Ebay financially if they didn't send them, since they would have had a poor resale value based on the product descriptions.

Here's what happened as a result of that. Ebay has now banned me from receiving large packages through ANY of their shipping programs including domestic... And they've done it all behind my back without telling me.

Normal stuff I order goes through Ebay just fine, but the Kaypro triggered the ban, and the seller was prevented from using ebay to book the transfer of the item through Sendle as would normally happen domestically in Australia - At the same time Ebay are telling them that they are "Looking into the problem" as to how my address shows up as prohibited for large items, they are telling the seller that the seller has an obligation to cancel the order even though it's already paid for. In full.

Hmmm... It gets better... So the seller sends me some messages through the Ebay system that they can't ship to my address as the Ebay system no longer recognizes my address for shipping of large items, and that it's specifically my address and do I have another address, eg a friend or a relative, that Ebay can ship to? Otherwise he has to cancel the order. So even Ebay Australia don't seem to understand why my mail address is banned from receiving large items through their system.

I don't see the messages as I'm unwell at the moment, and Ebay is not notifying me that there's a problem but is sending me messages telling me everything is on the way. I eventually (post incident ) find these - and recently JUST these emails in my SPAM folder. Ebay's emails to notify me the seller is trying to contact me contain the phrase "money back" - which is a well known SPAM filter trigger, so all the email notices they send to me are being filtered by my SPAM. Clever.... I'm suspecting that's not a coincidence but there's no further evidence of that.

Fortunately the seller has enough of my details, and is a bit of a sleuth, and tracks down my cell number and messages me to ask if I saw his messages on Ebay... So I log in, and no, I hadn't been notified and wasn't expecting any messages either - I sort things out directly with him, and he goes back to the same dropoff location and ships, this time *without* ebay involved in the booking, and now I have a shipping number, and it's enroute with the national carrier - though at a much higher price for shipping...

And he sends me the screenshots and tells me details from his screen of what is going on with Ebay behind my back.

header1.JPG

That's the message he's seeing, and he contacted ebay and they tell him it's a problem with my *specific* address... Ebay has literally banned me from receiving large items by blocking the sellers from shipping them in the first place. It's a normal household urban address with a road and a single-story house, just like any other urban house, in case you're wondering, although it *is* in the world's most isolated city, and it is expensive to ship things here - even domestically. All the other stuff I order through ebay ships to me just fine. I get huge boxes of stuff from Amazon every other week. It all gets delivered no problem. The rest of the page and details he sent show me that it has to do with the size of the package that appears to trigger the problem. It's within all of their other constraints - but Ebay tell him my address is banned.

So it seems that Ebay has personally targetted me, just like they targetted other victims over time. Though it's worse since I imagine it's most likely automatically triggered by the number of items I have bought from them which it is probably not profitable to send to me with their current shipping programs rather than me directly offending their executive, but who knows. Now they just intercede directly with the sellers to prevent them from shipping in the first place. I imagine this tactic is going to affect other collectors too, since other buyers who buy a lot of large packages might also trigger the same issue.

Had the seller not directly tracked me down and contacted me outside of ebay to alert me, I might never know. And I would have lost the Kaypro as well.

I'm pretty aghast at this... Words do not describe what I think about Ebay at this moment, not ones that can be said in polite company anyway. It may be a stretch to think Ebay is targetting me specifically because I posted complaints and warning here, but then again, that's exactly what they have been convicted of doing multiple times of late.

ie: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

Looks like I need to start organizing people to ship outside of Ebay now for anything large.... Small stuff stuff still comes through just fine, and people have no trouble sending small overpriced items through Ebay's normal shipping systems, so it's not like they banned me as a customer... They just found a way to stop me buying large bulky items, which, as a collector, I would do way more than usual.

I don't know what will happen about the ban in the future. If I get an opportunity to have someone send me an item through the Ebay system in the future, I might test this further, but computers are an expensive way to test this and 2.5 Osborne's is not something I would normally buy just to prove a theory... I'll look into ways to find out more if I can. Otherwise, I'd really like to hear from others if you have had issues getting large heavy bulky items shipped of late.
 
I've had computers and monitors come to me from the states via GSP, but then again you can get to Canada driving, don't need a boat or plane, unlike to get to Australia.
 
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