Hi. I am currently considering to buy an RF receiver and a transmitter from a chinese seller on ebay. It is a lot cheaper than buying it from my local store.
The problem is that I have never bought electronic components to chinese sellers on ebay.
Buying a cheap plastic case for my batteries or a stylus for my pda are risk free. But in the case of ICs or any complex component it is a completely different story.
Since I have never worked with RF I can imagine myself troubleshooting my circuit wasting an entire day trying to make a bad RF transmitter work.
I can also say that almost everything we have is made on china so they do have experience building this type of component.
I once bought a 2.4 GHz wireless surveillance camera package for my UGV experiments from a Chinese reseller on Ebay; never had a problem with it. I've bought LEDs as well, they work. I know others have bought things like clone Arduinos, as well as various test equipment (meters and scopes) that worked out for them.
That isn't to say you can't get burned, and all of the above is pure anecdote, so take it for what its worth.
Life is about risks; ultimately the shop that is selling them for a larger amount got them from somewhere - most like a reseller in China - ie, via some place like this:
I've bought a lot of stuff on E-bay from Asian sellers. Never had a problem and it sure is hard to beat their prices, especially on bulk components. As far as your RF module, a lot depends on how well it is documented or if you have other reference material on it from other sources. Good documentation and examples will make or break a project using a unproven RF module.
The good thing about ebay is the ratings. They will try their hardest to make sure it all works as otherwise you will give them a bad rating.
I have never had any issues with ebay as long as you know exactly what you want.
Mowcius
I have the same results. I have purchased many cheap chinese electronics for the price. It takes a couple of weeks to get them but I have never had a probelm.
The main complaint I hear is about the shipping time for E-bay Asian sellers. My orders almost always arrive on the west coast here in 10 days. give or take a day. However as a retired old guy I have no problem with waiting for orders, I have patience and my smallest unit of time increment is seasons.
I've generally had good results with ebay purchases. Beware of some ways the vendors promote their products. The quoting of extremely low prices with extremely high shipping and handling can be a problem, as the usual ebay refund is only for the product cost and does not include the shipping. I recently got a DFRobot arduino from Hong Kong. Arrived in ~10 days by registered mail. Every thing works well except when an external power supply is connected, the board voltage is significantly higher than 5v (7.5v when connected to a 12v external power supply). Not sure what the problem is, but chasing a possible "clone" issue on the other side of the world is probably not as easy as local in the US.
I had issues with my DFRobot arduino on external power too! I bought from a U.K ebayer who just sent me a replacement. No quibles at all. Makes me wonder if there's a known issue....
