I’ll start - I don’t shop a lot, but if I had to buy stuff like hardware parts, I do use Amazon sometimes, but if I can, then I try to use Flipkart. Realizing how it has turned into a monopoly, I try to look for alternative websites, and check if they’re trustworthy.
If I remember correctly, the last three items I’ve bought online were hardware parts from some local websites. The chi-fi IEMs were bought through headphonezone.in, and they were super-fast in delivery - I had to wait for only four days.
The seller that scammed me was huku huku japan. Apparently this is a very big problem with Japanese sellers, many of them are simply bots that copy and translate listings from Japanese second hand sites, then direct the shipping address to the eBay customer.
They are terrible because they offer zero transparency and missing items are common. Since it is automated, if there was a mistake in Japan (ie original seller lost the item and refunded the buyer) you don’t get your item, or a refund. Basically dropshipping. It’s sickening that they are given a full refund, but keep the eBay buyers money and shipping fee. In total they stole 70$ from me.
Similar to you, I expected long shipping times. I’m in the US and was buying from Japan. Since the shipping times are so long, I gave the seller a lot of leniency. Especially because tracking only occurs after the item has already left japan. This unknowingly disqualified me from a refund, or any help at all from eBay.
If you are looking for cheap refurbished laptops, I recommend PC Sever and Parts. Ive bought from them before and they have good customer service and generous free warranty (90 days). I work IT and I was satisfied with the refurbishment. There were some covered scratches, but it was clean and thermal paste was changed.
I had a lightly damaged cable internal cable. They offered to pay for return shipping and refund me, but I just asked for replacement cables. They quickly shipped me 2 new ones free of charge and shipping.
https://pcserverandparts.com/