Preps from China

[Scythe13]

This is being debated at current on a different thread, but to stop it going off track, I'm starting this one.

First up, I'm not for or against China, the industrious little fellows.

The issue is that many people have had MAJOR problems shopping over in China or buying Chinese made equipment/items.

The situation is pretty normal, but it comes down to a few different things.

One thing is called outsourcing. This is where you have something and it's made somewhere else. You have sourced a factory or process to make your products, but you do not own them. Think of it as contracting work out. Well, it turns out that MANY factories actually made US brands, but are located in China. These places have very high standards and all their items are of very high quality.

The second thing is called 'Knock Down' items. These should be considered as forgeries of the originals. That Smith and Wesson knife that is spelt Smith and Weston.

The third thing is...expectation. Expectation is the resulting outcome of personal experience, belief, and second/third part influences. If I sold my XBox (I don't actually have one, but bare with me) to you, you'd expect it to work. Would it work as well as a brand new one? It should do, yes. Would a Flextronics made XBox from Singapore work as well as one from me or from PC World? Truth is, yes. ALL XBox (it might be PS3's, but we're using XBoxes for this example) production is outsourced to Flextronics in Singapore. The expectation is that certain unknown companies are making inferior products, just because they're made by a separate company to the 'branded' company.

Lastly, one of the reasons why so many people have had bad experiences buying stuff from China is because they are human. As humans we're 10 times more likely to talk about a bad experience than we are to talk about a good one. If something bad happens on a shopping trip, you'll tell 10 times more people than if something good happens. For example, ice cream parlour, you get awesome service. So what? Who are you going to tell? Now let's say the ice cream jockey spits on your ice cream when you ask for more topping. You'll be telling every person and their dog about this crazy jack-off (haha, I love this expression. Read it earlier today in an email) that gobbed on your vanilla ice cream!

The way around it...buy from someone reputable and thus give all the problems to them. No offence Beardyman (but you're a reputable business, so I'm using you as my example), but if you buy through Sid's, if any of the products are from China, you can guarantee he's tested them (I used to get stuff to test, so I can promise the testing is rigorous) but also that he will be the one fitting the bill if the products he receives are crap. If he gets a load of crap stuff, he's not going to risk his business reputation, so he'll be the one fitting the bill to buy the stuff. End result, if you buy from Sid's, you know it's good quality.

Personally, I have a load of friends from China (uni, house shares, family, etc) so that's me safe. But if you do not have that kind of connection, I'd recommend just sticking with the UK company to buy stuff from. Anything that sucks....it's their problem, not yours.