No issues with quality so far here!
Besides eBay sellers, I recommend taking a look at
AliExpress and
Deal Extreme also.
Concerning eBay: if customs handling is included, such a thing will be highlighted in the product description. (But mostly it’s not the case).
The thing with customs is this: check out if your country has some kind of
‘order value threshold’ where no customs duty and/or import tax is charged; should be some info on the customs webpage of your country – or simply google for it. When you know the amount and place the order accordingly, you can be quite sure that no surprising fees will occur afterwards.
In Germany (where I live) for instance this threshold is about 26?Euro. So when placing an overseas order somewhere (in China or Hongkong), paying in Dollars (via PayPal), I make sure that the order value including shipping does not exceed 35 Dollar – so 35 / 1,35 conversion ratio Dollar/Euro will make about 25,92 Euro. (Plan in some buffer due to rounding issues.
)
How does customs know what’s the worth of the parcel? The seller does put a sticker (called CN22) on your parcel where amount, weight and value will be noted. Most sellers are very ‘generous’ and your 35 Dollar order will be declared as 15 Dollar outwardly or something like that. They know how things roll in the shire.
But don’t count on it.
If the parcel is small and stuffed with some electronic components like ‘modules’, or ‘arduino’, declared with some tiny Dollar value on the CN22 sticker, no one at customs will check the inside of such a parcel, if these descriptions are true?… But don’t count on it.
I recommend: always place an order with a value according to your countrys threshold value (if such a thing exists at your place!) –?then you’re safe in all cases. When a seller offers free shipping (this may then take 3 or 4 weeks or more), it’s better to place two small orders than one big order exceeding the threshold value. So when time is no issue, you can get quite cheap stuff from overseas sellers out there! I’m amazed quite repeatedly by this.
Hope that helped a bit to get you started.