[solved] wtb from UK, the seller wants UK-only, looking for a forwarder to italy

[legacy]

So, I came in the need for an obsolete SCSI Iomega REV drive, I can't use any ATAPI or SATA, because my I need to attach the unit to my unix workstation which only provides SCSI Narrow/SE and Wide/SE|LVD. Bridges do exists. made by ACARD (it's a USA company, located in California), but both SCSI-to-ATAPI and SCSI-to-SATA bridges are too expensive.

The whole searching for Iomega REV SCSI (internal unit) on ebay and on amazon didn't help so much. There a lot of units, they are both plenty of SATA and ATAPI gears but found only a few sellers in USA with brand new SCSI-REV, but they want 250 USD + postage + customs (import taxes), definitively too expensive, and only a seller in UK with a decent price for his second hand and SCSI-REV.

No customs from UK: excellent, I thought, he is *the* candyman I am looking for!!! Unfortunately, digging for more details into his auction I found he doesn't want to ship outside the United Kingdom 

Item location: Luton, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom
Postage to: United Kingdom
Excludes: Channel Islands, Scilly Isles, Scottish Highlands, Scottish Islands, Albania, Andorra, Austria, Belarus, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Republic of, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Gibraltar, Greece, Guernsey, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Jersey, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Svalbard and Jan Mayen, Sweden, Switzerland, Ukraine, Vatican City State, PO Box

So, here we are. I need someone in UK who buys the unit, and forwards it to me in italy. I can send the money, covering both these two operations, through Paypal.

Thanks in advance 

[MK14]

It might be worth sending them a brief, very polite email/PM, asking if they would be happy to ship it to Italy.
Pointing out there is no customs (charges or issues) between EU counties (Yet!!!).
The only real difference for the seller, is higher postage charges, which you obviously need to cover.

But they may not want the extra hassle of evaluating the extra postage charges.

[legacy]

It might be worth sending them a brief, very polite email/PM, asking if they would be happy to ship it to Italy.
Pointing out there is no customs (charges or issues) between EU counties (Yet!!!).

Already done! Written I can send there, at his address, an UPS-dude for a local pickup: he replied "UK-only", without providing a reason.

He doesn't want to ship outside UK, as he has written in his auction.

But they may not want the extra hassle of evaluating the extra postage charges.

I don't know. Asked, but he doesn't reply.

[legacy]

"UPS" is a local service, they transport goods within italy, but they can also ship your goods abroad and collect items for you, and they also assist you with customs. Already used to collect an item in Texas. The seller was very collaborative, and it was a success!

The seller in UK ... he has 100% positive feedback, and a good reputation on amazon, but he is not so talkative. I can't understand his reasons to say "uk-only", also refusing the UPS-collecting service 

[tggzzz]

Maybe it is something like this folklore, from the Yahoo TestEquipTrader group:

Some years ago when we ran an online out-of-print bookstore, we
encountered problems
with Italy and South Africa. I the case of Italy, we had tracking
information for our customer
who had a hell of a time tracking down his purchase. IIRC, the Italian
postal system
actually had the package in his town but then moved it to two other
cities before our
customer finally nailed down its location.

South Africa proved to be something of a black hole for our shipments--
books went in but never
resurfaced.

I know nothing about your case nor that case. However, that kind of thing makes me think I don't want to take on such responsibility.

There are packing and shipping companies, but they wouldn't be cheap. I've never used them.

[MK14]

Ebay has made changes over the years, which hurt sellers quite badly. Such as having to accept returns, for potentially no good reason. One way negative feedback etc etc.
So I'm NOT surprised.

My understanding is that 50% .. 75% (in the old days of ebay) of the time, you can get the seller to post elsewhere. But not always, as in this case.
Unfortunately the 50% to 75% was BEFORE all the bad seller ebay things happened. So nowadays it is probably a much lower percentage.

It was worth a try, anyway.

[legacy]

There are packing and shipping companies, but they wouldn't be cheap. I've never used them.

UPS is the solution, it isn't of course "cheap" as Ecoparcel, but nope, I pay for it. 

[Ian.M]

I believe Iomega REV drives may suffer from similar reliability problems to those that plagued Zip and Jaz drives.  If so, it may appear to work, but not reliably seek to the last track - which you wont find out unless you run detailed hardware diagnostics, and even if its good now, you have no idea how long it will last.   If the seller is aware of Iomega's reliability issues, he may simply not want the hassles of a possible D.O.A outside the UK.

[legacy]

Ebay has made changes over the years, which hurt sellers quite badly

Yup. Yesterday I provided my reasons to a dude in China. He had asked to buy a few items from me on ebay, but due to the new restrictions on ebay I was not in the position to say it is a good business for me.

My reasons: paypal and ebay are forcing me to pay the 5% and the 10% for the total, and their restrictions are now forcing me to accept paypal as "safe payment method" (it means covered by their stupid "protection plan") and refuse a postage through UPS because ebay considers this service "too expensive". Duh?

Four years ago you were able to fill the "postage cost" field with the value of your wish, today ebay reserves the right to judge if it's too expensive, and in this case refuses it.

Now, China is far, it's a long trip, and it's also outside Europe: I can't ship with Ecoparcel simply because it's a shitty service with a poor quality, and if things go wrong I will be forced to refund the whole money!

So, I need an assurance (which adds more cost to me), and things must go through UPS (which needs to be payed outside ebay due to the stupid restrictions they made ... a second payment --> again, more cost to me)

Therefore I kindly explained my reasons to him: if you want to buy, it's ok, but we must use UPS, whose cost is ...

Accepting my rules, or rejected them, once explained the choice was 100% up to him.

.Such as having to accept returns, for potentially no good reason. One way negative feedback etc etc.
So I'm NOT surprised.

Having to accept returns (when you have written "no returns" and applied a discount for it) is really annoying 

[legacy]

I believe Iomega REV drives may suffer from similar reliability problems to those that plagued Zip and Jaz drives. 

Never used Jaz, about ZIP I can say we have a lot of industrial sewing machines attached to a SCSI Zip drive. They load the them from the cartridge instead than from reel of punched card. Not kidding 

There are a lot of audio synthesizers (still in use) which load their waves from a ZIP's cartridge. Again SCSI Zip. They seem Highlanders (die hard).

I need a REV unit because I got archives in that format, there are projects and documentation inside, I can of course read them from a Linux-PC using XFS on UDF driver through a pATA-REV unit, which is cheaper than the SCSI version and more available on ebay, but it will be more complex than having the SCSI-REV directly attached to the workstation 


Ah, Computers ...

[Ian.M]

Be *GLAD* you never used Jaz . . .

[legacy]

On  Amazon Marketplace, Comet Enterprises wrote

I am not sure how it would work if we convert the 68 pin to 50 pin SCSI. However, I believe it'll work at the slower throughput. We ship to Italy, the shipping charges to Italy is around $30.00 US

 
I had asked if REV (which is 68p, SCSI WIDE SE/LVD) is know of being working when forced into 50p Narrow/SE.

Note they do ship from USA to Italy. The only problem is: brad new unit, 300 euro + customs 

[nctnico]

68pin (wide) SCSI can be made to work as narrow. There are even converters (just a PCB with 2 connectors) for this purpose.

[legacy]

68pin (wide) SCSI can be made to work as narrow.

It depends.

e.g. Barracuda 2U hard drives have SCA connector on their back, which means they are SCSI WIDE, but their firmware is not 100% compatible with the SCSI standard, resulting full failure if you try to force them into Narrow mode because their firmware wants to ignore if an high-byte terminator happens of having been plugged on their interface, so even if the interface has 8 physical bit they, it believes it's 16bit -> resulting a black mess, half the information is lost.

e.g. LTO2 Ultrium (it's a tape, 200GB uncompressed) can be forced into narrow but the trick doesn't work if you want data compression (made in hardware), because there isn't enough bandwidth on the narrow bus, the tape speed cannot be reduced and their internal buffer is also limited.

no compression? they fully work in Narrow mode
you want compression? they don't work in Narrow mode, they MUST be connected in Wide mode

There are even converters (just a PCB with 2 connectors) for this purpose.

Yep, these cheap adapters, I have a few of them, but in order to do a good job a terminator on the high byte needs to set in order to force a device into Narrow mode.

high byte <----- terminator
low byte ----------------------------- narrow

It's a bit more expensive, but they are complete. I am fine thanks to a dude on Amazon who sold me his highest-byte-terminated adapter (paid 35 euro, second hand. It also comes with active terminator)

[amiq]

I'm happy to help if you're not already sorted.  Just PM me the details.

[legacy]

Thanks to everyone for the help, I appreciate it a lot 

[legacy]

Problem solved, thanks a nice guy here, who did the reship!
Thanks so much