Good place to buy a gamebox advance sp?

[StealthLurker]

http://obscurehandhelds.wordpress.co...-live-the-gba/

Very nice and thanks for the heads up!

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[squirrel_king]

That's very cool - what's the price?

Dunno yet - the team haven't announced anything AFAIK. I'm sure it'll be mentioned on that blog when they do, though.

[Aussie2B]

If you spend any time looking through DX you'll see that they specialize in grey market goods.... more so than lik-sang ever did, which I think is a huge plus for niche/strange gadget fans. Back in the day you couldn't obtain obscure stuff like this conveniently. You had to go to Hong Kong or have a friend/relative ship it to you. I remember trips to Hong Kong and seeing the weirdest/coolest gadgets with functions I always wanted, but questionable in legality from a US perspective. Haha, some of the stuff I've brought back in the past have made interesting exchanges with the customs officials at the airport.

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That still doesn't make sense to me. If there is stuff from DealExtreme that customs would confiscate, how do they sell it in the first place? What, they just go off of the luck of the draw that it might slip through? I don't get it. If they only sold things that customs would let through, then customs wouldn't see the need to hold everything forever.

And if they know that they're shady and that they have trouble with customs, why don't they leave the DealExtreme name off of every package? Rather than expect the customer to know to mark it as a "gift".

[Tupin]

Does the service of removing the logo from the package really work? Do you really get your package in two weeks compared to the two months without it?

[BlastProcessing402]

I order stuff from DX all the time and with about 200+ orders I’ve only had two take over a month (one was on backorder and they hadn’t updated the site to show it) and only a hand full of DOAs there returns have gotten a lot better so only a few of them were a pain.



Also to the people that it took a long time for shipping did you add the “Drop Shipment and Gift Service?” Most of the time it only takes a few days for the package to get here from China but then it spends most of its time in customs. Adding this greatly reduces the time in customs most of the time.

I think that the normal shipping has incorporated most of what this did (like declaring as gift and not saying what the contents are) but customs know the DX name and hold most of the packages from DX to check them for illegal lasers, cell phone blockers, and what not. So if you drop the DX name you reduce the chance of this happing.

My issues with DX had nothing to do with customs, it has to do with them being f'ing liars and claiming they have things in stock when they don't, so I'd order something "in stock" and as soon as I did the status (in my order, not on the site where it kept staying in stock) would change constantly to different variations on "waiting on stock".

My first order, of "in stock" items finally shipped about 3 weeks after I placed the order, and after that took about a week to get to me, not a single problem with customs or anything.

My last order, I finally got fed up with the bastards after they hadn't shipped my "in stock" item well over a month after I placed the order, so I canceled the whole transaction and decided not to order from them again. This wasn't even anything ultra rare or anything, just an Xbox360 transfer cable. If I'd done the smart thing and spent a few more bucks I could've had one from Amazon in days.

And while it didn't ever happen to me personally, there are enough stories out there of DX selling fake versions of memory cards and stuff (without mentioning they're fake) that they just aren't worth it, despite the rock bottom prices.

[StealthLurker]

That still doesn't make sense to me. If there is stuff from DealExtreme that customs would confiscate, how do they sell it in the first place?

Maybe the United States isn't the only country it sells to? Mexico?

What, they just go off of the luck of the draw that it might slip through? I don't get it. If they only sold things that customs would let through, then customs wouldn't see the need to hold everything forever.

And if they know that they're shady and that they have trouble with customs, why don't they leave the DealExtreme name off of every package? Rather than expect the customer to know to mark it as a "gift".

Maybe overall not enough people see a problem with this and or complain to them about it.

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[squirrel_king]

Maybe the United States isn't the only country it sells to? Mexico?

exactly - DX ships worldwide, different countries have different laws about these things. DX doesn't generally keep track of what is and isn't allowed in each country, theyre based in China so they only have to comply with Chinese law. If a customer wants to order something that might be confiscated by their country's customs, thats their own risk to take.

[Aussie2B]

They may not be responsible, but if they want to actually be viewed as a quality, respectable business, then they should care about providing a pleasant experience for the customer. I'm sure they've been in business long enough to know if they have issues with US customs, so all they need to is prevent US orders on certain types of items. Or not put their name on the address label. Or put a note for the buyer that they should pick "gift" service. Or SOMETHING.

It's your prerogative if you guys want to worship DealExtreme and think they can do no wrong, but my experience was awful with them and I highly doubt that you guys would be happy with waiting 4 months and all of the other issues either. If you've never had any problems, then consider yourselves lucky, but I personally will always recommend that people DON'T use DealExtreme. In all of my many years shopping online, I've never had a more frustrating experience with an online store.

[Frankie_Says_Relax]

They may not be responsible, but if they want to actually be viewed as a quality, respectable business, then they should care about providing a pleasant experience for the customer. I'm sure they've been in business long enough to know if they have issues with US customs, so all they need to is prevent US orders on certain types of items. Or not put their name on the address label. Or put a note for the buyer that they should pick "gift" service. Or SOMETHING.

It's your prerogative if you guys want to worship DealExtreme and think they can do no wrong, but my experience was awful with them and I highly doubt that you guys would be happy with waiting 4 months and all of the other issues either. If you've never had any problems, then consider yourselves lucky, but I personally will always recommend that people DON'T use DealExtreme. In all of my many years shopping online, I've never had a more frustrating experience with an online store.

Well, in some respects I worship the service they provide, because the prices, the products and the FREE SHIPPING are really really tough to beat.

BUT I know that it's certainly not perfect and there are major pitfalls - I've had items that were listed "in stock" get stuck in packing limbo for weeks/months and then never ship at all based on discontinuation of the product where I've had to ask for a refund/credit, and I've had smaller, inexpensive items take months to get to me, but I order SO frequently from them (almost weekly) that I've just become accustomed to the lack of speed by which they deliver.

There are a lot of eBay sellers that are obviously doing the same kind of warehouse drop-shipping as DX and they tend to get the stuff out a bit faster, so, if you absolutely have to have something on DX faster, you can probably find it on eBay if you poke around, but the price on the item will typically be a bit more, or include shipping charges.

In the case of these GameBox SP units, they're not on eBay at all that I can find.

But, to your original point, yes, DX can be a shitty experience, but, like I said, I'm a serial user of their service, and overall it's worth the occasional headache.