I’m completely recycling my shortwave radio inventory, selling mostly, but I bought a couple of new ones to check out.
One new one I ordered this morning was an XHDATA D-808. It’s feature rich, combining SSB with Air band and RDS. One expects a feature set like that to cost at least $80, and I wouldn’t have bought at that price, but AliExpress offered it for half that:
In the end, the order totaled $39.36 including shipping.
Just for grins, I checked eBay to see if I could have gotten a better deal. Apparently not. Here’s one offer:
I wondered how that “GREAT PRICE” came about; eBay says:
A Great Price badge helps eBay shoppers quickly and easily discover high quality inventory at highly competitive prices. When a Great Price badge appears with your qualified listing, your item will get buyers’ attention because they know they’ve found a great product at a great price.
https://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/listing-and-marketing/great-price-badge.html
There were 2 offers on eBay at that price with the “GREAT PRICE” logo, and as far as eBay is concerned, that is a great price. There were a total of 36 listings for the radio on eBay, and including shipping that $100.98 is the lowest price, but there were many much higher than that, topping off at $285!
A little reading finds that this is not a new radio, but one from late 2017, shipped to the US for a short time, but then suddenly not available here. You can read about that at the SWLing site. There are also reviews of the radio at eHam, whose readers give it between 1 and 5 stars. One big negative they report is a poor memory management system, but I rarely use that feature.
So I’m either getting a radio at an extraordinary price, or ripped off.
Update:
Well, I guess I’m sort of ripped off.
Update 2
That last was just too good to be pass up, so I ordered 2 of them to sell on eBay. As I taught my children, it it sounds too good to be true, then it’s probably not true. Both Ali Express sellers failed to ship the radios and I got refunds instead. $100.98 is more than I want to pay for a radio that’s not especially better than what I already have, so I’ll just do without.