Great deal on Premium HDMI 1.3b cables on eBay... or not!

Ah my first eBay Experiences blog post and sadly it's a negative one.

I was looking for a wholesale lot of HDMI cables on eBay and found the following listing from a Top-Rated eBay seller with nearly 100,000 feedback at 99.4% positive: eBay item # 180420832889. In case that listing is inactive when you read this, here's a screenshot:

So the listing says it's a wholesale lot of 100 6ft length Premium HDMI 1.3 cables for $239.99 and FREE SHIPPING within the US! That's a great deal for the enterprising type of person who may want to re-sell these cables for a small profit. Afterall, each cable would cost the buyer only $2.40! Even if one sold each cable at $5 per unit - which is still a good deal as far as HDMI cables go - that's more than a 100% profit margin!

The detailed description even certifies that the cables are HDMI 1.3b compliant and can fully bitstream DTS-HD Master Audio and Dolby TrueHD, which is only possible with HDMI version 1.3 cables. The description of the listing also specifies once again in bold letters that this is a Wholesale lot of 100.

So on January 12, 2010 I hit the Buy It Now button and like a good eBayer submitted my PayPal payment immediately. On January 13, 2010 I received an automated shipping notification email from the seller that the item had been sent out via UPS Ground. Impressively quick shipping! So far so good directdiscountinc!

The box was delivered on January 20, 2010. The dimensions of the box were 13" wide by 9.5" deep by 12" tall (13" W x 9.5" D x 12" H).

If you haven't yet figured it out, that's a pretty small box for 100 6ft HDMI cables to fit in. At first I was suspicious, but thought maybe it was a magical box and directdiscountinc somehow squeezed all those cables into it. But then I saw the following markings on the side of the box and felt a little dismayed:

That Q'TY: 50 PCS sounds like it means that the quantity of items in the box is 50, in plain English. 50 does not equal 100!

Still optimistic that the box was just deceivingly small and that the markings on the side of the box didn't mean anything, I opened up the box:

And dumped all the cables out and lined them up in a neat array to make it easier to count them.

For the mathematically challenged: that's 5 rows of 6 cables pictured above = 5 x 6 = 30 cables. That's all that came out of the box. The box wasn't magical afterall. Not magical, and a liar!

It claimed to contain 50 items but it really only contained 30! At least the model # listed on the box did indeed match the model # listed on the UPC sticker of each HDMI cable package:

So I paid for 100 6ft HDMI cables and only got 30! 30% of what I paid for... I think I got screwed. My original estimate of $2.40 per cable turned out to be way off the mark. This is costing me $8.00 per cable. Re-selling them at $5 per cable just isn't going to work... time to re-think my business plan!

I tested one of the cables out on a Playstation 3 connected to a Yamaha RX-V1800 audio/video receiver which is then connected to a 58" Panasonic PZ800U plasma by playing a couple of games ( Uncharted 2, Braid) and a couple of Blu-Ray movies (I, Robot, The Dark Knight). They work fine and picture quality is just as good as with my Monoprice and other miscellaneous cables; afterall, unlike analog cables, HDMI is all digital and you either get a clean, crisp picture or you just don't.

However, I am very concerned that these are not really HDMI version 1.3b cables as stated in the eBay listing's description. Most HDMI 1.3 cables clearly indicate that they are version 1.3 on the markings on the cable insulation. Sadly, these cables don't say version 1.3:

The only way to know for sure is to test bitstreaming of DTS-HD Master Audio and/or Dolby TrueHD. Unfortunately the old fat PS3 (160GB) doesn't support that so I'll be getting my hands on a Blu-Ray player that does in the next couple of days and report back with the results.

So there you have it. A top-rated eBay seller selling boxes of "30 6ft HDMI possibly-not 1.3b cables" but advertising it as a box of "100 6ft HDMI 1.3b Premium cables". Buyer Beware!

Of course I've tried to contact the seller on multiple occasions and even opened a dispute with eBay. Response time has been long and disappointingly slow for a seller with such positive feedback.