Ebay - Inverter Generators 1000w

Short answer is you get what you pay for and sometimes on Ebay not even that.

Bite the bullet and buy one locally At least you can take it back if it dies and it wont cost you postage and hassles with someone who will probably sell 50 to mugs and then disappear.

I bought a so called genuine Motorola Bluetooth earpiece recently.
The seller assured me it was genuine. When I got it it wasn't. Luckily I got onto them straightaway and they were good about it and refunded all my money including my return postage.
Not all are like this though.

Caveat Emptor applies bigtime.

With anything mechanical bought from ebay, id make sure it has a warranty which is worth the paper it's written on in Australia, and the power output is 240V/50-55Hz as we use, and plug sockets are our type. I have bought things which have come from Malaysia, even though they say they are from Sydney (and arrive in a package with Malaysian postage stamp and power socket adapter to suit our plugs...).
Also i think an important part of a generator is the regulator. A motor is a motor, of course there are different sizes and 2 stroke or 4 stroke, so getting a generator with a known brand engine is a pretty safe bet, but the regulator can determine whether it can power a laptop computer (like a honda generator can) or just a drill... I guess it depends on what you want it to power too...
I'd work out the max current draw i need and how frequency sensitive the equipment is and go from there.

An old adage to keep in mind................

"Poor man cannot afford to buy cheap thing"..................

;-))

One point, a genuine engel 2000w generator uses genuine honda 4 stroke motor and has invertor, all looks great until a closer look shows that its output is not pure sine wave, but modified square wave, ok to run an engel fridge, but not for digital equipment.
Friend use a good quality generator with honda motor to power his huge plasma tv during a barbie/footy broadcast, plasma blew and is only useful as a door stop. Genny was'nt pure sine wave.

Tony
Read the post below yours.

.

Tony B
See thread 61484 that I initiated a week ago and you would not use EBay. A shame as there are honest sellers there but are difficult to identify

Baz

The biggest problem with the latest inverter gennies on Ebay is that they are sold out of Sydney and warranty is return to base. Now you can imgagine the freight cost of sending a gennie to Sydney and back.? Also I doubt the Ebay seller would repair a gennie so who does.? You could pay for it to go there and back and get it back still with problems. I asked them to appoint service centres in every state, they said they would look into it.! Now why would they when people are still buying them.

Cheap is good until it needs fixing, Bunnings are dumping GMC across the board..? Wonder why.?

The Honda parts claim is bogus, they may use and older design Honda engine but that's only one small part of the gennie makeup. If your a gambling man take the punt otherwise buy a Kipor for a coast saving.

Tony

I bought a KAITO unit before our recent trip and it worked fine. I paid about $270. Great for charging the camper batteries.

Peter

Well I've bought some stuff from ebay lately and it was, did the job, but was cr@p, the hilux manual had the pages but I had the same year Gregory's original Prado manual so to compare made me think what I got was semi-profesionally photocopied in some asian country but would be lucky if it lasted me a few years.

ebay, you get what you pay for which is usually for me not much but enough for what I paid, but a piece of equipment I'd need to rely on? no i wouldn't.

I'm amazed at the "logic" people use here.

I've made nearly two hundred purchase on eBay - up to Satphones.

Most have worked exactly as expected - a few have been lemons - but that's been exactly my experience in buying from shops.