It is amazing to find original Revere Ware from the vintage period in new condition; it is simply stunning. Today we found this new percolator for sale on eBay.
Archive | Ebay
Revere Ware find of the week – Revere tie pin
Is anyone really enough of a fan of Revere Ware to wear this tie pin?
Fake web store?
Plenty of our parts are available on eBay, as we recently mentioned. Most appear to be parts that were likely obtained through us, or through our store front on Amazon.com, and are simply being resold (at a higher price). So we aren’t totally shocked that other people are selling our parts.
But we recently found a site that lists all our parts, at substantially higher prices
They list a lot of other kitchen related items as well.
Given that we don’t currently sell wholesale, and those are clearly our stock pictures, it seems unlikely that they are fulfilling from inventory. That leaves a couple of options.
Our first thought is that it is a completely fake store and they will just harvest your credit card number and keep your money.
Our second thought is that, it is just a storefront sitting on top of Amazon.com fulfillment. If they simply order the parts through Amazon and have it directly shipped to the end-customer, they don’t have to carry inventory for any of the items they are listing. So far, we haven’t been brave enough to try purchasing something to see if it arrives in an Amazon box. But if someone is willing to try, we’ve love to see what happens.
The store looks pretty fake, as do the reviews. It all looks as if someone tried to make it look like a legitimate store, but didn’t quite succeed.
Their contact page lists a German address and an emails: [email protected]. When I go to the tsc-retail page, it is a fancy presentation with text overlay talking about bringing the world closer together through retail … and the video shorts are of Seattle. Hmm.
In any event, just a word of caution: We are the only folks that make these Revere Ware replacement parts presently. We sell them through this site, and on Amazon.com. The items we’ve seen for sale on eBay appear to be legitimate second market items. But I would stay away form any other outlets (and the prices are much higher anyways).
Revere Ware listing of the week – LoL
We found ourselves laughing at this obvious mismatch between product and picture.
Our parts on eBay
It amazes us how many of our new parts make it on to eBay for resale, complete with all of our stock pictures and our product description verbatim from our website. Since we don’t sell wholesale to others, we assume these are just parts that people have purchased and decided they no longer needed. This must mean we are in the mainstream now.
Revere Ware listing of the week – colored lid knobs
We’ve seen colored Bakelite parts before, but this is the first time we’ve seen white and green lid knobs.
Amazon feedback – don’t believe what you read
We’ve ranted before about the effect of negative feedback. In the last few days we’ve seen some perfect examples of undeserved negative feedback affecting our Amazon seller rating substantially.
Here is an example of someone giving us the feedback that should have been left for another purchase.
In this next example, the customer was confused and thought 1 was the best possible feedback. Thankfully, they retracted the feedback when we brought this to their attention.
These two reviews dropped us from 100% positive feedback for the last 30 days to 87%.
Unlike eBay, in which feedback is very frequently mutual, Amazon customers have very little motivation to leave positive feedback when they have a good experience. That means that negative feedback has an oversized effect. When see the feedback rating of an Amazon merchant, it will look something like this:
With the eBay feedback system, I expect that about the same percentage of happy customers leave positive feedback as unhappy ones leave negative feedback. So, if I see a 92% feedback rating, I assume that there are a heck of a lot of unhappy customers and I tend to avoid sellers with ratings like that. Even a 98% rating can indicate a history of issues with buyers.
But with Amazon.com, probably 10 or 100 times fewer satisfied customers will leave feedback than unhappy ones. Let’s make some assumptions and see what a real feedback score would be like if everyone left a review reflecting their experience. For example, let’s assume that 1/2 of all customers with a bad experience leave a negative review. We had 14 neutral or negative reviews in the last year, out of 3768 purchases.
That assumption gives is 28 bad experiences out of almost 4,000 customers, or a real feedback rating of 99.26% (compared to our 92% rating as shown above). Put another way, you would have a one in 135 chance of having a bad experience.
But that’s not the end of the story. Almost no-one that leaves us negative feedback contacted us first to see if we could resolve their issue. We are very helpful (if we do say so ourselves) and are always willing to solve a problem that is our fault, and usually solve issues that aren’t our fault as well.
That means, with us, you have almost no chance of having a bad experience. I’ll bet a lot of other Amazon merchants are also very willing to work with their customers and have similar frustrations with the Amazon feedback system.
That reminds me, I am way behind on leaving feedback on my eBay purchases. I’d better get to it.
Update 3/27/18
I couldn’t help but add a couple of recent feedback ratings we got on Amazon.com.
That last one just kills me. It makes you wonder, exactly what does it take to get 5 stars in this day and age?
Arrived promptly, was as described, was well packaged, was hand delivered by the seller, at no cost, very satisfied.
When you can’t find a replacement part – buy a donor
We often get queries for replacement parts not in our catalog. Unfortunately, it isn’t economical for us to supply every type of part regardless of the amount of demand out there for it. One option, is to search eBay for new old stock replacement parts.
When that doesn’t work, it isn’t necessarily the end. Given that there is a very rich marketplace on eBay for Revere Ware cookware, you can very likely find the same piece you are looking for a part for, that is complete, and use it as a donor for the parts you need.
One example of a part that is critical and can no longer be purchased anywhere is the over pressure plug for the vintage pressure cooker.
While this may look like a simple screw, it is not. IT has a hole in the center filled with solder that will blow out at high pressure. Once the over pressure plug has been blown out, it must be replaced.
eBay typically has quite a few listings for the vintage pressure cooker. For example, here is one for $30 shipped.
If you are attached to your vintage piece (as many of us are) this probably isn’t too much to pay to get your pressure cooker functional again, and you’ll get some other extra parts to boot.
So, the next time you can’t find a replacement part, consider buying a used piece as a parts donor.
Revere Ware find of the week – kids set
Here is a lovely kids Revere Ware set on eBay. We don’t see these that often.
We purchased one a few years back and our kids have loved playing with it ever since; one pot remains their favorite shower toy.
To our knowledge, they don’t make these anymore, so any you might find are left overs from another era. There are currently 11 child related Revere Ware listings on eBay.
Revere Ware 3 quart tea kettle triggers, and other hard-to-find replacement parts
We get a lot of request for parts that we don’t carry – unfortunately, parts for some less popular pieces just don’t have enough volume to justify a production run complete with customer part molds.
One of the most of-requested parts is the trigger for the 3-quart Revere Ware tea kettle. We’ve talked about 3D-printing them, but unfortunately materials aren’t quite to the point yet where they can handle the high temperatures that cookware require.
For the determined and dilligent, let me introduce you to a new concept – new old stock, which is often shortened in product listings to NOS. New old stock stands for an item that is no longer in production, but someone found a cache of them somewhere that are still brand new.
For the tea kettle example, here is a small cache of the (get them while you can, they will go quick), at an incredibly reasonable price.
Over the years, we’ve seen just about every part we’ve needed eventually show up on eBay, and this is how we got most of the samples we’ve used for our production runs. Here is another part people often ask us about, the percolator and coffee pot handle.
If you are looking for a replacement part, search for it on eBay. If you don’t find it, try saving the search via the follow this search link in the top of the search results, so that when new matches occur, you’ll get an email.
The search above, for “Revere Ware NOS” is a good place to start if you are looking for replacement parts that we don’t carry.