This week has been hectic, so what with one thing and another I didn’t have a chance to fire up my RasPi in anger until today, although it arrived on Monday from Farnell.

I thought I had bought an appropriate power supply. There are a number of sellers on UK Amazon selling what purports to be a genuine Samsung ATADS10UBE rated at 700mA. ‘Ideal for the RasPi’, thought I.

So imagine my surprise and delight when some while I received a .55amp ETA3U30UBE, not a .7amp ATADU10UBE.

I contacted the seller, who duly sent a jiffy bag for me to return the item for a full refund, which I did on the same day.

I heard no more about it and somehow didn’t get notification of the refund I was promised, so I gave them a 2 star rating and registered my dissatisfaction on Amazon.

I was called on the telephone almost immediately by someone not wholly conversant with the english language who asked what the problem was and I repeated that they had sent an inferior charger, not the item specified and it was no good because I wanted it to work with a Raspberry Pi and it needed 700mA. ‘So what’s that mean?’ was the response. I patiently explained it meant the amount of current the charger could supply.

‘OK, we send you the right one, please amend your feedback, we’ll send you a link.’

‘You will send the right one?’ I asked. Yes, yes, the right one, no problem.

They sent the right one and guess what? It’s another under-rated .55amp ETA3U30UBE. The idiots.

I advise them of the mistake and received the following:

‘Hi! Thanks for your mail, We have sent you the one is in the picture and this charger is for Samsung and any other deceives which had micro connector, We would also like to let you know that far as we know the ap doesn’t really matter at longest you device is getting chartered, As you can see we have tried our best to help you but it seems like nothing can, IF you send the item back to us we will issue you with the full refund, Regards’

I had already given up with these guys, congratulations to The Fonetech. They’d already promised a refund once and I didn’t get it. So I’d already ordered from another Amazon seller a week ago, Deal Direct UK, and duly got a confirmation of order

1 Genuine Samsung ATADU10UBE Mains Charger
Electronics; £2.61
In stock
Sold by: deal direct uk

And then yesterday I received the following:

Dear Customer,

We’re writing to inform you that your order 203-4536738-5245134 from deal direct uk has been cancelled by the seller with the following reason: -

The item(s) you purchased were out of stock. Please return and attempt to purchase the item again at a later time.

So I wonder which part of ‘In stock’ I didn’t understand.

Today my son dropped by and for now I have exchanged my inferior Samsung supply from Fonetec with my son’s 1A supply.

It seems there is a bit of a free-for-all with Amazon listing all sellers willing to sell the item of your desire, yet who have no clue what they are doing. So they sell a substitute or, in my case, an item that looks the same, is not in the packaging shown and is an inferior rated product.

Did I mention The Fonetec? Forget I ever did.