Originally Posted by CliffordK

I had an E-Bay purchase where I purchased bicycle brake cables, and got phone cables.

I assume it was an honest mistake (the number of phone cables matched the order). The vendor wanted me to pay for the phone cables, but I eventually got a full refund and bought my bake cables from another vendor.

How does one know "reputable" companies, Ribble, Wiggle, Chain Reaction, Universal, bikediscount.de, etc? Some can be good one day, then vanish the next. Niagra?

I do buy Chinese direct from time to time E-Bay, Amazon, Alibaba, Aliexpress.

Aliexpress has a unique system where the payments are held in escrow until a week or so after shipment is received. So a dispute goes to Aliexpress (so far I've never had to do that). PayPal does something similar, especially with new vendors.

I might have bought from the OP's company, with the caveat that all the products appear to be cheap generic China imports. Some are good, some are not. I got one of those bicycle shaped multi-tools for Christmas. Cute tool, but chunks broke off with the first use.

Sometimes companies drop ship, so a shipment can come in more parts than one would otherwise expect.