I have
Once I was sold a reel of components that, when they arrived, were marked as dummy components! (the person gave me a full refund).
Another time I purchased some surface mount links that turned out to be TopLine components -- for those of you that are unaware, these are test components. In this case, whilst I again got a refund, it's a bit of a toss-up for me as to whether or not to use them as jumpers.
A nastier case was a couple of tubes of LM337 TO-220 negative regulators. On receipt of these I pulled one out and tested it for basic operation. It worked as I expected. This component actually got used almost straight away and is still in use.
The next one I pulled out gave me a lot of trouble. I looked at my circuit a bazzillion times (337's are polarity-wise upside-down and have a different pinout to 317's, so I really needed to check). I considered the unlikely option that I may have damaged it, so I pulled out another. Same result. They turned out to be something that kinda worked like an LM337, but did weird things at low voltages.
One of them was good, but all the rest I've tested have been... fake? Whilst I've not looked at them recently (yeah, I kept them) I seem to recall that some had the printing not quite straight -- a dead giveaway.
I really should pull out the good one sometime and compare what it looks like to the others.
These were purchased from a seller in the US that was getting rid of stock at fire sale prices (cents in the dollar) during the height of the GFC. Everything else I tested and have used has been OK, and frankly I didn't lose a lot of $$$ on this deal. I wonder if they even knew.
Once I was sold a reel of components that, when they arrived, were marked as dummy components! (the person gave me a full refund).
Another time I purchased some surface mount links that turned out to be TopLine components -- for those of you that are unaware, these are test components. In this case, whilst I again got a refund, it's a bit of a toss-up for me as to whether or not to use them as jumpers.
A nastier case was a couple of tubes of LM337 TO-220 negative regulators. On receipt of these I pulled one out and tested it for basic operation. It worked as I expected. This component actually got used almost straight away and is still in use.
The next one I pulled out gave me a lot of trouble. I looked at my circuit a bazzillion times (337's are polarity-wise upside-down and have a different pinout to 317's, so I really needed to check). I considered the unlikely option that I may have damaged it, so I pulled out another. Same result. They turned out to be something that kinda worked like an LM337, but did weird things at low voltages.
One of them was good, but all the rest I've tested have been... fake? Whilst I've not looked at them recently (yeah, I kept them) I seem to recall that some had the printing not quite straight -- a dead giveaway.
I really should pull out the good one sometime and compare what it looks like to the others.
These were purchased from a seller in the US that was getting rid of stock at fire sale prices (cents in the dollar) during the height of the GFC. Everything else I tested and have used has been OK, and frankly I didn't lose a lot of $$$ on this deal. I wonder if they even knew.