Well, you get what you pay for...

Unless you're paying for a copy of "Absolute Beginners Bass Guitar - Omnibus Edition", in which case you'll have paid for it on the fourteenth of june, and still not received it (as of today, the 8th of July) because it's still currently on order with music sales, also known as "we're still waiting for it, so you can too"*. This from the same company that was friendly and helpful with my tuner being out of stock. I guess the "friendly and helpful" bucket has run dry.

But today's moan isn't about those guys, it's about my guitar stand, which, chosen in a "I don't know what things cost/this's cheaper than I thought it would be" way, chose yesterday to spontaneously break.

Yep, you get what you pay for, and I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me that the neck support on the stand was held to its retaining bolt by a pair of tiny and badly-done spot welds. A real Friday Afternoon piece of work right here.
The seller, to their credit was pretty apologetic (not that they really needed to be because they're not responsible for the crappy welds), and say they're going to fire off a refund, which at the minute, I have yet to receive. So I started a thread on the bass forum, as well as looking at the local music retailer's selection of stands, which (being made by reputable companies that specialise in making guitar stands) look well finished, reassuringly sturdy, and cost about six times what I paid for mine. Expensive? No, that's just what these things cost, it turns out.
So I'm looking at another tripod style-stand. This time, I'm after a self-locking one, so it secures the bass as well as holds it off the floor. That should set me back about £30 and I think it'll be money well spent.

So there we go.

*In fairness, I should point out that I didn't order the book through Amazon, their link was just the first one that came up. That said, I do try to avoid buying things from Amazon where possible.