Has anyone noted defective replacement home button ribbon cables?

Not so much a question as a warning.

I've been trying to purchase a handful of iPad Mini home button ribbon cables for a couple of iPads I'm repairing. Despite the name "home button ribbon cable", these cables have another function; they contain about eight tiny SMT parts which together detect the smart cover when it is closed or opened to shut off or turn on the iPad

I've shopped on eBay and received a total of ten (10) home button ribbon cables in the past three months from four different vendors. Every single one of them has been missing the smart cover parts. The photos shown in their ads show these parts fully populated, but when they come, they're unpopulated.

One vendor ("telitetech") took the time to understand the problem, checked and told me they did not have any working parts and gave me a refund.

One vendor ("top*parts") sent replacements, which were also bad. They refunded my money.

One vendor ("fine-stock") promised to send a replacement within 3-5 weeks and I should be patient (It's been 8 weeks. It hasn't arrived).

I am still in discussion with the final vendor as their defective parts just arrived.

I fear that some supplier has a defective lot of home button ribbon cables and, perhaps having been rejected by Apple, are now dumping them on eBay. The vendors handling these parts are themselves not aware that they are defective and if you complain, they just reach into the bin and send another set of defective parts.

Only one vendor ("telitetech") withdrew their defective parts from ebay and are now explicitly advertising that their cables have the missing parts (and if I'd noticed that before today I'd have just ordered tfrom them).

The takeaway-- it's buyer-beware in spare-parts world. Don't be afraid to complain if thngs aren't right. Most vendors really aren't trying to steal from you, but some just aren't equipped to help.

BTW, I have tried to transfer the SMT parts from old button ribbon cables to my unintended stock of blank cables, with mixed success so far (two attempts:one failure, one still awaiting test).