I purchased my first 3d printer back in 2013, IIRC, from Gearbest. This was when they were only in Asia, and it took about 6 weeks to get here. The printer was the Anet A8 which is a DIY Prusa i3.
It came as a kit that had to be built. It took me about 2 1/2 weeks to assemble it. Then I found that a couple of the parts were broken. The frame is made from laser cut ABS. Now I had to wait an additional 3 weeks for the replacements parts to be sent out. The parts did come and I was able to complete the kit and start printing.
The next post will talk about various upgrades.