russman Messages: 14 Registered: May 2009 Location: McKinney, Texas
Chancellor
It's a crap shoot really. Depends on the seller. More often than not, the problems don't lie in the fact of whether the gear was as advertised, but in the ability to pack it properly to arrive in the condition stated.
I try to do most of my purchases local, or from people I know.
I bought an iPod off Ebay and it was a decent price, I thought. I live in Canada and the duty cost was more than I paid for the iPod. Thankfully it worked though.
Adveser Messages: 434 Registered: July 2009 Location: USA
Illuminati (1st Degree)
I would just suggest being weary of anything that has time sensitive components.
Don't buy things with hard drives in them unless they are fairly new.
Skip the 30 year old amp that has never been serviced.
Stuff like that.
Personally I wouldn't buy a CD that's more than 15 years old right now either, unless one were to get it strictly to make FLAC files out of it the day it arrives and couldn't care less about it after that.
I have bought a few electronics from eBay buy I have always tried to do it from sellers that only have good ratings. There are a lot of places that do sell new items that are in their original package. Paying with PayPal helps you dispute the charge if the item is not as promised.
That's a very good point iDummy. I didn't have a paypal account at that time and thought that paying by money order would be traceable, but I guess it doesn't work like that.