Ebay!

[steve_spackman]

Anyone had any bad stories about buying things from Ebay?

Curious as i have seen a good few laptops that have caught my eye.

[Easy Drifter]

A good friend was a very heavy E-Bay buyer/seller for a few years.
There are scam artists out there and E-Bay and Paypal are not very effective against stopping them.
Most sellers are honest but be very careful with electronics. You will really have little recourse if you get scammed.
Check out the sellers' history. See how much they have sold and how long they have been selling. See if they have had complaints and if they have been resolved. Any major seller if going to have the odd complaint but see if an attempt was made to resolve it. The positive feed back needs to be above 97% and should be higher.
Stay away from a seller who has only sold a couple of items or one where there are any sort of problems.
Bargains are to be had but so are problems. Warranty is doubtful.
We were a dealer for a large fishing reel company. They had run of one model of reels with bad bearings. We checked them when we got them from the distributor and if any had problems (you could tell) they went back.
All of a sudden this model started showing up on E-Bay in the US real cheap and from several sellers. How they got them I don't know but I would bet they were the ones with faulty bearings.