E bay users - got a question

[Mister Bushice]

I don't e-bay much, usually I buy only from stores that use Ebay.

I was thinking of buying a high ticket item from this guy, and was wondering what you experienced users might think. He's got a better price on a factory sealed item than I've seen anywhere else:

http://myworld.ebay.com/moncdawg

[BSmack]

What is he selling you?

[KC Scott]

I don't e-bay much, usually I buy only from stores that use Ebay.

I was thinking of buying a high ticket item from this guy, and was wondering what you experienced users might think. He's got a better price on a factory sealed item than I've seen anywhere else:

http://myworld.ebay.com/moncdawg

First off, he has 1792 feedbacks and a 99.9% favorable - so that is about as good as you're going to get.
Like Bri said, you didn't say what you were looking to buy, so the I would check the feedback on same / similar items.

As long as it's a name brand you're familiar with I don't think you can go wrong

[Mister Bushice]

It's several things including brand name electronic signal processing equipment, a multi tiered keyboard rack, and some cables for my recording studio. I've done the research on the equipment, it's what I want, and he's offering it new in factory sealed condition for less than any on line store I've found.

My guess is he's got some stuff listed just north of his cost and is trying to do volume for profit.

My biggest issue with non retail store e-bay stuff is the credibility of the seller, and I wouldn't recognize an Ebay scam necessarily since I've only bought two items from there and both were from stores selling stuff on E-bay for a good price.

Also - how do they work the shipping if you buy more than one item? Are the two rates added together, or are they shipped in one box and adjusted?

[KC Scott]

Since it sounds like a "buy it now"- just send him a message asking what he can do for you on shipping, I've found most of them will cut you a deal

[Mister Bushice]

Thanks. That's a good idea. There were a couple of things there that I was looking at that didn't have a manufacturers name listed, but are being called pro audio, so I wanted to ask about those, too.

[ElTaco]

I can't say i've ever been totally screwed on ebay except once. I would say that was my fault for trusting a seller from over seas with low total of feedbacks. I usually will just look at the total number of feedbacks and their rating as well as how long they've been on ebay.

As far as scams go, the biggest one is shipping. People try to do awesome deals on the 'buy it now' and then over charge on shipping. This is the norm, and in some cases you just have to do the math to see if the ebay 'deal' is really a deal. Also its easy to get into bidding wars and actually get so close to the regular price of an item that its not really worth buying it over ebay. Thats not really a scam, it just happens regularly.

Other scams are selling items that are replicas or stolen. for example when I was looking to buy a GPS trainer for my bike, I read that a whole bunch of them were being stolen before they ever hit the store so the companies were tracking these and then not offering support on them. I was worried a little and sure enough my GPS ended up failing on me a few weeks after I got it, but had no trouble at all getting it replaced.

I would say the Feedback is the easiest way to tell if there is a scam. High volume sellers will always have a few idiots that they just can't satisfy or maybe there was a disagreement but they will have an established history that you can review and be fairly comfortable with.

Also be on the lookout for relatively new sellers with 'high volume' of feedbacks. I haven't really run into this or read up on it much, but to beat the feedback game, a bunch of people will get together and make fake sales to each other and create a bunch of feedback in a short amount of time, then use their high rating to make some bad sales and then disappear. These are usually done with groups so they can come up with a few hundred feedbacks fairly quickly, but I'm not sure how they get around the sales and paying a percentage to eBay on the fake sales. Again I haven't researched it much, and I haven't run into it but I always hear about it.

Anyway, if you just do the 'buy it now' buys, you are much better off then most people because you have a lot less scams that way.