E Bay can you trust it

[gareth]

I've followed yet another bogus ebay auction, this time for a mint 65 strat that sold for some £1500 - about $2800. I emailed the winner and warned him of my suspicions and told him the only way i'd paid for the strat is cod once the strat had been verified.

This follows an experience earlier this week. I bid on ebay for a MM sterling and put in a bid for £500 (about $900), I then got an unsolicited email from a guy in Spain saying that he had two Sterling's for sale and I could have them both for £600!. Of course he wanted payment in advance.

I've bought a lot of good basses and equipment thru ebay but i'm just wondering if there are now just too many crooks out there.

 

[kmacleish]

In those age-old words, caveat emptor.

I have done a lot of buying and selling on eBay, and so far it has been all positive. You sound like you take the old caution to heart, and are also educated about the items you shop for. Both of those things will go a long way to safeguard your shopping experience there.

The closest I have come to a problem was when I purchased a VHT Pittbull amp for my guitarist. Our transaction went just fine, but the same seller had listed a couple of Les Paul Customs, and I received several sad e-mails from a Canadian buyer who had paid for one of them but never received it.

I have also passed up some good deals that were offered by sellers with little or no feedback. If you exercise due care, eBay is a great place. And of course, if you are the seller, you have very little risk.

 

[BoiNtC]

If you do the auctions legit, you usually don't run into a problem, those guys that send you e-mails when the auction hasn't finished yet are usually scammers, there's a Sadowsky thread around here that I'm a bit too tired to dig up now that says people have been giving out e-mails saying they'll sell you a Sadowsky cheap through finding you from your bidding on eBay or something like that. I wouldn't trust anything like that, but if you bid on an auction and let the auction end and whatnots you should be okay.

 

[Hambone]

Ebay is a legitimate company. You can trust Ebay.

Ebay allows individuals to auction their possessions in a businesslike way on the internet.

Ebay does not run bogus auctions. Ebay does not auction anything. Ebay is an auction service not an auctioner.

Now, if you had asked about the people that sell on Ebay you might get a different answer.

 

[thejohnkim]

those people who e-mail you off of ebay aren't part of the 'ebay system' so i wouldn't count it against ebay, and yes they're usually scammers....

the people with thousands of positive feedback with 99%+ ratings are people i usually trust even for big dollar auctions...i've seen friends nail some great deals on high end acoustic g--tars off ebay

 

[B'Aces High]

Ebay is a legitimate company. You can trust Ebay.

Ebay allows individuals to auction their possessions in a businesslike way on the internet.

Ebay does not run bogus auctions. Ebay does not auction anything. Ebay is an auction service not an auctioner.

Now, if you had asked about the people that sell on Ebay you might get a different answer.

Thats what i was gonna say!

Anyway...i have bought quite a bit of various items from Ebay...and each time i take as much caution as humanly possible...but that is still no garuntee.
But if you use your head and little common sense i can garuntee that you will have a better chance of determining what is legit and what isnt.