What items have people learned to avoid buying on ebay either because buying used isn’t worth the lower quality, because there are tons of low quality knockoffs, because the price isn’t lower vs buying in store when you add in shipping, etc. I’ve had good luck with ebay on a lot of purchases, but some have been terrible.
I try to avoid some electronics since ebay has a lot of knockoffs that break pretty quickly and have lower quality. There are good items, but it can be hard to wade through the knock offs to find them. The best thing to do is only buy from US sellers when buying those items (to avoid hong kong exporters), but even then you could just buy items that were exported from hong kong to a US distributor. My brother has had trouble buying rechargeable batteries due to this issue too.
But other ebay electronics have been great. I have bought ipod cables for a fraction of what they cost in store.
I’ve thought of buying a used car on ebay, but it would have to be a local model so I can take it to a mechanic. People I’ve known who have bought cars have had mixed reviews on the subject.
You used to get magazine subscriptions on the cheap there, but they stopped selling them. I never got ripped off but apparently other people would pay, leave positive feedback and then never get their subscriptions since it took a couple of months to start.
Anime DVDs. If it looks too cheap to be true, it is. I once bought a box set of Wolf’s Rain that was a bootlegged copy with an English translation that was utterly incomprehensible.
Tee shirts from the UK. What they call Large is something between a small and medium here, and XL is much (too much) wider without really being any longer, so I basically get to choose between the ever-stylish “skintight douche” or “mushroom-man” looks.
I might have just gotten unlucky, but I’ve bought my fair share — all of my favorite bands are British, after all. For the ones that are still active, I’m always sure to stock up whenever they make it to this side of the pond.
I’ve learned to not sell jewelry on eBay. The buyers have a very high flake-to-sane ratio. Right now I’m dealing with four payment problems out of nine lots I recently sold… back in my salad days I shipped a gold bracelet without a tracking number, and got scammed out of it. It doesn’t happen when I’m selling china or yarn.
:smack: Oh crap. I just bought $40 worth of sandisk sd cards for a 8 year old Kodak digital. I had trouble finding any that were small enough capacity to work with my older camera.
any ways to tell if I got the real deal or a fake?
I’d check the seller’s history. If they’re well established and many good reviews it’s most likely good. Also if it’s not coming from certain countries ;).
I won’t buy any Tuscan Whole Milk off eBay since I can get it cheaper on Amazon.
Yup, same with merchandise of any type for anime. Best protection is to limit your search to North American and/or European sellers. Also, check that the images of the product match the official product. Plus many sellers will include a barcode # or other type of identifying information. The less info in the auction the less reliable it is. Oooh, and if the seller is selling 5+ of the same DVD set it’s a good chance it’s bootleg.
I gave up on buying used clothes from eBay, for the most part. There weren’t enough hits to counterbalance the misses… and now I’m paranoid about bedbugs.
I’ve only bought a few things on Ebay and most were good quality. I did buy a few makeup brushes that were a good price (but not ridiculously cheap). I thought there was a chance that they were knockoffs, but I didn’t really care. They were supposedly MAC brushes and at first they appeared to be good quality, but when cleaning them a few of the ones that had dark bristles bled a lot of color - turns out they were fake, and instead of real dark natural bristles they were dyed synthetic. I still use most of the brushes though - they work fine.
Power supplies for notebooks. I’ve bought several for different models and they never work. The sellers tend to be dicks to boot. The most egregious seller was telling me that I was wrong. Shit, I’ve got a masters in electrical engineering and I can tell whether or not a god damn power supply is working. This was back when the seller could retaliate by giving the buyer a negative review, so I just gave up.
Now I just suck down the outrageous prices that the actual manufacturer charges. I’m talking to you, Dell.