I'm with Reno on this one. I have nothing but disdain for Ebay.
A few years ago I did photography on the side. That was before the photographic digital revolution made every pimply faced kid with a digital camera and a computer with Photoshop a "wedding photographer", but I digress...
I've been a member of a photography forum for many years. As you can imagine Ebay is a popular place for photographic equipment, especially it seems for the unscrupulous to sell to the naive.
Many times there were forum members who had equipment that had problems and rather than pay to have it fixed decided to sell it on Ebay and use the money to buy a new one. Usually their way of thinking was that they weren't going to disclose the problem so they can get the most money.
On the other hand there were buyers who never got the merchandise after paying for it, got something broken with the seller blaming it on UPS, even got a box with a brick in it, I could go on. Most often the buyer got something that had an intermittant problem that didn't show up for a month or two or didn't notice that some function didn't work until months after receiving it. Just what the seller was counting on.
Now, I'm sure that there are a majority of honest sellers as well as ligitimate deals on Ebay, but the very concept of it's operation makes it easy for those who would be dishonest to conduct business.
Like gambling, if you can't afford to lose what you spent you shouldn't be there.
-Hal
