Not top dog anymore (ebay.co.uk)

Member Name: bored_at_home

Product:	ebay.co.uk
Date:	23/09/09 (268 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap, some possibility of getting a refund if it goes bad

Disadvantages: Too many catches and flaws

Ebay use to be the place to be - a haven of reliable businesses at cut throat prices with amazing levels of service. You can buy absolutely everything and if you just ensured that your retailer had a good feedback rating from other members then you were ensured to get genuine goods, quickly at a fraction of high street prices. Paying through Paypal was the god send people wanted - a payment system where the retailer never receives your credit card details and you can dispute any flaws in their levels of service with the option of a refund.

Unfortunately this is no longer the case. Ill start by listing by last 3 bad ebay experiences:
1. Ordered concert tickets from someone selling a lot of the same with good feedback. Tickets didn't arrive, started panicking 24 hours before the event. They'd sent to the tickets to the wrong place, got the address from them and had to drive 135 miles - 12 hours before the event to bully a 14 year old kid into handing over my tickets. Tried to raise a paypal dispute in the meantime but Paypal won't accept disputes on concert tickets .... the most fraudulent area of ebay!!!
2. Ordered a printer that cost a bit too much but I prefer to pay through Paypal, huge seller with 10,000 feedback. Seller sat on the order for a week before shipping, I highly suspect he is back-ordering everything i.e. he never holds stock and just orders from his supplier when you order from him and the delay is him waiting for delivery of your item.
3. Ordered a specialist PC part (Parallel port convertor). It took a week to arrive and the item didn't work, the seller admitted that he knew it didn't work in most cases. Had to send it back at a cost to me.

These are just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. I'm very familier with shopping on the internet, I only buy from ebay when its the cheapest but nowadays the market is very competitive. Check out the google shopping comparison and other sites like pricegrabber and kelkoo and you'll find that some major retailers can be as cheap as ebay. Amazon marketplace also gives smaller retailers a chance at selling online and its much more reliable and cheaper in most cases. Ebay have done a great job of spamming their listings everywhere and advertising on TV to make it seem as though they're the cheapest but a bit of shopping around will save you a lot of hassle.

Summary: Not my first port of call anymore