Ebay - Good or EVIL?

[The Curmudgeon]

I remember when I was first introduced to ebay - I was amazed. Really, genuinely AMAZED at the sheer volume of stuff on sale. Everything I could imagine was for sale - and I went a bit ebay crazy at first, scooping up long deleted CD singles and comic books I thought I would never see again.

I think ebay is brilliant for stuff like that, but there are many, many bad things about the site as well. For starters, it is absolutley RIFE with piracy - whenever you buy CD's and DVD's from there you really have to be VERY sure its not some crappy copy from some dick who you'll never meet and get a refund from. Also, its a breeding ground for ticket touts, who hoover up gig tickets as soon as they go on sale and then sell them at vastly inflated prices. The goverment and ebay themselves have said they'll try and do something about it, but what could they possibly do?

Another thing - there are many things that could once be described as "rare" - deleted CD singles in funky packaging that you would happily pay through the nose for at record fares etc (which I used to do) but then you see about a hundred of the damn things on ebay for £5 or less. In a way its superb you can complete your collection, but its a rather depressing experience seeing what you thought was a rare and fairly valuable collection become worthless with the click of a mouse.

Anyway - the choice is yours. Ebay is one of the most dominating internet brands ever, and its changed the way millions of people buy and sell their goods. But what do YOU think about it?

[Ben]

Every once in a while I'll decide I want to spend, oh let's say, around 50 bucks on ebay, and I'll just get whatever it is that's on the top of my "to buy" list for as low as I can get it. I love it for the purpose of buying cds and dvds, and those "rare" singles like The Curmudgeon mentioned, but, also like The Curmugeon stated, it's turned hard-to-get items into not-so-hard-to-find bargains.

I'm somewhat of a sports memorabilia collector. I've got rows of autographed football cards and pictures. I've often used ebay to track down items I can't find anywhere else, and of course, they're about 10 times cheaper there too. The only problem is deciding which are authentic, and which are reprints, or complete fakes. It takes a lot of reading in between the lines to determine which items are truly authentic. Sometimes you get the whole "...I recently came upon this item in my dead Uncle's attic, and I'm pretty sure it's a real signature..." or the intentionally hazy and/or blurred picture so as to make it harder to determine what condition the item is in. My favorite ones are the ones that scream "100% REAL AUTHENTIC SIGNATURE (etc etc)" and then after spending 10 minutes trying to decide if it is or not, you scroll to the bottom of the page looking for info about a certificate of authenticity and there's something in font size 4 that says "item is not original, reprinted for sale." It can be a headache to go through all kinds of these different items, but when you do find one that's real, it's usually very cheap. And of course, most of the sellers that deal with memorabilia and such sell that stuff all the time, so I just save them to my favorite sellers and check what they have up for sale when I decide to enhance my collection.

Now I've never ordered something and found it was pirated, but something that I'm fairly sure has happened to me is this: Sellers use multiple accounts to jack up the price on their own items. I mean, I can't help but wonder why there's only one bidder other than myself on Slayer's South of Heaven, especially considering there are a number to choose from that don't even have any bidders... Things of that nature happen to me all the time on ebay. I'd be more willing to accept it as a coincidence if I didn't personally know people who have multiple accounts for this very reason.

[trashcanman]

I use ebay sparsely, but enthusiastically; mostly for hard-to-find or imported DVD's or bootlegged live recordings of my favorite obscure bands. I've received a few pirated DVD's and even a CD once, but if I can't get ithe product legally, I don't make a big fuss about it. If the companies don't want people to pirate these things, they should make them more readily available to rabid potential customers. Japan seriously needs to add english subtitles to more of their DVD releases; it's bad enough that their prices are outrageous. Usually, I try to stick to legit sites like Amazon for 90-95% of my purchases. I've just had too many shipping-related problems with ebay. One DVD I ordered didn't arrive for six freakin' months. I had actually forgotten about it after it didn't arrive for so long and had written it off as a loss. A few other times, the (ripped) package made it but the DVD was missing. One seller had just duct-taped cardboard around the DVD and shipped it like that, then got all defensive when I emailed him that the DVD had fallen out. Dope. My verdict: ebay good, stupid and dishonest sellers bad.