"Unrevealed Source" wrote in
:

I agree with all negative comments regarding RadioMart, but I think
most people in the hobby already know about him and have him filtered
out of their eBay searches. He caters to the newbies.

However, I disagree that eBay is a bad place to buy gear. It is
definitely the largest collection of radio and related equipment
available, and with careful buying it is possible to avoid being
taken. I have had a few attempts to rip me off, but Paypal is your
best friend when it comes to getting your money back. EBay knows it
can't afford to alienate buyers with a bad reputation and so it
protects sellers pretty well. And the nice thing about eBay is that
if a particular seller seems shady or uncooperative, just walk away.
Another one just like it will always come up.

Exactly. I have several pieces of ham equipment that I bought on eBay
and I got what I paid for every time. The only real problems have been a
couple of people who mistook a customs invoice for a declaration of
replacement value for transport loss. In one case the difference was
large enough to need correction.

But I have, looking around here, a keyer, paddle, microphone, HF rig,
antenna tuner, audio DSP filter, artificial ground, Noise canceller,
speech processor, flashlight and reading light--all acquired via eBay.
And that's just my desktop. Around the room, a portable air conditioner,
another HF rig, digital TV receiver, HDTV VCR, DVD player, stereo, HDTV
set, and VHF-UHF handheld. In my bedroom there is an old S38B
Hallicrafters. All from eBay.

The trick, you see, is to evaluate the listing (and the lister's
feedback) to ensure that the item is what you want. Then don't bid
anything more than you're actually willing to pay for the item. Take
shipping into account. This means you will lose a lot of auctions. But
you should not care, since you will lose them to people willing to pay
more than YOU think the item is worth.

Now, a fair amount of that stuff was new when I bought it and came from
dealers who happen to operate eBay stores. But a lot of it was second-
hand as well.


--
Dave Oldridge+
ICQ 1800667