I'm becoming exceedingly disillusioned with buying stuff from Ebay. I've purchased 5 things from Ebay. Only 1 of them arrived properly.

The first item was an air nailer. It costs me $125 plus shipping and was listed as a refurb. This was about 3 years ago, so my memory on some details is a little fuzzy. The item took (as I recall) over 3 weeks to arrive, as the person who placed the auction didn't respond for an excessively long period after the auction completed. Once it arrived, it did work, mostly. But the thing is, I've replaced it because it would jam every 3 or 4 nails. It was easy to unjam, but when you're building an entire garage, you don't want that kind of headache. You just want the nails to fire.

The next item on the list was a set of saddle bags for my motorcycle. Someone was offering a very nice deal on a nice set of saddlebags. It was one of those ebay stores sorts of places, and he appeared to have a dozen or so sets. Well, it turns out he didn't actually HAVE them. I got an email 3 or 4 days after the auction had closed (and I'd paid him) and he told me it would be a "couple weeks" before he got them in. Of course, he rounded down, and it would have been exactly 3 weeks from the close of the auction to when he shipped -- product he didn't have. Who knows whether he'd ever would have shipped. He did offer to refund my money and did so promptly, then gave me a bad review in retaliation for my review. People shouldn't offer for sale stuff they don't have!

Next, I bought a turkey fryer. Again, I got a good price, about half what it would cost new, and it's virtually new. The guy packed it badly, and the packaging fell apart before it even left Mailboxes Etc. I'd hoped for it to arrive in time for an upcoming campout, but instead it took over two weeks to arrive. I got it, and it was everything I expected, but the delay was annoying.

Finally, the latest incident... I bought a set of scaffolding. Just a small painter's scaffolding, about $125 including shipping. I paid for the scaffolding on January 3rd, and on January 5th, Fed Ex lost the package. Calls to Fed Ex are nearly worthless. Email to the seller as of last week sounded great, but then he stopped replying. I just phoned them instead, and we'll see.

The seller called me back and said "we'll send you another one, but it'll take about a week in transit and it probably won't go out until Friday." Which means I'll lose this weekend and there's a good chance I'll lose next weekend.

So, that's 4 bad items. The one good one? 5 years ago, I bought 2 books via ebay from someone I sorta already knew. She shipped promptly.