Tips Ebay: Big Ticket Buying on eBay

It almost seems like conventional wisdom these days says that the best deals around are to be had on eBay. Conventional wisdom also seems to suggest that anyone who buys big-ticket items like cars or computers on eBay is begging to be scammed.

So what's the truth? Can you buy big on eBay and get everything you've paid for? Of course you can.

From Personal Experience

I'd bought exactly one laptop computer my entire life when I first joined eBay in 1999. Since then, every laptop computer I've owned—a total of five IBM ThinkPads, which I've worn out one at a time writing books—has been an eBay purchase. My camera purchases show a similar pattern. Digital cameras were relatively new when I joined eBay, and I'd only ever owned one—a low-end consumer model. Between then and now I've supported my entire photography habit, including pro-level bodies and lenses costing thousands, by purchasing on eBay.

Great deals on big-ticket items can absolutely be had on eBay, if you're a careful consumer and you keep your wits about you. As a matter of fact, I've never lost a dime as an eBay buyer. I did, however, come close a few years ago—and the story shows just how hard it can sometimes be to identify a fraudulent auction.

Tale of a Near Miss

I was in the market for an expensive camera that I intended to take to the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City. The market value for the unit I was pursuing was around $1,800 at the time. I found what I thought to be an amazing deal on eBay—the same $1,800 camera I was looking for being sold for only $600 by a liquidator who had a feedback score a hundred strong.

I knew the price was very, very low, and that the seller also wanted payment via wire transfer—two facts that made me wary. On the other hand, the auction listing displayed a 1-800 number and a Better Business Bureau icon. A careful consumer, I called the Better Business Bureau in the seller's home state and found that he was indeed a BBB member. Encouraged, I phoned him directly and was assured that the $600 liquidation was due to inventory overstock.

I must have stared at the auction listing for half an hour afterward, convinced I was about to buy. In the end, though, it just seemed too good to be true. In an attempt to reassure myself I phoned the Better Business Bureau once more to ask how long the seller had been listed. The answer raised a red flag: all of two weeks. When I called the seller again to discuss the point, he offered to sell me a camera right there and then, over the phone, bypassing eBay entirely.

With one too many red flags now waving, I didn't buy.

For several weeks afterward, I wondered whether or not I had missed out on the deal of the century—until I got a call from the FBI, who was investigating the seller for mail fraud. I'd made the right decision after all. The experience taught me the single most important lesson any big-ticket eBay shopper can learn: your consumer's intuition is the best tool you have to protect yourself from fraud.

But there are other ways to protect yourself. -Ebay