thought on eBay?

I use eBay plenty and have bought and sold higher end ($500-$2,000) audio gear there. When buying I always look for many instances of positive feedback and drop a question to the seller just to check out how the buyer responds. I have had excellent luck there with that simple vetting process.
If an item does not arrive at all or is not as described there is a fairly simple process to get a refund but it does take about a week or so to wait for that stuff to get worked out.

As a seller I have tried audiomart and Audiogon but just use eBay now as I get higher  prices in the auction format and get tired of all the back ids on those sites. I will say the quality of the sellers on Audiogon are great so prefer to buy there when I can. 

right now ebay can remove negative feedabcks left by buyers for sellers who sells a lot of hifi .
there is a lot of scammers on ebay with just few feedbacks
money back garantuee can be very tough task,I was refunded partially by a seller,and only after many attempts with proofs from shipping company ebay returned all money(seller wrote address incorrectly and item stuck and was not shipped)

+1 for steakster summary. I have spent up to about $2k for an item on ebay and usually have no problems, they favor buyers. Their money back guarantee has worked 99% over the last 20 years. You cannot guarantee that the seller will be good at packing. Take a photo of all items when you receive them, unopened box and amount/type packing material used. I have even shot video of me opening a package of high dollar items, just to be safe. Some people do use a 100% feedback account from other family members or friends, so even that is no guarantee. I'm contemplating a +5k purchase on ebay in the near future. For me, audio experience is not a requirement. I would be leery of low # of feedback for sure.

I try to avoid buying audio equipment on ebay. As mentioned above, ask questions and gauge the seller by his responses. Several years ago, I bought an Accuphase tuner on ebay. I asked a few questions. The seller was the original owner and really didn't want to part with it, but he no longer had any use for it. Turned out to be a great transaction. When buying, knowing the ownership history is a big deal for  me.

Okay! Thanks everyone. I genuinely appreciate the reassurance. I do find it strange to see a seller who has sold hundreds of vintage car decals or commemorative plates from Luray Caverns and then out of the blue puts Ypsilon monoblocks up for sale. (That's not literally the case here but it's the same idea.) 

Thanks!

I’ve had a lot of buying transactions on EBay. I’ve never sold a thing on it.

Out of 50 plus and 300.00 dollar or more audio transactions, I got stung once by a guy in Perth (remember that town) and once in the states.

State side it was a MC240 that just looked like crap and the guy said it worked as it should.. It looked worse than CRAP holes in the chassis and it couldn’t have worked no mater what, PARTS were missing and had been for a long time..

That was the first time I had a problem and fumbled the ball with the 10 day grievance procedure.. I would have won that one.. I learned better pictures from the seller and pictures on arrival on anything over 300.00 for sure..

It amazes me what people say about how equipment looks though. They will say it looks great and selling for parts. Its actually a rust bucket with a Mac or Marantz logo.. That IT...

I usually sell to people I know. Now that I’m thinning the herd a bit. I’ll see.

Listing and relisting fees, ain’t gonna cut it for me..

Fees, PP, shipping and Taxes.. LOL 20-30% if your not careful.. Better off selling closer to home and loosing 5-10% at the most..

Police station deals.. I love it when they come out and we’re loading 300 pound speakers in the parking lot... Beer bottles rolling out of the other guys PU. That was fun to explain.

Regards

I stopped buying big ticket items on Ebay since they started charging sales tax. I also stopped selling on Ebay because they get over a 12%  selling fee. Audiogon works out great for me!

Never get audio on eBay.Thats me however.

Stay away. 
Sold 2 amps and had a %50 ratio of good / bad

  will only buy,from audio places. 

Yes: but, you must use PayPal. They have a good record of always supporting the buyers. 

All good 4 me.

eBay is as good or bad as any other online market. Do your homework and when something is to good to be true, it isn’t.

It’s the only place I buy tubes.

EDIT : I buy only from USA sellers. 

I feel a lot better when the seller has the original boxes and/or shipping containers. 

I buy and sell on ebay all the time. It doesn't matter if a seller says no returns. If you have a problem ebay will allow you to return the item regardless of what the seller says. In my experience the buyer is in the better position with ebay than the seller. I'm more concerned with places like Audiomart than I am with ebay. 

Never buy audio gear on eBay. Most people find gear at estate sales and garage sales and know nothing about the equipment except the name on the front. I’ll only buy from us audio mart or Audiogon where most of the sellers are hardcore audiophiles and honest. Not worth the gamble. 

1. Watch your local Craigslist for as long your patience holds out.
2. Use a true community buy/sell forum, like Audiogon. Same thing for photography gear (FredMiranda.com).
3. While you wait, keep doing research to find alternative gear that fulfills the function you have in mind at the quality level you want.

Ebay and paypal will protect the buyer 100%.  I have purchased a whole lot of electronics on ebay.  Only had one problem.  Seller claimed to be a record executive, packed a Proceed AVP 2 in a way too small box with crumpled newspaper for packing material.  The box arrived covered in USPS red tape and really beat up.  It was missing the volume knob, the inner chassis was floating.  I took a lot of pictures.  Submitted my complaint with about ten pictures to ebay.  I had a return shipping label within a few hours, a refund came about a day later.  I have two ebay purchases awaiting shipment today.  I have also purchased from Agon and Audio Circle and US Audio Mart with zero problems.  I refuse to sell on ebay.  Ace Ventura works for Brown, Fed Ex and USPS.  I had to submit a claim to Fed Ex for about $299.  It took a few weeks but Fed Ex refunded the full purchase price and shipping, I still have the item, go figure, and yes it works, my complaint was a badly dinged corner.  My tube amp was 2000.00, my Marantz was just over 2000.00.  As others have said document your gear upon arrival with pictures.

@yogiboy hit it.Since they started taking payments directly for seller fees they have raised selling cost 300%..Add to that they charge a flat rate sales tax of 10%,when even my state & county sales tax is 8.75% so where is that $ going & don’t get me started on HTF can they charge sales tax on out of country purchases that fall under Duty Free regulation?SCREW Ebay.

It's always a bit of a risk.  I've had great luck at eBay buying used upscale headphones...Focal Utopia, Audeze LCD3, Hifiman HE1000 V2...all in superb condition, but never dirt cheap.  My worst experience was buying a Revox turntable that was described as refurbished...it was no such thing (it was a total mess) and I had to send it to a certified Revox repair place to have it done properly.  I must say, though, that all my experiences buying at Audiogon and US Audio Mart have been excellent.  So yeah, I think the odds are a bit better at those places, in my experience.

Major issue with EBay purchases is....wait for it....wait for it.....peanuts. 

@yogiboy  it used to be 14% when they operated with PayPal. 

I used to do a lot of transactions on Ebay. Very few problems and when they happened buyers protection worked 100%; so no complaints there.

Nevertheless I have decided not to do business anymore since they now do not allow negative feedback for non paying buyers. There's no way to protect yourself form people just playing with bids and alas there's  many. This is so bad for me I decided to switch to other marketplaces.

eBay is a business...crazy concept eh? Those charges are paying for software, staff, worldwide exposure, some profit (obviously), instant customer service & most importantly full insurance as a buyer & seller. I've had very few issues throughout my time with eBay but on those remote occasions they have stepped in & sorted it. 
Also they do have regular reduced seller's fee offers of 80%.
Just offering a balanced view.

I have been both a buyer and seller on eBay.  I have not had a bad experience either way.  I have tried selling higher end audio on eBay, Audiogon, AudioMart, Craigslist, & Facebook Market place.  Unfortunately,  (I list on at least 3 at the same time), eBay sells the item faster.  I say unfortunately, because I wind up with less money for the item due to their fees and charges; however their shipping costs are substantially lower than you can get on your own.  That didn't make as big a difference as it does now that shipping costs are extremely high.

Does the seller have the original cartons? If not, I've gone so far as to construct over size boxes and sent to the seller (including the tape for the outside of carton!). You said that the seller has excellent feedback. You should be good to go with PayPal. The worst case scenario is you get stuck paying the return postage.   

I've been a seller on ebay since 2004...sold plenty of audio gear, as well as bought...last audio component purchased was several years ago, my marantz pm14s1. It was sold by a reputable audio dealer based in New England and was a customer return. It arrived in flawless brand new condition. Yes, there are some occasional jerks that buy my stuff and cause me a headache, but over all I've had great success and 100 % positive feedback. 

Buy from eBay, yes. As far as selling on eBay, be careful. The buyer can return the item for nearly any reason. The seller will eat the return shipping fees as well. Also be aware of parts pirates.

I use email all the time for audio equipment. All of the advice here is excellent. Be careful of international sellers. Read and look carefully at the ad an style of the ad. Ask questions, or even ask to speak by phone. If it’s an expensive item and you can  pick it up yourself. A lot of audio stores legitimate brick and mortar sellers use ebay. It’s been great for me until recently florida made them collect sales tax, so now I’m looking for other avenues to buy. 

Sorry eBay not email. Autocorrect. 

I would stick with audiogon and audio mart. If it is a unit for under a thousand dollars I take my chances. I always contact the seller and ask questions. If the seller knows about audio it will come out in the correspondence. If I do not get a response then I move on. Good luck. 

No. I have never bought anything for hi-to on eBay that worked out l.Every single piece of gear had to be repaired, with the repair person sometimes telling me that the item had already been tested and traced with the faulty aspect having been marked. I got tired of it. Tried it again recently and paid for an NAD receiver before discovering the seller had misrepresented the number of amplifiers in the receiver. He claimed it would be the correct number if I added a couple of external amps. Also found out at that point that something was wrong with one of the rear channels and it hadn’t been divulged since they only used it for two channel and they assumed anybody wanting it would only use it for two channel. At that point, some other minor repairs issue also surfaced, I can’t remember what. And just two weeks ago, I got a refund on a Norstone rack after the seller never responded to any of my correspondence, including touching base and asking for tracking. Eventually eBay stepped in at my request after enough time passed. At that point, the seller accused me of being on drugs and called me scum of the earth in two separate responses. I asked him to clarify his reasoning or to explain not responding. Crickets. I got a refund when he couldn’t provide tracking. But at one point, eBay glitched out for about 15 hours and when it wasn’t glitching, it was telling me my purchase was no longer eligible for protection because too much time had passed. I really thought they were going to try to screw me, and I believe that was their attempt (maybe I’d go away quietly). Up until that time, I had to carefully navigate their land mines labeled "close this case" which popped up as the only prominently positioned clickable button on several pages I had to navigate through. I truly felt that if I wasn’t a tech savvy person, I would’ve accidentally closed the page or not figured out how to get it done without too much time passing. And according to eBay, I started the process too early, and they moved the date of the day I could take action, twice. I’m still going to look on eBay, but I really doubt I’ll buy anything of value again. I also recently got a refund on a ceramic Chris King bottom bracket that was sold as a particular current model and it was an older one that has been replaced with an improved version. The tracking on the item was extremely sketchy when I sent it back. The updates were wildly inaccurate and had me very worried ($275). Turns out, the guy took it to another town and dropped it back in the system somewhere. It was lunacy. After about a week of wondering what happened to it, it finally showed up at my house. eBay sent me a refund and I was very surprised. Just realized I should put it up myself, but label it correctly. I need the money for some snake oil I charged, lol.

I sold my integrated amp, a couple of phono amps on eBay also several different cables and floor standing speakers. The speakers was sold with self local pick up option only. All other stuff was shipped to the buyers via UPS or USPS. All with No Return Policy. Both sides was happy. No complaints. 

I’ve had great success buying on eBay, but from actual dealers. I won a Bryston 4b sst2 sold by Overture. I also WON a BAT VK-30SE from a small dealer in New Hampshire, I think. Most recently I won a VPI Scout with a TNT 4 platter and prime sig feet from Music Direct.

Be cautious, be patient, and be a little lucky :)

A lot of good advice in this thread, especially on the packing issue. In August, I bought a Paradigm CC-450 center speaker that arrived with thebinding-post assembly torn completely loose due to improper packing. I was at home, but in the rear of my house when it was delivered, and could not get to the door in time to meet the delivery person. They basically dropped the box from what I am guessing was knee-height or higher onto the cement floor of my front porch/stoop. There was another CC-450 in equally good condition (both were on ebay), so I messaged the seller, telling him the tale of the first transaction and stressing the importance of proper packing. He assured me he knew how to pack to prevent damage, so I pulled the trigger and bought the speaker. It arrived a few days later with the exact same damage, again due to insufficient/improper packing. Usually the key to safe transit lies in double-boxing and making sure the item has no wiggle-room inside of the inner box, unless the original box and packing materials are available. Fortunately, I was refunded in both of these cases.

I used eBay to purchase a brand new amp. I paid 5k for it. The retail price was $7,995. I had no issues. I registered the amp to start the warranty process as well. The amp did have a glitch occur about 1 month after the warranty expired but Yamaha honored it and paid for freight and service. They even sent me a new used box so I could mail it in for service since the box had been destroyed (my wife while I was out of town). Something triggered the amp which then went into protection mode. They reset it, tested it for two weeks and found nothing wrong. After I got it back I enjoyed it for several months without another issue. Then I decided to sell it. I sold it on eBay. I believe having the new box helped me to sell the amp quickly. It sold within 24 hours. I don't recall having a serious problem buying or selling on eBay.

The larger purchases I have made in the audio area were all done on audio boards where feedback relates solely to audio gear, not to someone in Singapore pumping  hundreds of $1 items through and giving themselves glowing feedback under fictitious buyer names.

The eBay money back guarantee only applies to 30 days after the sale is transacted.  So if you purchase something from overseas and it doesn't show up or if it is not promised to be delivered in less than a month then avoid it.  I took a risk on a $10 item, was in constant communication with the seller, it was tracked to a US customs location,  and never arrived.  After the seller told me they were reshipping the item I waited some more.  I finally got sick of the wait contacted eBay they told me tough luck.  I wouldn't do it for a high dollar item.
I have purchased several nice pieces domestically but nothing over $500 dollars.
Just my 2 cents worth here.

As a long time and frequent seller on eBay, I want to give a shout out to my buyers. All have been great and quick to provide feedback if they had any questions. My goal is 100% satisfaction and I really appreciate the positive feedback when I get it.

I feel the audiophile community is a great one to work with. Everybody wants the same thing: great sounding music.

I concur about packaging. Original packaging is always best. If I don't pack it up, I've had excellent work by UPS staff. You just need to show interest and ask questions about how they plan to do it.

I’ve bought and sold high dollar jazz archtops on eBay. Up to $8k. I’ve purchased $4 and $5k amplifiers and preamps as well. I’ve been a member there since ’97. USAudioMart is the better place to move high dollar gear, imo. But I’d not hesitate listing nor buying from eBay. 

I avoid it like the plague. I learned a hard lesson years ago.

I have bought lots of audio equipment on ebay.The only problems I had was how the seller packed the equipment.their guarentee is great. I've bought Speakers,amps,receivers ,tape players ,cd players. The damages were with turn tables I had bought.If they dont have the orginal box your going to have problems.Cds and lps hundreds of them probably a thousand cds and cd boxsets.Problems there was cds missing .I only buy unattached cds.VG or VG + vinyl  lps.

My worst audio purchase ever was on eBay.

One of my best audio purchases ever was on eBay.

The best: I got a Koetsu Rosewood Signature for about $1,000 from a seller in the UK. The ad was simple, short, clear with detailed photos. I had a few questions that the seller answered to my satisfaction. It arrived quickly, in good shape, as described. The seller said the needle had about 1,000 hrs left. That turned out to be more or less correct.

The worst: I bought a Velodyne ULD15 for about $600 from a seller in Colorado. The ad was very long, very verbose, and with many but slightly out of focus pictures. I asked the seller questions about compatibility that were answered. Once it arrived, it sat around for a few weeks due to the death of my father. I noticed a small tear in the surround which was not described and did not show up clearly in any photo, though now that I knew the tear was there, I could sort of see it in one photo. Once I got it plugged in, it did not perform as well as I expected. I had forgotten that the servo uses a second chord to communicate with the driver and it was missing. I ask the seller if he forgot to include the chord. He refers me to his “technician” who says he doesn’t know anything about a cable, it doesn’t need an extra cable to work. I download the user manual and learn that that is technically true but then the unit is not functioning optimally. The ad headline said “Sub and server”. I read the ad again, and buried in very fine print, towards but not at the end of 1,500 words - in hindsight I see meant to obfuscate - is a line that says “cable not included”, this even though the technician says he knows nothing about the cable. The cable used a non-standard 5 pin end but Velodyne by then was out of the sub business and did not have one to sell, and I could not find an aftermarket one, so I’d have to have one made. My engineer said he could do it for $120.

I file a complaint with eBay. It falls to someone in the Philippines with bad English to fail to satisfactorily explain why eBay took the sellers side.

The seller had a 100% rating, with good reviews, and sold a lot of higher end gear. all of which which I was in part relying on. I was loathe to leave negs at the time, and by the time I realized that the seller was deceptive, the 3 month period expired. Now, if I have a problem, I leave a neg immediately.

Fortunately, I bought it on a 6 month no interest no payment plan through PayPal, so I unlinked my accounts, refused payment and cancelled my PayPal account. The seller got his money, and PayPal paid for the unit. The sub sits in my basement.

I since bought another Velodyne ULD15, from a seller in Maryland. I went there, examined it, tried it out. It’s the one in my system now.

Thanks again everyone. I've bought and sold some things over the years but never a big-ticket/niche-market item. 

One thing that does seem true to me from observation is that Audiogon and AudioMart sellers generally have a sense of the audiophile world, know what questions to expect, know how to evaluate equipment. It feels a bit looser to me on eBay. More kinks and stories. (Just yesterday there was a pair of Pass 60.8 mono blocks for auction, sold by a pawn shop going out of business with the seller away for a month. Today the ad is ... gone. It's even gone from my "recently viewed" items.)

For audio I will not shop eBay, to many scam artists.  I have used flea bay non audio related items and had very good luck.

NO eBay for audio.

For audio, I’ve used them 3 times:

(1) Year 2000, bought a Marantz 4140.. seller shipped me a 2240. A clear case of fraud. It took me a month and I ended up paying 50 bucks for the receiver because I didn’t want to have to ship it back... eventually I gave that away, not one of Marantz’s good receivers.

(2) Year 2015, bought Radio Shack APM-200 power meter from a seller that carries only audio. Good transaction.

(3) Year 2021, bought another APM-200 from a mixed seller. POS. Took me 6 weeks to get my money refunded.

I buy a lot, sell a little, of audio stuff and I NEVER use eBay for electronics anymore.

Pretty much use eBay for buying. Selling got to be too weird, with fees being raised, taxes collected, then hey PP too. I gave up. For buying, it is really a joke to read that the unit has been tested and works 100%. I know better that this is BS. Fortunately the component that I am looking to buy will be completely rebuilt and it doesn’t matter about working order, or up to spec crap.

If I want to have an interested party offer to buy my equipment, then this is the place. Less tire kickers, generally more knowledgeable about the product, and hopefully don’t think that this site is a yard sale.

 

Packing properly is a concern for both buyer and seller. Nobody wins when a product gets damaged in shipping.