Agreed. I wouldn't try to buy a phone off of ebay.
Nor any highly sought-after or high-ticket item, for that matter. This place is rife with scammers.
Unless those positive feedbacks was obtained in the last 7 days... nobody have the time spending years building up their reputation just to get it trashed.
From what I could see, it seems surprisingly easy to cheat on eBay. Either motivated hackers take over a valuable account and start selling crap-ware, or they act in networks, each of them leaving a positive feedback after a false transaction for an item that was never actually sold nor shipped. They're patient, and can show a seemingly-good profile to buyers.
Hm...no.
There's hardly any risk with two levels of disputes available at paypal and ebay. I've never had a problem that wasn't solved.
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You can't live life scared of everything. Never had a problem from a power seller.
While power sellers are usually fine, I actually have problems sometimes with them. Last item I bought was a small true sinewave inverter. For some reason it is not compatible with my iPad charger as it bemakes it behaving erratically when plugged in. I now use a found Blackberry charger while in the truck. In the meantime, the seller never ever answered to my inquiry about possible incompatibility.
And actually both eBay and PayPal belong to the same entity. Although I didn't have any issue with PayPal itself, I would never fully trust a company that abruptly ceased to transfer donation payments to another entity without a court order. The fact there's no real competition in the online payment industry only worries me more.