9/24 Does anyone here have any experience with purchasing used laptops
on the Internet? If so, care to suggest a reliable site for it? Tnx.
\_ I do. eBay
\_ I did fine with ebay - found a vendor in New England that does
high volume (hundreds of postive feedbacks) and sells thinkpads
with service contracts good for another 9-12 months. -jor
\_ Reliable?
\_ Strictly speaking, it claimed to be a cancelled order (I didn't
care--it had the right specs for the right price). It works
great. The seller's rating was over 200, with nary a negative
comment, and he'd been selling for 2-3 years.
\_ I wish I had a link to the guy who had a 6300 rating, was
selling since 1997 and then skipped town with $300k stolen
from ebay. It was in the SF Comical last week.
\_ Part of the research is checking what other auctions
someone is running. If they suddenly have a lot of big
ticket items for sale and didn't before, you should be
concerned. If that's the case I'm thinking of, it's old
news, and the ripped-off people formed a community to go
after him. I haven't seen the full outcome for that guy,
but I know they ID'ed him and turned at least some of
their info in to the FBI.
\_ Ok, you're really smart, you'll never get ripped off
at ebay, you're right, I'm wrong. Good luck.
\_ I work at an eBay-related company, and we just had a
person scam $5K worth of auctions this way (in $200-$500
increments). The funny part? He lived in the I-House,
and is now at home in Turkey. The FBI is investigating.
He was likely an international student just finishing up
his time in Berkeley--going out with a bang.
\_ Mac or PC?
\_ Duh. No one uses Macs. No one with any sense anyway.
\_ S00ry, I f0rg07 that B5D i5n'7 1337.
\_ BSD good. Mac bad. Why pay extra for Apple hardware?
There's *nothing* special or unique about it. Go run BSD
on x86 hardware at 1/3rd the price.
\_ I bought a used Vaio on eBay (in the box, w/ all orig packaging,
etc) and it worked out fine. The guy was even in China or something.
A friend however bought a PowerBook from some guy in Vietnam and
never got the box after he mailed the money.
The lesson here: buy PC's not MAcs of course... er, buy from China
not Vietnam? I dunno... interpret the results as you will.
\_ Ebay: roll the dice and get lucky sometimes.
\_ Do your research and don't get burned.
\_ You can *always* get burned on ebay. Plenty of people got
taken in ebay ripoffs by people with great ratings. You're
not super smart, just lucky not to get burned... yet.
\_ bought mine on ebay. it was traumatic, but I eventually got it.
only buy from someone with spotless feedback. better yet, only use
escrow or COD.
\_ What are some good escrow companies?
\_ I thought escrow companies are only for buying/selling real
estates.
\_ Check out escrow.ca or http://escrow.com. |
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