Don't use E-Bay? Seriously, with all of the bs crap that people pull on E-Bay, I have no idea why people insist on using their (so-called) service.
Uh, because millions of people use it quite successfully. How else are you going to go about selling a Pez dispenser collection if nobody in your geographic location is interested in buying, but you know buyers are out there? (This is exactly how Ebay got started.)
Or for selling large items locally, it can be a nightmare trying to find a buyer and paying ridiculous amounts to local newspapers hoping people still look in papers for things. I have sold a TV, washer/dryer, and electric piano on Ebay to local buyers which would have cost em a lot more to sell via newspapers and I probably wouldn't have been able to sell it for as much.
I did have this in the auction notes: "This item is sold as is but it worked fine just before I put it in the box last night after doing a factory OS restore"
You have nothing to worry about. When you say the item is
as is and don't offer any guarantee or refund, you are covered. If something happened in transit, that's what shipping insurance is for. If it has a different hard drive and you didn't say it was factory, it doesn't matter if he thought it should have the factory hard drive. If the DVD drive could have been replaced under warranty and he voided that warranty by cracking open the case and looking at the hard drive inside, his loss.
But the bottom line is
as is with no guarantee means you get what you get. I sold a TV once that worked fine for me and phrased by description just like you. The guy picked it up himself and 3 days later complained to me that the picture was bad. I couldn't help him. I don't know if he banged it when he unloaded it or if moisture got in while he took it home in the back of his pickup. He took it to Ebay too, but I won in the end.
I never go to ebay for electronics... ever! You just don't know who's fake and who's real. Ebay has gotten so out of hand... it's not worth it.
I don't think it's necessary to avoid Ebay for those purchases. In fact, I think it's absolutely great for electronics and I pretty much buy ALL my electronics from Ebay. For example last spring I bought a brand new Canon EOS 400D camera with a kit lens and US warranty for $150 less than I could find anywhere else. It was one of the best purchases I've made on Ebay.
You just have to be smart: watch reputation, watch shipping costs, read descriptions carefully (avoid "as is" sellers like I mentioned above), and check people who have given feedback and their product selling pattern. There has been some unscrupulous behavior, but Ebay has taken steps to curb it. For example, a lot of people were making ridiculous shipping costs and low prices, so Ebay now has shipping right there in the auction listings before you click on an auction. Also, people would sometimes build up their own feedback with friends or false identities, but Ebay made it easy to check who is leaving feedback and who those people are buying from most.
