Okay, I just bought something, and it is as advertised, no problems with the item, etc, but early in the day the auction closed, I made a proxy bid at my upper limit and was outbid, so I watched at the end to see what happens; a friend who has bought a lot on Ebay said it can be interesting. But I thought I had lost the item in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I was now the high bid! The main bidder had been disqualified for some reason, after running the price up. Conveniently, there was one bid from a third bidder that locked mine in at the high end of my proxy bid. But earlier I had been bidding against thin air I guess. So no more Ebay for me for a very long while. Left a very bad taste in my mouth, but I am happy with the item so no regrets. A friend of mine bought a piece of english china and paid top bucks for it since it was supposedly in perfect condition. (and this could as easily be a car part, so bear with me) The same thing is nearly worthless if it has been broken or restored (glued). Anyhow, he gets his china and it has been repaired, so he contacts the seller and the seller says he was selling it for someone else, and then accuses my friend of owning a similar piece and that my friend has switched the purchased (supposedly perfect) piece for his previously owned damaged piece, and is trying to rip off the seller. So he is now in the midst of trying to prove that it is the same piece, has Xrayed it to prove the nature of the crack, etc. So there is risk on both ends here, the seller's reputation could be damaged if my friend really was running a scam, and in this case, my friend may well be out a lot of money for worthless china. At minimum he will waste a lot of time and money on shipping. Those are my two EBay horror stories. And I bet ther are lots of other scams out there too. As for using your email address, I tried to change mine but they won't let you for 30 days after you last changed it, in my case, for the first thirty days after I registered. I guess this is to cut down on the scammers? I bet you could do a documentary miniseries on EBay scams.

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