ebay vs audiogon

I have bought and sold on both sites and I have found both sites to work well. When I am looking at high end stereo equipment then Audiogon gets my interst. I look at the feedback on Ebay to see what the character of the seller may be like. This sometimes can put up the red flag. A scratch on a component can be tolerable if the purchased price is a great deal even if the buyer was not aware of the issue.

Kevyo

I think the biggest problem in ebay is the "power sellers". A lot of these pick the stuff up from estates or whereever, and often no nothing about high-end audio, etc. They really dont even know HOW to list the items properly. Some guy had a Pioneer Elite CLD-95 Laserdisc player listed as Dolby Digital capable. I looked it up to make sure (I was already pretty sure it wasnt DD capable), and sure enough, it was not. I emailed him and he thanked me and changed the listing.

The typical ebay user has probably never sat in front of a home stereo system to listen for differences in cables. My guess is most audiogon members have. Point is that ebay and audiogon attract a different type of person, and lets face it guys, audiophiles are different...but in a good way...right?

Let hope the community thing here keeps up. Sure every once and a while you find that awesome deal but the sense of community is the really cool thing here.

I forgot to mention in my last reply, a year or so ago I had listed my pair of Kharma CE 1.0s here on Audiogon. I had numerous pictures and a fairly thorough description included in the listing. I received an email from another Audiogon member telling me it looked as though someone had taken my ad and duplicated it on Ebay as an auction. I tried to contact Ebay and the only way I could file a complaint was to join Ebay. Well to make a long story shorter, some lucky person thought he bought a mint pair of Kharmas for less than half of what I would have sold them for. You go Ebay!!!

People are people, it's naive to think that good guy's are on Audiogon and all the crooks migrate to eBay. If you exercise some diligence you can trade on eBay without significant risk. The feedback system works just as well on eBay as it does on AG. Anyone who has consistent positive feedback will work hard to protect it, and you should be able to trade with them without worry. Someone who has not established much of a reputation through the feedback system may not have the same desire to preserve their feedback rating and might represent more of a risk.
Remember that eBay is a much larger community than AG, so you're exposed to a much larger mix of people.
If the feedback system isn't enough, you can often guage what a person is about by the way they construct their ad. Is the person clearly knowledgable about the equipment they own, have they provided suitable images, are they responsive to emails, will they provide a telephone number etc.
It's common sense and there's no need to get burned if you use it.
I've been trading on eBay for several years and for a little longer on Agon. I probably have over 300 transactions on eBay and only 20 or so through Agon, yet my one bad online experience was through Agon.
There are exceptions to the rule in any situation.

Rooze