So, EBay is broken (at least when it comes to computers & electronics).

There must be a startup opportunity there.

I sold my laptop on eBay about a year and a half ago. The winning bidder had a 100+ feedback rating, so I thought everything was fine, but then I get the email that he wants me to ship it to Nigeria. I contacted eBay via their chat support, and they were actually not that lame -- they agreed that obviously one of these scumbags had pwned a legitimate account, and refunded my money. When I relisted it, it sold without incident.

Another data point. I just sold mine a year ago and had no problems.

I bought a laptop and 3 months later got a work laptop negating my need for the other. Sold it on ebay at a loss of just 50 bucks from the original price. Yet another reason to buy a mac. The resale value remains really high.

I've sold two Mac laptops on eBay--one 12" Powerbook G4 and the other a 13" Macbook (white). The 12" sold within 24 hours (August 2006) for $500 (!). The 13" sold within three days for $900 (I paid $1200 and it was 1 year old, refurbished). The 13" did come with some other goodies, like Parallels and Win XP Pro, however.

Craigslist should be thanking eBay, because all the scams and fraud on it have made all the people weary of shipping things, So local classifieds thrive.

Ha... I never used EBay in the intended way: when bying I always do searches for local items only, and just pick things up with cash.

For selling I always use Craigslist.

eBay is a rule unto itself. They love buyers and do not care much about sellers.

I used to be a powerseller but stopped as I was fed up of people lying on eBay, especially buyers who received goods and complained to eBay they did not. In many cases I provided the shipping tracking numbers and eBay+PayPal could see the items were sent and recieved by the buyers but still they would refund buyers so sellers lose out.

They do this as it is easier to push around a seller (eBay tell you that you have to take the buyer to court but then will refuse to give you the buyers details) than a buyer (who can simply tell their credit card company to sort it out).

See http://www.paypalsucks.com for the horror stories I and many others have suffered at eBay/PayPal.

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Shorten more, please

how do you sell your laptop on ebay? just list it as a single-priced auction, set shipping to USA only, reject any bidders that don't have a paypal account, etc. anyone who can't sell something on ebay without running into trouble like this is an idiot.

welcome to human society.

Haha. The article is hilarious. Definitely a good afternoon chuckle.