'nuff said...

I prefer El Reg's description, 'Tat Bazaar' .. :D

I wonder if you can make a living picking out warez and sending it in. I believe that might be the only way you could make decent money from eBay these days.

Thing is I always wondered why people get so upset when they receive the wrong item from eBay. Surely one piece of tat is more or less equal to another? You may think you bought a toaster, but if a world-class piece of toast in the shape of the virgin Mary arrives instead, surely that's a winner?

You missed

or 3) Guessing that it might be pirated and still paying for it.....

Firstly i've bought alot of stuff on eBay which has been as described, not 100% deals have been great, but i've never been 'ripped off'. I've gotten goods quite cheaply, saved myself a lot, sure some products are 'grey market', but none of the products have failed on me.

My only bad experiences were getting a product slightly damaged, but they replaced it for me with a completely new unit and my only additional expense being postage back to them, and ordering a product and the dealer 'disappearing' after i'd received the goods (but the goods still worked fine!).

Secondly, gumtree. Some people prefer it, but every time i look there all the cheap laptops, ipods, etc.... too cheap, some seem to be nigerian scammers, and some i question if they 'came off the back of a truck...' (lots of laptops there for £200-300 of all kinds of spec, when even dodgy stores like 'exchange' places seem to mark their products up an additional £100+ for their lappys)

Only two years after I reported having bought pirated Symantec software on eBay, reporting it directly to them and to their BSA-style piracy-tracking organisation, complete with full details of the guy who sold it to me, and a statement that I'd be willing to help in any way with this guy's prosecution. Did they come back to me? Did they buggery. So I'm sorry, but Symantec can stew in their own juice if they've only just got round to doing something about this.

Anyone who would pay anything for crudware from Symantec deserves everything they get IMHO pirated or not.

Norton Utilities was a good programme until Symantec bought the name (I'm talking mac here). Since then it has gotten successively worse in whatever incarnation.