I'm a big believer in the eBay model but I recently had a nasty little eBay experience. I spotted a nice cheap video card for my PC. Seller had 97.7% positive feedback with 252 responses.

Can't go wrong, right? So I buy-it-now.

4 hours later I got an email from eBay saying "Oh, we think the sellers id has been compromised - take all the steps you can to recover your money"! Doh!

A few hours later I get an email from the seller saying - "where would I like it delivered?". And the another saying "eBay screwed up". Two more days go by and I get eBay saying "we screwed up."

Anyway to make a short story long and tedious, the seller appears to have been who he said he was and eBay had "overreacted" to a situation which caused me a sleepless night and I had cancelled the PayPal payment, made chargeback to credit cards etc etc etc ...

So eBay DO act upon suspicious sellers - but it can be unnerving when it happens AFTER you've bought the damn item.

My advice is to use PayPal to pay and look for the PayPal Buyer Protection http://pages.ebay.com/paypal/buyer/protection.html

Jerry
Amsterdam