eBay X-series sellers--any votes of confidence here?

[silo]

has anyone done business (bought a used x-series notebook or other IBM notebook) with either horizon_electronics or thinkpadworld on ebay? I've been looking at the X31 and X32 for sale and these two sellers seem to dominate the low end. Both have like 98.5% positive, but I usually shy away from anyone without 99.5% or better.

Thanks,

Silo

[440roadrunner]

I discount your "supposed" low positive rating, IF the seller has other attributes, like being a "power seller" and has a LOT of feedback, say at least a thousand.

ANYONE who does a lot of business on ebay is going to get a hit here and there, no matter what they do.

I look carefully for other hits---do they have a decent return/ guarantee? Do they charge too much for shipping/ handling? Do they seem too secretive about who they are, given that they are a "business"?

(There's a LOT of sellers that have XP cd's for "buy it now" but want 20.00 or more for shipping. No thanks)

[LtTPfan]

Silo,

I'm with you on the 99.5% feedback. Assuming they have more than several hundred feedback I get suspicious and investigate further. Yes, there are the occassional idiots. My wife has nearly 11,000 positive feedbacks and has received only 7 negatives with a 99.9% rating. Reading their negative feedback shows what idiots they are. http://toolhaus.org has some great FREE tools, their primary being a tool to search for all negative and neutral feedback received or left by someone. It saves a lot of time from searching thru possibly 100s of pages of feedback. When a seller has less than 99.5% and say 1000+ feedback, I'll use toolhaus to read their feedback. This gives a much better indication than just a number. What do the buyers say and what are the seller's responses? Who sounds more believeable?

I also look at the feedback the seller has left. This tells me if they hold a buyer's feedback hostage. (Did the seller leave a negative after the buyer?) It's my policy to avoid these like the plauge. Why? Well, as a buyer I have trusted the seller with my payment, and have completed my part of the "contract" (feedback IS voluntary) but the seller can't trust me to leave appropriate feedback after completing his part of the contract? How can I trust his feeback rating if buyers are afraid of leaving appropriate feedback for fear of pure retaliatory feedback. This practice of holding the buyer's feedback hostage has truly degraded the value of sellers feeback ratings.

Another thing I like to do is ask the seller a simple but appropriate and relevant question about an item (maybe even a different item) if there is adequate time (at least one full business day before ending time, not counting weekends or holidays), especially if negative comments indicate the seller refused to repspond to problems and the seller asserts the buyers are lying. If they won't respond to [appropriate and relevant] questions before a sale, what are the chances they will respond after they have your money? I say appropriate and relevant as I might not respond if someone asks a question that is plainly addressed in the ad, has no real relevance, or is too petty.