Ebay is a fantastic auction site. Quite often there are some pretty great deals. And sometimes these great deals end up as very bad ones. One of the first things I look at is the sellers reputation. Sometimes you can take a chance and buy items from sellers with less than 100% positive ratings, but you need to use caution when you decide to take that chance.

Recently my husband and I purchased an old digital camera on Ebay. Learn from our costly mistakes. When it comes to photography a digital camera really is an excellent choice. But there are many components to a digital camera that you must understand before you decide to buy a used digital camera on Ebay. If you are purchasing a brand new camera from a reputable seller, it should include a guarantee. In this case, it would be a wise decision to pay the extra dollar or two to get it insured.

This story is about buying a used camera on Ebay and how you can avoid making the same mistakes that I did. Well, my first mistake was letting an ebay buying rookie, who happens to be my husband, do the buying without checking on the item personally. Here’s what happened…

My husband decided to buy an Ebay canon camera. He found one up for bid that included two extra lenses, a small tripod, and a really nice bag to carry all the items in. It arrived in very poor condition. 1. One of the apertures in the lenses will not close, 2. One of the lenses will not screw into the camera properly. 3. The tripod legs will not stay down due to the plastic tighteners being warn out. 3. Not a single zipper of the 5 different zipper compartments of the bad work. So, no zipping up any of the pockets.

In addition to this I have excellent feedback. It is at 100%. I don’t want to lose my perfect feedback rating. So, the last problem with this purchase is that the seller has blackmailed us with the following statement sent to us via a note inside the camera bag:

“We will happily leave you with a 5 star feedback rating once you have left us with a 5 start feedback rating.”

In other words, “If you leave us bad feedback, we’ll do the same.”

Where did we go wrong? Here are some suggestion on how to avoid our costly mistake:

Sneaky Tactic Number 1. “We don’t know anything about these cameras… we didn’t test it…” etc… This is a really good clue that the seller knows something is wrong with the camera but wants to pass the problem on to you. Since they are forewarning you it “may” not work, you can’t say they didn’t warn you. Avoid this seller.

2. If the seller says, “Take a GOOD look at the picture and ask questions before you buy”. This is a way of making YOU come up with questions they don’t want to reveal. One of those, “If you don’t ask, we won’t tell” sort of things.

Let’s just move on to number 3… You’re buying a digital camera. You need to know that all the features are working. Ask as many questions as you can think of to make sure they admit to each and every possible flaw. The way they answer you will help you understand just how honest they are. Stay away from sellers with vague answers.

4. If the seller has not tested the item, is he/she willing to take it back should it be broken?

My husband was so excited about getting this deal, and I was too busy to look it over, that we ended up buying something we’ll never use. It cost us $100.00 and the repair shop told us it would cost us $150.00 or more to repair the damages. It is a lessoned learned for both of us. You can avoid a bad Ebay Digital Cameras experience, if you follow some good guidelines and suggestions like those I have included in this article.