Originally Posted by kmcaprice14

First off, the "smart enough" comment was meant to refer to a hypothetical discerning shopper with a decent amount of common sense, it was not meant as a dig at you. I can see where you could have thought that, and for this I apologize.

Yes companies can screw you on ebay. Yes at walmart you can deal with a person. But you can too on ebay by requesting phone numbers and adresses prior to buying. I always do this, and several times when I check the adresses and buisness names online, it turns out to be a sham. Thats the steps you have to go to reduce the risk you take. And just looking at their approval rating is stupid. Thats like having unprotected sex just cause her friends say they think shes clean....

Finally, your comment about the error ratio is entirely unsupported. You have not studied ebay, you have not figured out what the margins of statistical significance are, so don't act like you have. Plus consumer behavior and depth of consumer knowledge and awareness factors into something like the probability of a bad experience with ebay, and there is really no way you can account for this. Futhermore if the the chances of getting screwed are less then 1 in 25, and you combine this with some common sense, I see no problem in using ebay as a valueable source of car parts. Sorry you were mugged by ebay in a dark alley or whatever, but let people make their own opinions. And don't make irrational and entirely unfounded claims about the probability of scoring a miss with ebay. But lets stop this stupid disagreement and allow this thread to focus on cats as it should. Sorry everyone, I'm not tryin to pick a fight, just wanted to explain myself a bit.