Getting Scammed, something that you well eventually deal with.

[jerry coeurl]

I waited a month for some assclown to send me a copy of Shenmue. A week and a half after I had paid for it I sent him an e-mail and asked when it was gonna be shipped and he gave me some bs response about how his computer had crashed and he lost all of the shipping addresses, and that he was gonna be sending it out the next day. This struck me as a little suspect because eBay saves all of that information, so you can get it off of any computer, but I figured maybe he really was super busy so I just tried to be patient.

3 more weeks went by and each day I would check the mail, and get increasingly pissed off that my copy of Shenmue wasn't there. I sent him like 3 more e-mails, none of which he responded too. Finally I filed a claim against him through PayPal, and my money was immediately refunded. The thing that pissed me off though was that after I got my money back, I couldn't leave him negative feedback, but overall I was just happy to have the ordeal done with. I promptly bought another copy of Shenmue from a different seller and it showed up within a couple days.

That's my only bad eBay experience, as far as I can remember.

[Metalwario64]

-Are your games sealed? Remove the wrapping (it may be shrink wrap, in which case you can remove it with your bare hands, or blister plastic, in which case a pair of scissors will be required). Take the game out of its packaging and place it into your console or personal computer. Voila! Your game is now ready to use.

Nah. Can't afford the sealed stuff.

-Are you 2D? 3D objects do not survive the transition, and will become flat and unuseable. Move into the three dimensional plane and repurchase the games. (You may have to refer back to point one before they are ready to use.)

I'm definitely 3D. In fact, I think I'm way too 3D, and that I'm too "in depth".

-Are the gods displeased? If you have angered the retro-gaming gods, then "All My Games Are Pictures" can be a side effect. If your modern consoles have all melted, your baby has dead pixels all over its face, or all your chickens have exploded, this would be a good indication. Consult any priest for further information and/or confused looks.

Sounds reasonable enough to me.

That has to be a joke...

Perhaps.

But, in all seriousness, I can't recall ever being ripped of on eBay, though I've had a couple of cases where the seller would package fragile items (like action figures) in bubble mailer with no padding whatsoever, only for them to arrive broken.

I actually only recall getting truly scammed by a seller on Amazon. Their name at the time was "Direct Liquidations", though they seem to keep changing their name. You can tell it's them when you see the name "Noram" pop up. They have a large history of selling used games and DVDs as "new", only I didn't realize that when I ordered something from them a few months ago.

What I find even more shocking, is that they have really good feedback, and many sellers are aware that they're getting resealed DVDs and games, but they still give them positive feedback! What the hell?

[TailsAlone]

Happily I have never been scammed. I've gotten the wrong game on occasion, or the seller had listed something they didn't actually have in stock (happens to the bigger ones), but the situation was always quickly resolved. I do most of my business with Amazon, which seems to be more dependable than eBay, and my local game store where I know everyone who works there.

When you're selling low to mid-priced used retro products, I guess you're happy enough to be making money on them and don't have much to gain from trying to rip people off.