personally i find it a fantastic place. every single thing i need for my cars, my house and various bits for work have come from ebay. its been years since i ever went in a motor shop or diy shop.and for unusual or rare/obsolete items every thing eventually pops up on ebay .a few clicks and in a few days it arrives. perfect.
Be aware, its usually about the most expensive place to buy new stuff.
yes ive had a few things not turn up and had to open up a few disputes ( maybee half a dozen in the 10 or so years )but the good outweighs the bad by a large margin
I'd say in my first 15yrs of using, both buying and selling, I think I had one single issue (ironically my first ever purchase). In the last half a dozen years, I'd estimate opening well over 100 cases, and its definitely getting worse.
I have theories about this.
Firstly, scammers and chancers know how to exploit it, knowing that a proportion of people will not bother with sorting it out. I mean, for a £10 item, is it worth your time and effort? Because these people tend to sell lots of items, they have multiple accounts, so if one starts getting too much bad feedback, they can either abandon it, or sell stuff below cost for a month to get the recent feedback back up to snuf. Sellers know that a proportion of buyers are as thick as 2 short planks, and are gullible.
Secondly, we have our millennials now selling stuff. Obviously life owes them, so why should they rush to remove a part from their broken car and post it when Call of Duty calls.
Thirdly, we now have a lot of far east sellers who claim that the item is in the UK, so it appears in UK only searches, but reading the description, delivery may be up to 4 weeks (no matter what the estimated time is)… ...and when it does arrive, it has a customs label on it.
Lastly, we have the back bedroom companies claiming stuff is in stock, but in reality they are just drop shippers. To me, these are a huge problem, as ebay is never my first port of call for new items for cost and warranty issues, so I tend to only buy new stuff from there if its not available elsewhere. I've even contacted sellers to check they actually have the item, and order it when they confirm. When I chase non delivery, they then claim its not in stock. Grrrr.