Ebay

Ebay is simply amazing. What can't you buy on this site? It is like the comparison of a garage sale and Ebay because it is a great comparison. Every year Cedar Falls holds the "World's Largest Garage Sale." Compare it to Ebay and it certainly isn't the largest, but it is quite similar in the way that you can find the weirdest and also greatest things at both of them. I am not a regular shopper on Ebay but I do sometimes visit the site to find things that I know I won't be able to get anywhere else. Like collectable band posters that I have purchased for my boyfriend. The concept of buying something off of Ebay seemed to be pretty safe and smart, but I was a little hesitant. The competitiveness of bidding on something was a little intense at first. Everytime I tried to bid higher the people bidding against me like magic made there bid higher then mine. I finally figured out how to do that myself. But I didn't feel like my time on Ebay was with a community. Facebook and MySpace are communities. People communicate back and forth and are friends. On Ebay people buy and sell, but I think that communication greatly lacks between a buyer and a seller. The first thing that I bought on Ebay made me scared to death because I was supposed to get the shipping information from the seller and he wouldn't email me back. I thought I had just got scamed. The package came eventually, but the whole lack of communication definetly didn't make me feel like I was within a community.
One great thing about Ebay is the way that they do try to prevent scaming of the buyers. The ratings system is a good way to know if you are purchasing from someone who actually is going to ship you your goods or not. Whether the ratings system is accurate...that's up to you to decide I suppose.
Another thingt that I do agree with is that Ebay is a way for fans to show off how much they like something. The first thing that I bought off of Ebay was a Dave Matthews Band poster and the people bidding were crazy. Luckily I was just looking for a poster that wasn't the most popular, because some of the posters were going on there for $200+ which is just nuts to me because you can buy one if you go to the concert for $30. Another thing about this is the "perfect price." I don't know what the "perfect price" to many things would be since not everything has as much popularity as others. I am sure if you were looking for something on a random Tuesday night and the bidding was close to being over with you could get a heck of a deal on an item that isn't really wanted. This brings me to my last thought which is that I don't think Ebay is the place for anything and everything, at least not if the seller actually wants to make money. For now I am going to just stick to real stores...they might not have better deals then Ebay, but they sure don't leave you wondering if/when you are going to get what you bought.