The up-sides and down-sides of buying on eBay
As someone who has bought much of his expensive and expansive home hi-fi system on eBay, and knowing that the temptation is always there to purchase car hi-fi the same way, I thought it might be useful to provide some pointers to help you avoid the pitfalls and choose wisely.
Perhaps someone would like to make this sticky, and maybe reward me with a * for my efforts.
First let's look at the most obvious similarities between buying home and car hi-fi on eBay:
- home hi-fi and car hi-fi can be found new and used on eBay.
- new items usually come from apparently legitimate firms either in Australia or overseas.
- price on eBay appears to be considerably lower than in the shop.
- warranties are typically very short or just for not working on receipt of goods.
- ultra-cheap products with likeable but never-heard-of brand names crop up repeatedly.
- there is no government-legislated right to return goods bought at auction.
- some people sell their goods because they don't want or need them any more. Others sell their goods to get rid of them while they still can!
Differences are more subtle and at least as important.
- In new home hi-fi on eBay most manufacturers are no-name brands, while in new car hi-fi, most manufacturers are well-known brands sold by unknown vendors.
- In new home hi-fi, fakes are rare. In new car hi-fi fakes proliferate.
- The condition of 2nd hand home hi-fi is usually easy to see. Car hi-fi faces much more day-to-day assault and can be difficult to evaluate without hearing it work.
- Home hi-fi is usually installed by you, the buyer, and usually more-or-less instantly on receiving it. Car hi-fi is often installed by someone else and often you can't know if it works until you have had it installed.
I've just done a lot of buying on eBay and I have had to deal with almost every issue in the lists above.
AMPLIFIERS
NEW
Most new amps on eBay are Chinese imports with unknown names and unknown manufacturing quality. They generally have good or even excellent specifications, but no credibility. The companies who sell them are not audio or car hi-fi companies, but general importers. For that level of specifications, they are selling at about half the price of known brands or even less. Would I buy them? I've been tempted, but no. I know that just about every Alpine product is a good product. I know nothing about these no-name products except their specs and price.
USED
Used amps are used. At some point they have likely been abused, since car hi-fi tempts you to go all out. Still, good brands, like Alpine or Clarion say, and even run-of-mill brands like Pioneer, are made to withstand more abuse than the typical home amp. Most top-name amps are almost completely idiot-proof. ALMOST. If it is electronic, it can be destroyed by electricity or by impact. You just need to be persistent enough!
The big advantage of 2nd-hand amps is the price.
An expensive 2nd-hand amplifier of a few years ago will sell 2nd-hand today for perhaps 25% of its original price and 30% of the current replacement. That's right - the current replacement will typically be cheaper than the original was! So keep that in mind. But, even so, that means you can buy a good quality amplifier 2nd hand for much less than you would have needed to pay new. No warranty of course. No guarantee that a component won't blow up on you in the first few months, but, radically cheaper. If it does fail, buy the current version and it will practically be a drop-in replacement. Or try 2nd-hand again - maybe you will have better luck next time. Still, luck plays a part.
RECENT EXPERIENCE
I bought 3 2nd-hand amplifiers for my car - one for my sub and two to power my other 7 speakers. I don't know whether any of them are duds yet as the installation is still 2 weeks away. But they all look OK and, if two out of 3 work, I will have excellent value.
By the way, whenever I buy something on eBay, I always cost in the shipping. I choose a price I think is a good risk, including shipping, and limit myself to that price. There are lots of items I don't win. They may be excellent value to someone else at the winning bid, but not to me.
SUB-WOOFERS
NEW
Quite a few new subs appear on eBay, either on their own or in an enclosure, often with full manufacturer's warranty.
I have a one problem with these. What does this sub sound like? Or that sub in that box? Why do you want a sub? To scare your neighbours, blow out your eardrums, or make your music sound more realistic? My sub is for the last reason - make music sound more realistic. Let's face it! Most subs are not built for that purpose - they are built to make rap music sound like war on the streets. Once you get over that, you still want to buy a sub to make your music more realistic. So picking up a sub you've never heard, new, on eBay, is as good as going into JB or Strathfield and doing exactly the same thing - senseless in my opinion!
On the other hand, some new subs are fakes (see the section on speakers below). Unless you are convinced that the vendor is trustworthy, don't buy.
USED
Used subs are another matter entirely. If you know what you want, look for it 2nd-hand. It might be there, in perfect condition. Why? Because some people buy and sell subs over and over again. Why? Because some people are just dumb.
But a word of warning: a guy will typically buy a sub and sell after 6 months because he never listened to that model in a realistic environment before he bought it. Try not to emulate his approach!
So what I said in the first paragraph of this section applies: If you know what you want... The corollary is "If you don't know what you want, you need to do some serious listening BEFORE you buy".
SPEAKERS
NEW
There are quite a lot of new speakers on eBay. Too many to trust the reliability of the suppliers. New speakers from Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong and China should be immediately suspect as potential fakes. This is particularly true of medium-to-high priced highly reputable brands such as Morel, Focal, Hertz, JL Audio. At the moment there is a glut of superseded Hertz HSK 165 splits on the market. These are almost all Chinese fakes. The original price of the originals would have been about $400 - these are being sold for between $80 and $120. Whether there are non-fake superseded HSK 165s out there is conjecture - I'd assume the answer is NO.
Like the cheap Chinese amps, there are also new Chinese cheap no-name brand speakers which are sold mainly by general importers. Keep away!
So what is there in new speakers worth buying. Well quite a lot, but you need to be wary. I bought two fake pairs of Hertz speakers, and found they had the same serial number. So I rang the manufacturer in Italy, confirmed they were fakes, and got the good oil about non-fake current speakers at good prices! It so happens that there has been a recent shake-down of distributors around the world, with the result that some ex-distributors have some "dead" stock they are selling off. I asked that the company who sold me the fakes return my money and they were more than happy to do so as they did not want to be tainted by fraud.
Then I purchased current model "dead stock" at a brilliant buy-it-now (or best offer) price.
buy-it-now (or best offer) is better than auction. It is a contract of sale with full Australian consumer guarantees. The (or best offer) bit means that the seller wants you to bargain. So bargain! I knocked 20% off that price, simply by asking!
There is another type of dead stock which is just as worthwhile. Discontinued models often have little to differentiate them from the current model. A quick check on google will tell you how well thought of that particular speaker happens to be.
I have purchased new but outdated Infinity speakers which have not been current for some years. Nevertheless, they are excellent speakers, little different from the current model, and are being sold off at less than half the original price. The only warranty is a money-back/replacement guarantee offered by the vendor, but that vendor looked reputable to me. As soon as they are installed, I shall know if they are faulty and require replacement.
WHAT MAKES AN EBAY VENDOR REPUTABLE?
That's always a bit tricky.
Here are some guidelines.
A vendor with almost zero (or zero) feedback score is a no-go area, unless they allow you to pick up the item for cash (which of course limits you to being in the same locality).
A company which appears to be in one country but is actually in another is very suspicious (e.g. a vendor which shows up as Australian, but has product in China or vice versa).
A vendor who does not respond to queries usually causes me to abandon the auction.
Vendors with hundreds of feedback points (or thousands) are not necessarily trustworthy, but they have a great deal of credibility to defend, so they will not want to be tainted by negative feedback (or worse).
WHEN SHOULD I BID? HOW MUCH SHOULD I BID?
Bid as late as possible in the bidding! There are tools available which allow you, for a fee, to place a winning bid at the last reasonable moment. This is called sniping. Everyone who has seen a great bargain snapped out of their fingers in the last few seconds of an auction, has been sniped. Different sniping products are priced in different ways but the idea is the same: Be the last bidder. In eBay auctions, your successful bid is never more than the next highest bid plus an increment which depends on the price the item has reached. That increment is 25c if the high bid was less than $5, rising to say $2.50 for high bid of $100+, and so on. So if you put in a snipe bid of $201, launched 10 seconds before the end of the auction, and the previous highest bid was $91, and no one bids after you, you will pay $92 for the item, not $201, your high bid. But if someone else had sniped at 12 seconds for $180, you will end up paying $182.50 for the item.
Only bid as much as you are willing to pay. Seems obvious doesn't it. Yet, I've seen bidding wars where the final price was above what either bidder wanted to pay. They just got carried away. That's one unexpected advantage of sniping: you just set your bid and walk away. There is far less temptation to get into a bidding match. If you get cold feet in the meantime, get in and kill the snipe bid before it is launched (each snipe system has a "too late" period at which point the bid must ride).
I almost always use a sniping product to launch my final bid. I will sometimes put in a bid or two before my final bid to get a feel for the sentiments of the existing bidders. The sniping product I use charges me US$1 if my bid wins (nothing if it doesn't), even if mine was ALREADY the highest bid before the snipe.
Thanks for your interest.
