ebay purchases

I am in the market for a DoubleDin Nav/DVD system. Being the cheap bastard that Iam, I have been thinking about the Sites on Ebay from China. really good prices, unit from $200.00 and up, but I am hesitant of getting ripped off. I was wondering has anyone purchased from those sites? and If so, how was it?

 

use the balls your mama grew you and use protection.... as in pay pal...

 

Im selling one

Edit:
http://www.tacomaworld.com/forum/buy-sell-trade-other/108298-pioneer-avh-p6800dvd.html

 

Based on the very high amount of times people from china tried to get me to ship them $500 dollar R/C cars to them, without wanting to pay me untill it ships (when I owned my hobby shop), I would say hell no.

 

Whats so special about paypal?..

 

If you don't get what you paid for, you file a complaint with Paypal. They will act as an agent on your behalf to get you a refund. You do not have to deal with the seller directley, and in most cases you will get a refund within days.

 

If you're going to buy those cheap systems from China, then you deserve to be ripped off. It will be junk.

 

what he said, the cheap chinese system are sh*t, i bought one for my 09 camry and it was junk, gps froze up all the time.... buy a good ddin, I have the kenwood 8120 in my taco and love it, works amazing and fast.

 

Thanks guys for your input. I will avoid those sites. I did have a concern on quality. sometimes I just need reinforcement to get my head out of my ass.

 

Paypal has screwed me twice with their "protection". Both times I had to take it up with my credit card to get a refund. They're worthless...I'll throw a party the day they go out of business.

 

Was it with eBay?

 

Couple of things.
If you have a paypal account you can get some of your money back should you get ripped off. Personally, I have about 30,000k of purchases through eBay and no I am not a seller. Never sold anything. I have bought everything from Cars, computers, boats, hunting gear, batteries for my laptops, to games. I did learn early on that it is important to see the sellers feedback. If they have 10 sales and a 90% feedback rating I'm probably not gonna go out of my way to buy from them. If they have 10,000 sales and say 97-99 percent rating, I am perfectly happy to make the purchase. The rating may be related to shipping, merchandise, or even communication. Do take the time though and see if the ratings are spread over a relative amount of time. If the poor ratings are all occurring in the last couple of months they could be having money, personal issues and you might want to find your product from someone else.

I have purchased from all over the world, including countries like China. so far no bad luck from them. They actually seem to have a pretty good track record, although I haven't purchase major items from there. Yes, early on I did get burned on a computer purchase. One of those too good to be true deals.

For large purchases you can even contact the seller to accept escrow payments. Basically, once you both agree to escrow and you win an auction, you send your money to an eBay escrow. The seller is notified that the money is in account. They in turn ship and you have a prior established amount of time to review the item. If you are satisfied you can either contact the escrow or after the established amount of time if you don't contact escrow they will disburse payment to the seller. If you find the item not as advertised you can negotiate a new price or return the item if you can work out an agreement.
There is always risk, but the rewards can be great too. Savings in significant cost, taxes, shipping, etc. good luck. Ken