Buying used power tools thru Ebay

I'm looking at a drill. 1/3 the cost of retail. (even with shipping). Description says used but in excellent working condition. It's a brand name drill. Exactly what I want.

Otherwise I'm looking at getting a 3/8 TaskForce drill ($20) and a set of 1/16-1/2 inch drill bits. And a couple of other drill bits. 7/16 and 1/2 inch with 3/8 shanks to fit the drill.

So, should I be concerned buying a power tool thru Ebay?

Thanks.

Pooh Bear

Which island do you live on? What town? I lived in Honolulu for a few years in the early 70's. I ran into a situation where the cops and the crooks were very obviously on the same team and I was on the opposing team, sort of. I think what it was was that the cops preferred local crooks to haole anybody. I didn't totally disagree. Later I got involved in a Life of the Land kind of outlook and eventually came to believe that the best thing mainland haoles could do for Hawaii was leave. So I left. I sure liked it there, though.

All the best, Stan

I have a TaskForce angle grinder and it works great. The drill should be better than the one I had before. I'll just get some reduced shank drill bits when I need them. I rarely need to drill anything over 3/8.

Thanks.

Pooh Bear

• Dewalt drill on ebay

The pawn thing has many truths. Good friend got three guys in jail for his stolen high dollar trolling motor sold on ebay by a pawn fence.

I have talked to pawn shop owners. They have told me that they know some of the items they receive might be stolen and because of that, they will loan very little on anything they suspect at all. They, in general, comply with the local law requiring that they report all pawns or buys to law enforcement and also get good identification of the person bringing in the merchandise. And sometimes stolen items are identified by the reports and are siezed by the law enforcement agency.

But relatively little is ever picked up. And the pawn shops continue to multiply, at least around Spokane, so they must be doing pretty well.

I have bought a few tools from pawn shops over the years, and felt that I got a good deal. I was able to check them before I bought them. But it bothered me to think that my buying the items might be part of the reason the druggies shoplift things from local stores. If there was no market for the items, maybe fewer would be stolen.

My wife has bought and sold a bunch of things on eBay, mostly sewing machines. She tries to deal only with people who have had prior transactions with good feedback and good reputations. Yet last year, she bought a sewing machine that did not have a serial number tag on it. It was not obvious that the tag had been removed--no scratches or machining, but the tag was gone. She had trouble getting the local dealer to work on that machine, since they believed it had been stolen at some time or other. They only tuned up the machine because my wife does a lot of business with them and they have known her for years. When my wife contacted the seller (who had a bunch of good feedback and had been selling on eBay for years), he admitted that he got the sewing machine from someone he didn't know very well. He ended up sending her back some of the money she paid for it and he said he would not sell items he doesn't personally know about their history. My wife ended up more or less giving that machine to a friend, who is aware that the serial number is missing, and it might possibly be stolen property. I should note that my wife and I looked all over the machine to see if there was anything else that might identify it, but there was nothing. The dealer also said the only thing that could be used for identification would be the adhesive paper tag.

Like so many things in this life, buying or selling on eBay is taking a chance. How good is the deal, and is it worth it to take the chance?

Main thing about buying on ebay, whether it's tools or anything, is to check the seller out. Be wary of someone with no or low feedback numbers, and especially of sellers with lots of negative feedback. You can click on the sellers name and read the feedback they've recieved from other people who've bought from them.

If the seller has lots of feedback and it's mostly all good(97% or so and above positive), I'd buy from them with confidence. People who sell a lot on ebay and have good feedback take alot of pride in that and they're not gonna risk getting negative feedback by unloading their non-working junk with an inaccurate description.

That's my experience anyway. Of course, nothing's 100% foolproof.

My biggest fear would be buying something hot, but in that respect it's not much different from buying locally.

I haven't bought any power tools of the kind you are talking about on eBay but I've bought a fair amount of welding equipment there. I've bought 4 small AC and 1 small AC/DC welder there (resold 2 and given 2 away) and they have been exactly as described.

I also bought 4 cutting torches on eBay. Two were brand new Smith torches with lifetime warranties. I paid about 1/3 the retail price for one, about 1/5 the retail price for the other. The other two cutting torches were used Victors. One of them doesn't have as good a metal to metal seal at the cutting tip as it should---you should be able to tighten it enough by hand but it takes a wrench. The other one I haven't cleaned up and tried yet but it looks fine. Both were quite cheap.

I bought a set of Victor regulators As Is. The seller said he didn't know the condition of them but one gauge was not functioning. I got that gauge working pretty easily but when I put them on a tank the output side wouldn't register. I already had several other sets so I put that set aside for something to play with someday when I'm bored. By coincidence I happened to talk to that seller about six months later and he asked me how the gauges had turned out. When I told him what had happened he said I should have sent them back to him. I told him I still expected to be able to fix them someday and I didn't consider it a problem. I thought his attitude was pretty generous considering that he had sold the equipment As Is (for very little money, I should add.)

Most sellers say they will refund your money if the item is not as described. Some even say they will refund the shipping costs. I'm sure that it doesn't always work out this way---but what does? You can give yourself a good amount of protection by only dealing with sellers who have sold a lot of goods on eBay and whose positive feedback runs 99.5% or higher. Use common sense. A seller who has pi$$ed off a couple of experienced eBay shoppers and has no good explanation for it seems to me to be a much greater risk than a seller who has received one negative feedback from someone whose own history shows only one or two eBay transactions and whose expectations may be unrealistically high.

Another source of protection is to sign up with and use Paypal with a credit card (NOT A DEBIT CARD!!!) Then if a situation arises where you think you've been taken, you may waste a little time in correspondence but the chances are you won't lose any money. People who say they would never use a credit card online because it's dangerous are partly right. The part they're not right about is to think it's safer to use a credit card anywhere else. Anyway, safe is overrated.

I don't think eBay is quite the wild and wooley market it used to be, and both the unbelievable deals and the hosings are more rare now. Paypal seems to be almost 100% reliable now (now that eBay owns it); only 2 or 3 years ago it had a reputation as one of the worst sites on the internet.

I can't argue the fact that you're better off getting to see and try tools before you buy them.
If you get good prices and all the selection you need at pawn shops, classified ads, and garage sales, you'd be crazy to shop anywhere else. But eBay is probably the largest market in the world and I don't think you should write it off without giving it a try.

All the best, Stan

• Hobby farm