I always thought this way until 6 months ago and i bought a bunch of small stuff and then gained enough confidence to finally get my Nokia N800 from eBay (but I only bought this one because it still had the SEAL intact) and I have had 0 problems with it so far. But I heard about eBay like 10 years ago or so and I vowed to never buy 1 thing on it... in 61 experiences I had just a couple of small lies from the sellers but never got ripped off.