On Tue, 24 Nov 1998 21:38:27 -0800, x.whillman@x.mindspring.com (william S. Hillman) wrote:

>But still say only a fool would send a
>check to an unknown location to buy something on the net and a fool and his
>money is still easy to separate! Even if the camera had been shipped any
>guarantee that it would work? You can bet there wouldn't be. Next good
>place to get scammed is at a computer fair. Lots of junk get sold for good
>prices (so the buyer thought at the time) that didn't work and then some that
>did most likely was stolen! There seems to a never ending line of fools
>ready to be scammed!

Gosh....! ;-) Well, here is one o' them fools...! ;-)
I've bought one heck of a lot of gear from Shutterbug
classifieds and from r.p.m (and from computer shows...),
and my experience has not been as described above.
Sure, people often describe gear as better than it is
(and cheerfully refund my money, if I'm dissatisfied...
[one of those human characteristics I've never quite
figured out...;-]), but I've had so very many good
deals in the last 15 years or so that the two scams
I've experienced hardly made a dent in what I've saved
buying gear this way (and one of the scammers was caught
by the postal authorities [and he is regularly sending
me checks these days...;-]). My experience shows that
people are maybe 50% honest or knowledgeable enough
to accurately describe gear, but are maybe 98% honest
and pleasant in the money-dealing part (with a couple
percent who protest refunds on obviously mis-described
items), and 99+% of deals are satisfactorily concluded
eventually... Not bad averages, I think...
(My opinion of human nature appears to be far more
positive than yours as a result of this, I guess...;-)