eBay scam or great deal?

[danaeris]

So there's this guy who is selling a lot of 10 kyocera 7135s. 4 days or so left on the auction, currently at $1009ish ($20 shipping), "buy it now" is $2400 with shipping included.

The lowest I have seen one of these sell for is 270; many of them sell for as much as 300 or 400. These ones come with no charger or cradle which will decrease their value, but I'm pretty sure I could break even on the ones Unseelie and I didn't use.

You can see the auction here:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3071109124&category=15045

The seller has a blue star; 3 neutral feedbacks and 68 unique positives and no negatives.

I do have the cash to do this without hurting at all.

(1) Would anyone like one of these phones if I did this?
(2) Does anyone think this is a bad idea?
(3) Anyone have thoughts on the odds that this is a scam of some sort?

Comments

[amberite.livejournal.com]

Feedback won't always tell you if you're being scammed, as the expert scammers steal userIDs. Feedback history, on the other hand, may give you a clue. Look at their last few auctions and see whether the descriptions look like they were written by the same person, and if the item types are in line.

[thirdson.livejournal.com]

depending on how much you could get them for, I might be interested...

[bk2w.livejournal.com]

Oooo, I'd be very much interested. My LG phone is dying, and I've been planning on replacing it. Even at $240, this would be only $10 more than the cheapest phone I'd be interested in from Sprint.

So, the only issue is whether Sprint would be able to support this phone, given that it's Verizon. I seem to recall Sprint selling this phone at one point.

So, I'd say go for it. I'd be in for buying one of them from you.

[princeofwands.livejournal.com]

OTOH, I know a couple of Verizon users how have sprint phones that'd be willing/interested in trading...

[rightsock.livejournal.com]

imho, only if you have a lot of time on your hands. you will have to get chargers at the very least, and hopefully cradles, otherwise they will be difficult to get a good price for them, because of the extra shipping cost required to separately procure the required accessories.

Note also that they make no mention if the phones work or not. I'd at least ask that before you get them. Also physical condition is not mentioned: scratched, dented, dinged, mint, or what? are the phones locked or ? (maybe they can be easily reset? maybe not? most phones can't be easily reset.)

Doing a group purchase for friends is much easier than thinking about resale. I'd estimate that aside from research to gather data to build the auction info page (at least 30 minutes, probably more like 60 per item, though a lot of identical items saves this time spent since you only have to do it once), I easily spend 60-90 minutes dealing with payments, packaging, shipping & handling, package delivery to fedex drop-point, etc. and I have all the tools I need on-hand too (a mini-shipping dept in my back porch, scales, and fedex account).

[bk2w.livejournal.com]

Any more thoughts on whether you'll pursue this?

[danaeris.livejournal.com]

See my most recent entry on this subject!