Main Area and Open Discussion > Living Room

Experiences buying software on eBay?

(1/5) > >>

tranglos:
I want to say upfront that I've only had good experience buying stuff on eBay. I don't do so often, but I pick sellers carefully, and have bought things from cheap (DVDs) to fairly expensive (my fine pre-Lenovo ThinkPad :-), without a single problem ever.

But I've never bought software. Specifically (the seller states) a legitimate, shrink-wrapped, never opened, never registered retail copy of Delphi 2007. eBay is about the only way I can buy it, since CodeGear marketing dept lives in a cave and they sell only to US and Canada directly. They have resellers worldwide, and the Polish reseller not only charges an enormous margin above CodeGear's price, but they expect you to order only by printing out an RTF order form and faxing it to them. The order form doesn't even have a line for first name/last name - only for company name. If they don't expect to be selling it to individuals, I am not going to plead with them, and I certainly won't be buying a fax machine to deserve the privilege of odering an expensive product from morons. (Yep, I have some strong feelings about them!)

Assuming the trade goes well, and that the copy is indeed virginal, the net result would be no different than me traveling to the US, buying Delphi retail and bringing it home. Or receiving it as a gift. EU law does not allow manufacturers to limit where or to whom they sell, so this is completely legit on my side. (A second-hand copy would be perfectly EU-legal too, but CodeGear would almost certainly block me from upgrades and patches, so I'm not considering that.)

So the only thing I am left to wonder about is how likely it is that the copy in question is indeed legitimate. The seller has lots of feedback, practically 100% positive, and he seems to be selling shrink-wrapped copies of Delphi and other software almost daily. He has a long string of such transactions, dating back months. So it looks pretty good. Is there anything I'm forgetting about?

Does anyone have any good or bad experience of the sort?

f0dder:
Hm, I shop online relatively often and I'm certainly not scared of it in general - but for software shopping, I'm very skeptic, especially if it comes to "secondhand" or non-official resellers. One thing is whether borland/inprise/codegear/fancynameofthemonth and their license feels OK about reselling, another is whether those copies are genuine in the first place. Why would anybody an individual person end up with a large amount of legit, shrinkwrapped copies of development software?

Not saying it's necessarily shady, and I certainly have no experience with that kind of purchase, but it just smells wrong to me.

tranglos:
One thing is whether borland/inprise/codegear/fancynameofthemonth and their license feels OK about reselling-f0dder (January 14, 2008, 08:45 PM)
--- End quote ---

They don' like it, but thankfully the EU thinks differently, and if the software is really shrink-wrapped straight from a legit distributor, it's not even reselling. It's more like I ask you to buy it for me, and you do, and airmail me the package.

Why would anybody an individual person end up with a large amount of legit, shrinkwrapped copies of development software?
-f0dder (January 14, 2008, 08:45 PM)
--- End quote ---

Right, this is what smells somewhat. Then again, people who run their own brick and mortar stores sell their stuff on eBay, too, and offer better prices.

I certainly don't want to end up with a bad copy. I'm only considering this because the idiots at CodeGear won't sell it to me  >:(

f0dder:
I certainly don't want to end up with a bad copy. I'm only considering this because the idiots at CodeGear won't sell it to me  >:(
-tranglos (January 14, 2008, 08:57 PM)
--- End quote ---
Tell me about it - the hoops I had to jump through to purchase DataRescue IDA... involved a fax machine, passport + visa card, and quite an amount of cash. But I digress.

I'll step into the corner and watch what other people (with experience :)) has to say, and stop offtopicing your thread :)

Stoic Joker:
Simplest answer might be to post a link to the eBay item, so we can all get a first hand look at how legit it appears to be.

Just a Thought...

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page