Okay, I just bought something, and it is as advertised, no problems with the
item, etc, but early in the day the auction closed, I made a proxy bid at my
upper limit and was outbid, so I watched at the end to see what happens; a
friend who has bought a lot on Ebay said it can be interesting. But I thought
I had lost the item in the morning. Imagine my surprise when I was now the
high bid! The main bidder had been disqualified for some reason, after running
the price up. Conveniently, there was one bid from a third bidder that locked
mine in at the high end of my proxy bid. But earlier I had been bidding
against thin air I guess. So no more Ebay for me for a very long while. Left a
very bad taste in my mouth, but I am happy with the item  so no regrets.
A friend of mine bought a piece of english china and paid top bucks for it
since it was supposedly in perfect condition. (and this could as easily be a
car part, so bear with me) The same thing is nearly worthless if it has been
broken or restored (glued). Anyhow, he gets his china and it has been
repaired, so he contacts the seller and the seller says he was selling it for
someone else, and then accuses my friend of owning a similar piece and that my
friend has switched the purchased (supposedly perfect) piece for his
previously owned damaged piece, and is trying to rip off the seller. So he is
now in the midst of trying to prove that it is the same piece, has Xrayed it
to prove the nature of the crack, etc. So there is risk on both ends here, the
seller's reputation could be damaged if my friend really was running a scam,
and in this case, my friend may well be out a lot of money for worthless
china. At minimum he will waste a lot of time and money on shipping. Those are
my two EBay horror stories. And I bet ther are lots of other scams out there
too.
As for using your email address, I tried to change mine but they won't let you
for 30 days after you last changed it, in my case, for the first thirty days
after I registered. I guess this is to cut down on the scammers? I bet you
could do a documentary miniseries on EBay scams.

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