I've never really been ripped off on ebay. I was my mothers 'ebay bead-buying agent' for ages (she told me what to buy and I did the paying and shipped the items to her when they got to me)... we bought over a hundred sets of glass beads, and there was only one where the seller couldn't be bothered to package them properly - blind freddy should have realised that if you wrap a string of handmade beads in a single sheet of tissuepaper (and don't even tape it) and then shove it in a non-padded envelope that it's not going to be protected en route from Germany to the US! She wouldn't replace them either - she said that was why she put a couple of extras in the bag...

DH bought a computer part that turned out to be a piece of (broken) junk instead of the motherboard he bought, but the seller apologised and said that they got it from someone else (and they gave us our money back).