Buying phones from ebay

Would you recommend doing this?

For example, click here...

Here we have a Sony Ericsson W880i, which is perfect for my needs and for a poxy £3..it sounds almost too good to be true, is it risky?

Has anyone else bought succesfully off ebay at these prices?

Sounds a bit risky (because they haven't sold anything before) but for £3 it's worth a chance. Just make sure you pay with paypal so if anything does happen you can't be taken for a ride.

Also I'm sure you noticed but you don't get a battery or charger with it so not really sure how much use it would be unless you already have these.

Yes, I noticed that as well. Then again, I guess everyone on ebay goes through that! This person is also selling a K750i for £1...he must be mad!! No wonder has hasn't been selling much!

I have a charger - and the batteries can be picked up for 50p online....although it's not ideal i agree.

The price will probably get to about £40 for that - it's still got 2 days left on it. I'd leave it a while, someone might stamp down the minimum price on it as a bid and then you could snatch it up later.

I got a Nokia E71 off eBay once, came in the condition they described, without original box but everything else was included. Suffice it to say, my parent's weren't best pleased so I had to sell it off about a week later - I actually ended up making a bit of profit on it because it re-sold for more than I bought it for.

I miss that phone

Yes, I suspect the price will go up a fair bit. Even still, it's a very low starting price.

I was trying to nab a phone with a 3-day listing that started at £5 and by the time it had sold it had rocketed to about £50. It was only a used Nokia 6300 as well.

To put things in perspective, I put my N95 8GB on for £10 starting and it went for £145 the other day, I also put an LG Shine on with a 99p starting price and that went for about £40. It don't matter what the starting price is, it will rocket up if it's worth it.

I have sold a few phones on Fleabay once contracts ended and I got upgrades and all were fine.

For what it is worth, I had a W880i for a while and it was pants. The worst thing about them (and other I knew with them had the same problem) is they are deaf when it comes to signal. The phone also crashed a lot and had other bugs which I can't remember now, but I remember not liking the handset at all.