Singing the praises of EBAY

On Thursday last week my power adaptor for my laptop decided to die. The one shown here on the left is the original Dell equipment the one on the right is the replacement I bought. The problem with the old one is that it had a short in the part that plugs into the wall. I will most likely save the rest incase I come across a replacement somewhere for that part. I am currently using one of the replacements to write this blog entry. This one powers up the laptop just fine. Since my laptop is my main source of computing power in my house I thought I might stop at a local store and purchase a replacement. Surely someone in town had one that I could purchase and it shouldn't be that much.


WRONG! I stopped at a local store and much to my suprise the total cost was $109.99 + taxes. I was shocked! I thought surely I can beat this price. This is 1/2 of what I can spend to get a new laptop, so off to ebay I went. I first tried to search for the part in Ebay and it wasn't found so off to Google I went and Google found it in Ebay. The total cost was $18.98 shipping included. I bought two of these for $38.56. I use the laptop in my car with a power inverter so I can plug the second one in in the car and just leave it under the seat. Needless to say I got two for less than I could buy one at the local store. The seller had this to me in two days priority mail via the United States Postal Service. Needless to say in all my time on Ebay I have had only one bad auction and that was before EBAY canged the way sellers are rated. Sellers are rated on how fast they ship, how well the item is described, how reasonable the shipping is, and ect. They are rated postive, netrual, or negative.