Reminds me of a story. I used to be a avid bowler. One night our star team mate was late, we where playing the 1st place team and we were wondering were the heck is he. He shows up twenty minutes late, under his arm a big box that said he had some fancy new VCR or stereo, I forget. Anyhow this guy isn't the brightest, and he's telling how some guy runs up to him at a stoplight, asks you you want to buy this, open a genuine carton of some name brand electronics shows him this great equipment, our guy buys it on the cheap.

We ride him all night show us, show us. Finally he can't take the ribbing any more and he opens the sealed box. Inside a bunch of bricks.

E bay has a lot of legit sellers. They also have some scam artisits. Proceed with caution especially if the price is too low.

What kind of feedback does the seller have? If they have a very low number or a lot of negatives, stay away. Check out their other auctions, if listed.

I hear ya, but while there may be legitimate sellers on eBay, you have to look too hard to find them. I think I’m going to contact the seller and ask a few questions but you can never be too sure.

What I usually do is also look at the seller’s feedback from their buyers and see if they had a past auction with the same item. If they claim its used software and they’ve sold it 5 times in the last two months, that’s usually a clear indication it’s illegal. I mean, where would they get all those used copies without a box or manual?

I’ve contacted some of the buyers and in each instance and they have confirmed that what they got was a CD-R disk and not the new box pictured in the ad. Here is one:

This is a confirmed illegal CD-R copy. I have buyers emails to prove it: ACID PRO 4 FULL RETAIL VERSION+SERIAL# 4 REGISTERING!!

One poor buyer just got an email with a serial number and a pointer to the Sony site to download it themselves! (the ad said "free shipping")

Here’s that one: ACID PRO 4.0 - Full Retail Version $399.96 with a Buy It Now price of $99.96 that points to the web site: www.abnotic.com. The fine print at the bottom of the auctions reads:

THIS IS NOT THE BOXED COPY ($449.96). IT IS 100% LEGAL AND CAN BE REGISTERED. YOU RECEIVE E-MANUALS WITH THE SALE AND GREAT LINKS TO GET YOU STARTED WITH THOUSANDS OF LOOPS.PICTURE IS FOR REFRENCE ONLY!

and it also says:

Note to eBay: We have read all your software policies carefully and our auctions in no way violate eBay rules. Please contact us with any questions

What are the chances this is a legit copy? And abnotic.com is selling them every day of the week or $99.96!

But getting back to the auction I originally listed, I’ve checked all of this seller’s previous auctions back to January (as far as eBay still has active links to) and this item is not in there. Plus it looks like they’ve been selling some factory sealed boxed items, and some computer parts, audio items, etc. and none have been duplicates except for some blank audio tapes. So they may just be legitimate.

I guess maybe they did have the bagged version and just put it in a DVD case to make it more presentable. I’ll have to send them an email and see what they say.

~jr

Hey, I'M an honest, legit E-Bay seller. So, if you ever see anything for sale from "TheHappyFriar" on e-bay, I always make sure I give good item descriptions, etc. Plus I pride myself on have 100% customers satified. :)

I e-mailed the the guy in the auction John pointed out. It's a pretty good deal (but for being the old version of SF, not impossible). I asked if the serial numbers were included in the manual.
Someone could sell a copy on a burned CD-R if they purchased the download version & were e-mailed the serial number.

But, If *I* were selling any of my Sony/SoFo products on e-bay, i'd give them an e-mail so that they know and can confirm questions bidders. :)

I purchased my copy of Vegas 3 on Ebay for a great price. It was legit - I've upgraded to V4 since then.

It seems like there's quite a few Acid auctions that are pirated though.

DRF

BillyBoy, I guess I must just be in a silly mood today, but when I read that you are an "avid bowler," I had this vision of a Mojo unit rolling down a lane!

Sorry,
-Don

We have a WINNAA!!!

This one looked legitimate: Sonic Foundry Acid PRO 4.0 like new and had a Buy It Now price of $85 so I jumped on it!

The reason for this sudden interest, is that Spot announced a new training DVD for ACID for Non Linear Editors and I realized that its probably going to cover ACID Pro 4 and I only have ACID Music 3. So that’s what prompted me to look for a newer version on eBay (because I couldn’t afford $399 to buy it new).

~jr

By the way, eBay feedback is NO indication of a legitimate seller. It is widely known that sellers have phony ways of generating phony good feedback. Happens all the time. Same thing as was happening on Yahoo recently and was exposed when the system failed and exposed all the real names of authors writing their own book reviews under lots of phony names.

I have never used E-bay (UK) but have thought about.

My thoughts are this;

Just like web services wouldn't you have a much better chance of it being legit if the seller is prepared to converse with you by e-mail and answer any or all questions.

If they don't I would stay out of it.

Perhaps I am oversimplifying things.

I just got an e-mail back from the person running the SF6 & Acid 4 auction. They said that the serial numbers are printed in the manuals.

That's a good sign.

Although I have my fingers crossed for you, I have to say, I would never, EVER buy software off eBay. I've never been burned (but then, I've never bought software from eBay), and I've never met anyone who has...

But chances are 50/50 that you're going to get screwed.

David.

At the end of the day there's NO way to be certain if an eBay seller is legit. Most common trick is to actually sell a lot of stuff over say a 3 month period building good buyer feedback. This is pretty easy to do, buy up lots of cheap bits and sell at cost or even slightly under.
This gives you good ratings and 100s of satisfied customers.
Then you put lots of expensive stuff up for sale, say a few VX2000s for example.
You require payment via direct debit, everyone thinks you're OK, after all you've been there for ages. So buyers are happy to give you the money upfront.
Needless to say at this point seller disappears into thin air, bank account is emptied and address bank has is non existant.
Only way you MAY be able to cover yourself is to only make payment via credit card, Amex seem to have best policy on covering buyers. If seller will not accept payment this way then stay well clear of them.

My version of Vegas +DVD came from a seller on eBay. It is an "academic" version , and a friend of mine who is a teacher bought it for me at a very reasonable discount. It came in sealed box with manuals + CDs,...works just fine, and as far as I know there is no difference between the "academic" version and the regular. Yes, you can surely get burned on eBay,..but likewise you can find some very good deals from legitimate , and honest sellers and distributors if you take the necessary precautions.

I got mine sorta off of eBay. The guy had massive feedback and was offering both academic and non-academic versions at decent prices. I wanted a non-academic version to keep the door open further down the road. I checked into the seller as well as I could - turned out he had a site too.

He answered all my questions and assured me that what he was offering was the real thing. I paid by credit card to give me some additional protection (you can see what a trusting soul I am can't ya??). "Da Merchandise" arrived in sealed, retail boxes, with registration cards, ID's, the whole bit. I installed, registered and have had no issues with upgrades etc.

eBay drives me back to B&M stores these days - I think it's time has come and gone.

I was considering bidding on the SF/Acid bundle, but not for $100. I was hoping it would stay around $60.

I got a reply back from the SF/Acid bundle guy too and he said they were the originals disks as pictured in the auction. He claims they were from a magazine review. I’m not sure that’s exactly legal if the review copy was gratis. The reason I didn’t bid on that particular item was because the Acid Pro 4.0 one that I did buy had a Buy It Now price of $85 and I had just lost an auction where I bid $100 for the same thing and got outbid so I figures $85 was a deal I couldn’t pass up.

My seller just emailed me and said he would ship tomorrow. I used PayPal because it uses my credit card and if I never received anything I could just dispute the charges and not be liable. PayPal also has a buyer protection option for an extra $5 but I thought that was redundant since I was already using a credit card.

My first accessory for Acid Pro will be this cool replica air gutar. ;-) (you gotta love this guy)

~jr

Hate to sound dumb, but what is a key generator?

If it gives you a number, don't you have to register these programs multiple time to get them to work with all features.

It basicly gives you a key (serial number, etc) that enables you to use a certain product w/o purchasing it. An example would be a keygen for the game Quake 3. Quake 3 has millions of possible keys that could be entered in. Only certain ones will work, and only a fraction of those will work after they are registered wit the id master server.

.........I used PayPal because it uses my credit card and if I never received anything I could just dispute the charges and not be liable.

Better make sure your credit card covers online auction purchases and/or purchases made from a vendor more than 50 miles fron your home.

I got burnt with the 50 miles thing on an ebay rip off to 150.00 of bootlegged software.

Good point. This credit card actually started out as an Internet Credit card! It was something the bank was testing. It has no magnetic strip on the back so it can’t be used in stores. It is only for on-line purchases and you have 100% guaranteed protection against fraud. Last year the bank converted it to a regular credit card with a magnetic strip and so I called them immediately to ask if on-line purchases were still 100% protected and they said they were. I should probably call again just to be sure because policies do change over time. I’ve never heard of the 50 mile thing. Wow.

~jr