I have been looking at getting two small higher-end kitchen appliances - coffee grinder and coffee maker. The coffee grinder retails new for $99 everywhere - Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc. It never goes on sale. The coffee maker retails for $175 everywhere and never goes on sale. I checked eBay and the same grinder brand new "buy it now" with free shipping is $50. The same coffee maker new "buy it now" is $90 with free shipping. Are these stolen items or fakes? There are multiple listings for new items at these heavy discounts, even with highly rated sellers. How can this be? I can't imagine they are fakes, its not like there is a big market for coffee grinders or drip coffee makers.
I find Ebay to be a crapshoot for things like this. A lot of the time the big retailers (Amazon, Walmart, Best Buy, Target, etc.) have better prices than the ebay sellers, and often by quite a bit. There are times a better deal can be found on Ebay. The discounts you proclaim there are bigger than I usually see. If you suspect counterfeits or other issues, take a look at the seller, sniff out the listing, see their feedback score, see if they do a giant business (5 or 6 figure feedback count) or are a small fish or pretty much a private party without having an actual business. Read some of the feedback, particularly for the item you are shopping. If buyers say they are totally pleased with what they got, I am much assured. I've gotten a lot of good deals on ebay buying new or used. For used, you have to be more cautious, of course, use your intuition. I've gotten burned a few times but rarely. Ebay has pretty good return policies. Look at the seller's return policy for assurance that they stand behind the item, that it's not an "as is" with no returns accepted. Absent that, you usually have recourse to complain and get refunded, and in my experience I have not had to pay return shipping.
BTW, I like my
Capresso 560.01 Infinity Conical Burr Grinder, which I bought off Amazon around 3 years ago, except that it's noisy while running, but don't know that the others are significantly quieter.
For the eBay stuff....yeah...maybe gray market. I've seen a lot of refurbs direct from manufacturers and extra inventory end up there too. It could be that with all the shipping nonsense that's happened in the past year that there's extra inventory they don't want to pay to warehouse. I could see that generating opportunity for you to pick things up at wholesale just for them to move the inventory and not get stuck spending more time looking for buyers of larger lot sizes.
I bought an Xtar VC4 battery charger off ebay maybe a couple bucks cheaper than Amazon had it. It was complicated because Amazon had two listings, different price, so I wasn't sure it was the same one. I settled on the ebay listing, but now regret it because it has issues. I should have bought Amazon, but never figured it might be defective. I can use it, it's just quirky in some ways. I heard since that Xtar has been having serious QC issues. If you are nervous you might get a lemon, sticking with a retailer that will stand by the product is definitely something to consider.
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