Anyone bought software on Ebay?

[_dobbo_]

I'm after a legit copy of photoshop, and noticed a guy selling CS for £20 - the listing says "no manual, CD and activation key only".

So I emailed the guy to ask whether it was legit and came with a certificate of authenticity and a unique activation key. His answer was suitably criptic:

ebay guy said:

hi mate everything you need is there

He's a power seller with a high feedback score, but I can't understand how he's selling over £600 worth of software for £20. I asked him this and all I got in response was the above!

Anybody have any experience of this? I suppose for that little money I can buy it and if it turns out to not be legit, just complain to the seller and if necessary ebay...

[TUS 373]

Fleabay is stuffed full of illegit software, sometimes you don't even get the disk, just a web link to download it from. I'm confident that sellers with licensed software for sale would only be too happy to point out that it was genuine. Anything else, especially with cryptic answers, is highly likely to be pirated. Ebay take a dim view of these activities and are likely to pull that auction item if it is drawn to their attention.

[omitchell]

that will almost certainly be a copy, almost all software on ebay is

[off_again]

I bought a copy of Call of Duty from eBay. Was very careful to select a real seller (he had over 16,000 positive feedback entries) and I double checked that it was un-used and a real version (for the activation key to play online).

The chap was in Thailand and the software is Thai, but obviously in English too so its fine. Got it for £16 with £4 postage which is a pretty good bargain. Completely against the terms and conditions of the distributors (not for sale outside of SE Asia) but I dont care, its a global economy and if some enterprising person wishes to take advantage of the market the fine. To be honest it almost looks like the distributors of these games (could also be software in general) are profiteering anyway....

Oh well worked fine for me. Oh, and just remembered bought the full Medal of Honor set from a UK eBayer - but again checked that it was valid and with a real license code first....

[_dobbo_]

I figure because he's a power seller with high feedback scores, if it turns out to be dodgy I'll just threaten to report him to ebay unless he gives me my money back.

I can get a dodgy copy for free from a torrent!

[rsvmilly]

Might be an OEM copy. I got an OEM copy of Norton AV dead cheap - cheaper than a years subscription to their updates.