has anyone bought a cell phone on ebay?
 

i hate my current cingular cell phone, but my annual contract isn't up so i can't switch it. i heard that you can buy a phone on ebay and just switch the smart chips.

has anyone done this? what should i look for or beware of?

thanks.

Never bought a phone on eBay, but I wouldn't pay a whole lot more for an unlocked phone than for a locked, since unlocking phones is really easy (especially nokias, which, I think, are the best phones out there, probably after Samsung, since I don't like flip phones).

I bought my Motorola V400 on Ebay. It was $200, unlocked and has worked perfectly. It was expensive but I had the cheap free Nokia phone and I wanted to color/camera phone with polyphonic ringtones. The biggest thing to watch out for is whether or not the phone is unlocked and whether or not it is new, "like-new", or used.

A friend of mine has bought 3 different phones off ebay without issues. 1 was an unlocked phone and the other 2 were sprint phones.

I kinda got hosed on a phone I bought off of ebay. I bought it, but didn't check into the ID of it to make sure it wasn't reported as lost/stolen. Sure enough, when I got it, I couldn't activate it because of it's lost/stolen status. If you do buy one, make sure that you ask the seller for the ID to be sure you will be able to activate it.

My roommate and I just bought Cingular phones off ebay. Her's is great; but for mine I stupidly assumed that if it worked with AT&T it would work with Cingular, it does not. Phonescoop.com seemed like a good place to check out user reviews of all sorts of phones. Also watch the shipping, some people were charging like $20, which seemed ridiculous.