SAFEST way to pay for ebay stuff?
 

There is a guy on ebay with no feedback and the symbol that means he is "new". How do I pay for it and cover my a$$ in case he's not too legit?

Paypal is always a good choice and use a credit card through them so you can dispute if needed.

COD through UPS ? Pay after inspection.

Seller designates payment options. I would never ship to a COD buyer.

I agree with Paypal using a credit card. They refunded me before. Get his phone No. and call him to confirm before and make sure he give you a tracking number.

PayPal, by far, is them most consumer friendly payment means. Don't shy away from some vendors that don't want to use PayPal though. If you have a high volume, low profit auctions going on, PP markup can really eat into profits.

I got clipped for 75 bucks on an E-Gay deal once. The seller would not accpet Pay Pal. I wasn't thinking at the time and paid using western union (Bid-Pay) Big NO-NO...Even though I used my Visa Check card to pay western union neither my bank or western union would do anything..or ebay but I knkew it wasn't their problem to start with. All they can do and DID do was to terminate the seller's account. I figure they signed back up the next day with a new ID. I was just glad it was only 75 bucks.

In person in small unmarked bills?

Don't buy from a zero sales guy no matter how tempting - unless its so cheap you dont mind losing the money.
People with 100 percent records with a number of different buyers are the ones to buy from.

Also useful is this which checks if the people are scamming by building up each others feedback fraudulently...
http://www.toolhaus.org/cgi-bin/negs

100%ers are hard to come by. I have only one negative out of 91 feedbacks. The negative was from a dick that retaliated. He subsequently lost his Ebay registration.

Paypal by CC. If UPS COD the driver will not let you see inside until you pays da man