The other boards you mention are indeed full of weird and horrible stories. The trick seems to be in reading between the lines, and remembering that "disgruntled" folks seldom tend to tell the whole story, and conveniently leave out facts that would shed light on the truth about an individual situation.

Also remember that when someone goes to ebay with a beef, and gets quick satisfaction and courteous treatment,(it happens thousands of time a day), they are not usually inclined to go running off to a message board to crow about it.

On the other hand, if they are denied "justice" for good reason or bad, they are inclined to "vent" their beef (usually in heavily edited form), so one should always keep this in mind when viewing those boards. Things are seldom as simple as they may seem, especially when it comes to the "nattering nabobs of negativity" that call those forums home.