You described what I don't like about it. I only shop online for new items, and most of the times I'm shopping for electronics. There are never any deals for auctions anymore. When I first used ebay, you could find deals, but now, as you say, the auctions either go up to, or way over the price you can find the products for elsewhere. Pricegrabber or any other price search engine, for that matter, will always have a lower price, and with a store I don't have to wait 3 days just to find out somebody outbid me with 5 seconds left, and in the process paid $10 over retail for it.

That's why I dislike it, anyway. That and Paypal blows.