No, you might get a used or not working one.

It all depends on who you are dealing with. If you are dealing with a reputable company that it is quite safe to buy electronics on line. I bought all of my current computer equipment and much of my past equipment online. Out of all of those purchases, I have only had one problem with one of the mail order companies. (I have had a few other problems, but those were problems with a lack of support by the manufacturers that I would have had regardless of from whom I bought the products.) On the other hand, I have bought a number of things from people on eBay. This has been more of a hit or miss proposition. However, those eBay purchases that were problematic were primarily attempts to upgrade capabilities of obsolete computers and I knew that I had no guarantees that the components would work. You do need to be careful with online auctions. Look at the sellers ratings. Those that have a lot of positive ratings are probably safe. They have reputations to protect if they want to stay in business. Those that have few ratings may be fly-by-night operations or just people trying to get started. Either way they haven't yet earned trust. So you need to be more careful with them. So, I would say that when dealing we reputable companies you are about as safe shopping online as you are going into a traditional brick and mortar store. If you are thinking about online auctions, then you need to be more careful about what you are buying and from whom you are buying.

Depends on where you shop. I've purchased a PVR, a video camara and most recently, a dvd duplicator through online merchants. Haven't had a problem yet.

With eBay (or any other online) auctions, you also need to watch out for deals that sound too good to be true, because often they are, and also watch out for auctions in which the other items the seller usually sells, aren't electronics--it's not uncommon for a thief to hijack someone else's eBay account (eBay's security is practically nonexistent), to post auctions for things, get your money, and you never hear from them again. In the past few months, for example, I've seen eBay auctions for expensive Mac models, supposedly being sold by sellers who normally sell things like jewelry. The items were top of the line, with various weird things about method of payment, method of contacting the seller, etc. ("don't contact me at the email address in my eBay profile"), all of which were tipoffs that these auctions were fraudulent. eBay has some useful tutorials about how to spot fake auctions, and they request that you notify eBay if you see an auction that looks suspicious. They'll yank the auction before it concludes, if they hear about it soon enough.

I would only buy direct from the manufacturer or a large reatail store (Best Buy, Circuit City, etc)only because I know they are legitimate. I worked in a fraud department of a credit card company for 9 years. What we saw were criminal rings that would purchase electronics with stolen card #'s and then ship them to places like the Philippenes, Africa, etc. The people receiving the electronics would set up web sites selling these items. So not only did they get the merchandise for free, but they were getting money for these items. The web sites looked legit and real hi-tech. These criminals then had access to thousands more credit card #'s that thet could use in the future to obtain more stolen merchandise. Be careful!

unityelectronics.com has always done me right!