Hate to pile to a 5 page thread, but I have had the same problem. I would ship to addresses in this one town, and when the item arrived it was always broken. These items were only shipped about 100mi from my house. I have had the same items go to Puerto Rico, New York, & Florida and they arrive fine. I started keeping track of the returns, and I found that 3 of them were from what I suspected to be the same buyer; he was using 3 different profiles. I block that buyer each time he changes profiles. Now I just look out for shipping to certain address in Fremont, CA and bad grammar in the instructions from the buyer, and I know I have my guy. The worst part is, just like the rest of you, Ebay always sides with him. A few times I have accepted the return, and the parts work fine; ebay still refunds them. In some cases he will wait till the 29th day and start the return. it seems like a lot of work for a 12$ hard drive, but I guess that's what he does. Funny though, that same effort devoted to anything else would make at least minimum wage