I have no problem with buying online as long as I can know that what I got was good. But frankly that means I`ll be scheduling a maintainer course MINIMUM before I dream of buying something off of ebay if it has a life support function. But for other items like knives, books, fins and such. As long as I can verify sizes and such, why should I pay a higher price. There are ways for dive shops to capitalize off of this. For one thing, they can sell online. Go through the ebay listings and see how many have a link back to a shop.