I used to us F&F mainly because I didn’t want the buyer to claim any reason to return the item. There is so much corruption on the buyers side. I always use signature required and I’ve had multiple buyers claim they never got the piece, but when I checked the shipper, the buyer did indeed sign for it, and when I told them they signed for it, they dropped the claim. I once sold a vintage piece to someone where I sent him a video of it working before I shipped it out. When he got it, he said it didn’t work. I told him to send it back, but I made a change inside and if the item was not the exact piece with my hidden signature, he would not get his money back. The reason I did this is because people would swap the new working internal pieces with a piece they already own that didn’t work, so when they claim it doesn’t work thru PayPal, you get back a non-working unit and the buyer gets his money back. Plus I found out that when you ship overseas, signature and tracking doesn’t work, so if the buyer receives the product but claims to PayPal that they never received it, the seller is screwed. There are other horror stories, so now I only sell using wired funds. I have a good reputation so the buyer isn’t worried as much. If I buy something, especially an expensive piece, I’ll buy new from a dealer or a manufacturer, or a few times, buy new pieces from a dealer at an audio show with a good discount, up to 50% off.
Same goes for a car, when I’m spending $200k+ for a car, I go check out the car in person (I would never buy sight unseen) and wire the funds to the dealer.