Buying medical equipment for your imaging center can be a big hassle. The equipment is EXPENSIVE — tens of thousands of dollars — and just the buying process can take up hours of your time. You may be thinking that the solution is to go cheap, fast, and easy on eBay. You can buy EVERYTHING ON EBAY NOW! And you should — YOU SHOULD! Here are the top reasons why eBay is the EASIEST way to buy a C-arm….
1 - Don’t waste time on an inspection. In fact, when you buy a C-Arm on eBay, you can’t inspect what you’re buying. The byline of most eBay medical equipment sellers is: “‘What is pictured is what is sold.’
2 - What you see is what you get — you’ve got a picture of it! It certainly LOOKS like a C-Arm. But does it look like a WORKING C-Arm….?
3- You don’t have to waste time reading the fine print on a warranty or service contract. Because when you buy a C-Arm on eBay, you don’t get a warranty of any kind.
4 - Ditto on those pesky SPECS —When someone is selling a C-Arm on eBay, they leave out important information — the things that aren’t immediately apparent in a photograph, like software levels and diagnostic features. (i.e. Vascular vs. Non Vascular).
5 - You don’t have to worry about shipping — in fact, the person you’re buying the machine from isn’t going to worry about it either. Even if the C-Arm does actually function before it’s shipped, unless it’s packed and transported by movers who specialize in medical imaging devices—and adequately insured—it could arrive on your doorstep damaged, and you’ve got no way to make a claim.
6 - And then there’s the hassle of getting the C-Arm from your doorstep and into your exam or OR room. Maybe you have a great receptionist who could just shuffle that 800 pound baby into the room. Hate to burst your bubble but the system needs to be installed and calibrated by a trained service technician. EBay sellers generally don’t install and calibrate — much less care about how it actually gets from the truck into your building.
7 - Let’s say you’re lucky enough to get the system into your facility — undamaged — and you can find someone to install it. (Maybe your wife’s great uncle Harry from Chicago knows a guy….?) Buying from eBay gives you another fun opportunity — hiring someone to train your staff in how to use it.
8 - Do you hate paperwork? Heck yeah, we all do. But not as much as you eBay seller — he’s not going to file your FDA Form 2579, or register your system with your state Department of Health. PaperworkSchmaperwork, right? Your state inspector will TOTALLY dig this — and the hefty fines he’ll levy on your practice.
9 - If you don’t worry about your state Department of Health, you’re definitely too chill to sweat a HIPPA violation — so just don’t worry about all those old patient records from previous users that are floating around on your c-arm’s hard drive. Your eBay seller didn’t delete them, but we’re not going to tell anyone.
10 - Since your eBay C-arm is, at this point, unregistered and chock full of HIPPA violations, you certainly will not want it to be programmed with your facility’s information. Those crappy scans will have another clinic’s name on them — SNAP!
11 - Who ya gonna call … when you get an error message, or your X-Ray tech has a question, or the image doesn’t look so good? Certainly not your eBay seller. Once you plop your money down, you’ll never have to bother speaking to him again. Isn’t the Internet great — you just click a button and …. all the annoying people go away. Unfortunately, the helpful ones do too.
Yes — it’s easy, fast, and cheap to get a C-Arm on eBay. At first. The headaches, FDA fines, repair bills, cancelled patients, and lost revenues all come AFTER that “savvy” eBay purchase.
At Integrity Medical, we don’t sell cheap click-bait C-Arms — just ones that work.
