This is always such a volatile subject - on this forum it's "never use a shock collar" and you get yelled at if you've every used one, and on the GSD forum it's "go buy a shock collar" and you get yelled at if you say "nooo, don't use shock!".
After much soul searching, I did buy a shock collar for one of my dogs a couple of years ago. I wanted a collar that gave me a wide range of control options so that I could pinpoint the lowest possible shock that gave me a reaction, and so I bought an expensive collar with 100 levels and a vibrating paging mode too. I wasn't going to use something that I couldn't adjust in tiny levels (and any collar that has less than, say, 50 levels is not that adjustable).
And I used the collar after months of research, and after more than a year of recall training on my dog. She was developing a problem where she would suddenly (sporadically) take off during off-leash play time. She'd been taught a proper recall starting at eight weeks of age (she was now 16+ months) and she knew what "come" meant, but just was so excited to explore the great unknown. Nothing I could offer her at that time was better than her urge to explore and chase moose and caribou and wascally wabbits. I put her back on a long line for months and worked on the recall, but could NOT get sufficient exercise into her when she was restricted by the long line, and she started acting out in other ways due to lack of strenuous exercise (which she normally got during off-leash race and tumble times with the other dogs).
So, after agonizing over it, I went with a shock collar because I felt she had more need for the exercise then I had need to avoid an aversive method. I didn't LIKE using it. And I studied it extensively to understand the concept of a low level stimulation that was used as a negative reinforcment (meaning that the dog responds and the stimulation stops as soon as they respond). It's still an aversive and still carries some of the punishment lable even when used as a -R, but the concept in training is a tad bit different.
You have to study your dog, understand their pain tolerances, and find the level of collar shock that makes them react in the tiniest of ways (in her case, she merely twitched one ear). And that's the level you use. The collar is irritating, I'm absolutely sure, and felt anything but good - but it wasn't the "screaming, cowering dog" level that you see some people use it with. It was an irritation bad enough that the dog wanted it to stop, but not bad enough for the dog to react in any sort of verbal or physically avoidant manner.
And yes, it worked. It allowed Khana to run and play and have a good time with her buddies, and allowed me to breathe again instead of always being fearful that she was going to take off and find a moose and get herself killed. I don't use the collar for any other training - not for heeling, sit, down, stay, competition recalls, retrieving, jumps, etc. I only used it for something that I felt was important to HER life, not to my life.
And when used in this way, I think there's some validity to the method. It isn't something that people should rush into willy-nilly without really researching and understanding the proper way to use a low level stimulation training method. If you're just planning on zapping the dog to try to stop a behavior, keep in mind that dogs easily transfer that shock to other things and it may make them fearful of things that you didn't intend them to be fearful of (like when my GSD Trick hit an electric fence while coming to me - I was on a horse at the time - and she associated that shock with me being on a horse and it took months before she'd come near me on horseback after that. WE may think we know what we're zapping them for, but they don't and they're going to associate in whatever way works in their minds at that very time. I just can't recommend any sort of punishment level shock collar training because you run such a high risk of creating worse problems.
And for whoever called e-collar training "lazy" .. well, I'll agree that the typical method of shock collar training IS lazy. Putting a collar on and then zapping the dog every time it doesn't do what you want is the epitime of laziness, to me. And just think what it does to the relationship you have with your dog. The low level stimulation was minimal enough that I maintained a high level of trust with my dog, but I've seen people who use the high zap method and those dogs do NOT trust them, regardless of what they think. They respond out of fear and not out of any sort of trust.
But - minimal use of a aversive method, thought out carefully in advance to create the least amount of stress and discomfort to the dog, and paired with high levels of positive reinforcement for when the dog does offer the behaviors you want - can be very effective as a last resort. It's not for lazy people, though, because lazy people aren't going to make the proper effort to do it carefully. And lazy people are going to use the collar for all sorts of things, instead of having it gather dust in the box 99% of the time (which is what mine does).
Over 30 performance titles on my dogs, including two UD's, three CDX's, 12 CD's, schutzhund BH, six rally titles (two RE's), and eight agility titles on my chows and GSD's, without the use of shock to train any of the behaviors, doesn't point toward laziness in training even if a shock collar is used minimally for outside behaviors.
Melanie and the gang in Alaska