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Warning About Guitar Purchases Online


LucSulla

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16 hours ago, crunchee said:

Reminds me of my asking a seller some questions about his listing on Reverb last week...he had his guitar listed originally for $1400 for a couple of months, then down to $700...after I asked my questions, the price shot up to $1150, then a few days later down to $800, until today where it's at $850.  Guy's name oughta be Marjorie Daw, with all that See-Sawin' going on.  <_<

An acquaintance was trying to sell his boat quick, to finance the purchase of another boat, he listed it cheap, to which he received only low ball offers.  He was forced to take out a loan to buy his new boat.  With the pressure to sell fast over, he listed the old boat high and sold it for that no questions asked.   Perhaps his initial low price scared off buyers? 

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   Some 10 years ago bought Les Paul Custom on ebay, seller sent it express and provided tracking. Couldn't be more happier. But was really surprised, when USPS guy appeared at my door and gave me an express envelope...Just an envelope. There was a note inside thou, it read "Thank you". Stupid prick forgot that the envelope weights only a few ounces. So went to the post office, had them confirm that it was an envelope, then contacted PP and got my money back in no time. Good thing was, at that time I was buying shit loads of musical equipment and had personal adviser with PP who took care of it in the matter on minutes.
     The only loss I had was in the beginning of ebay, when PP was called X.com and ebay still accepted Money Orders. Got Soldano SP33, sent money order and received nothing. Requested MO trace, got the copy of it and on the copy, where recipient had to write something, it read "Have a nice summer" ( still have that copy somewhere). Dude had balls and a sense of humor too, got to give it to him, but $400 wasn't worth getting on a plane and sticking some flat head screwdriver into his ear.
   Much worse thing happened to a friend of mine, who sold $6K guitar to some guy in Hong Kong and after a while left for the 2 weeks hike in the mountains. The guys gets the guitar and was not happy. So he writes a message. Obviously, with no internet my friend never checks it. Buyer opens dispute and since there was no respond in the dispute, buyer wins the case and by PP/ebay rules is getting the money back and does not have to ship the item back. That's your worst nightmare. Nothing helped to reverse that decision. After 6 months that story did have a happy ending, but it involved 2 round trip tickets to HK..the owner of that guitar was a pretty serious dude.

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20 hours ago, crunchee said:

Reminds me of my asking a seller some questions about his listing on Reverb last week...he had his guitar listed originally for $1400 for a couple of months, then down to $700...after I asked my questions, the price shot up to $1150, then a few days later down to $800, until today where it's at $850.  Guy's name oughta be Marjorie Daw, with all that See-Sawin' going on.  <_<

As of today, it's at $950.  :huh:

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1 hour ago, JustKid said:

   Some 10 years ago bought Les Paul Custom on ebay, seller sent it express and provided tracking. Couldn't be more happier. But was really surprised, when USPS guy appeared at my door and gave me an express envelope...Just an envelope. There was a note inside thou, it read "Thank you". Stupid prick forgot that the envelope weights only a few ounces. So went to the post office, had them confirm that it was an envelope, then contacted PP and got my money back in no time. Good thing was, at that time I was buying shit loads of musical equipment and had personal adviser with PP who took care of it in the matter on minutes.
     

I need to call PayPal tomorrow and make sure they add that the package only weighed .3 lbs according to UPS to the claim. 

I'm about 90% sure who it was.  I found her on Facebook.  GIve me a few data points, and I can find your ass usually if I really want to.  Unfortunately, she lives in the Philippines, which also happens to be the second scam someone has tried to run on me out there.  I guess, unfortunately, it wasn't just tried the second time.  

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5 hours ago, LucSulla said:

  Unfortunately, she lives in the Philippines, which also happens to be the second scam someone has tried to run on me out there. 

Hm...I was planning to buy a guitar from a guy from South Africa. we are in the talks last several days. Thinking now...

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The only place I'd buy used on the web these days is here or from Guitar Center. Here because I trust the people. Guitar Center because I can get it delivered to the local store where I can unbox it and check it out right there with them looking on. That way, we can resolve things when something ain't right.

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2 hours ago, JustKid said:

Hm...I was planning to buy a guitar from a guy from South Africa. we are in the talks last several days. Thinking now...

Lol, to be clear, I didn't know she lived in the Philippines or was a she when I bought it.  I thought I was buying it from a guy name Perry in New York.

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3 hours ago, LucSulla said:

Lol, to be clear, I didn't know she lived in the Philippines or was a she when I bought it.  I thought I was buying it from a guy name Perry in New York.

Perry's Gear Garage?  Love that place...  ;) 

Jokes aside, when you look up the tracking number, doesn't it show you the address it's going to?

 

Edit:  p.s.  I hope you get a swift and successful resolution to this.

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5 hours ago, sixesandsevens said:

Perry's Gear Garage?  Love that place...  ;) 

Jokes aside, when you look up the tracking number, doesn't it show you the address it's going to?

 

Edit:  p.s.  I hope you get a swift and successful resolution to this.

Only if it is going to your address. Otherwise, it just tells you the zip code and city.  

If you have a shipping profile with UPS or FedEx, you can login and see if it is going to your address.  If it's not going to your address, it won't say where it was going, you'll just have problems pulling up delivery options.  UPS wouldn't even tell PayPal where it went when they called, just that it didn't go here.  

Now could I have put together something was wrong earlier?  Probably, though after around 100 transactions on Reverb, you can probably understand why I didn't log in and go through the shipping info when I saw the city was right.   Also, it's still somewhat easy to overlook if, like me, you're used to UPS and Fedex being wonky about what it will and won't let you see and do based on how the seller set up shipment.  Yeah, I should have known, but it was real easy to miss all of this when it's all ultimately been cool every time in the past. 

But even if I had, and I had called UPS about it and then PayPal, noting the incorrect address and the shipping weight, I'd still be here.  Pretty much from the moment I paid the seller, I was stuck having to deal with all of this.  It was up to me to get PayPal to contact UPS and get them to look and see the shipping weight is completely fucked.  I would have still been stuck waiting at least 10 days while they let the "seller" have an opportunity to respond, probably after it was delivered at that. 

I wonder if I had paid through Reverb if it would have been a similar situation.  Something tells me it wouldn't have been any better. 

Long story short - don't trust Reverb or PayPal too much.  Reverb could make this a little harder if they required a user to confirm who they are and that their name at Reverb match their PayPal account.  There are ways to do that. They aren't full proof either, but they at least make it a bit harder.  Most of these overseas scams aren't particularly sophisticated.  They find a weak point to exploit and do so until it's fixed and moving on to the next site.  

It shouldn't be hard for a marketplace actually interested in doing so to have rules in place that trigger something when a user based in the United States has linked to an overseas PayPal account with a different name.   At the very least, there should be a notice to the buyer BEFORE they complete the transaction that the names and addresses don't match. You don't know that until you pay, and by then, it's too late. 


 

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It shouldn't be hard for a marketplace actually interested in doing so to have rules in place that trigger something when a user based in the United States has linked to an overseas PayPal account with a different name.   At the very least, there should be a notice to the buyer BEFORE they complete the transaction that the names and addresses don't match. You don't know that until you pay, and by then, it's too late. 
                                                                                      That would be great,there SHOULD be a OH! OH! alarm when things don't line up so to speak,to protect the customers that use those sites.......................one would think! I have been very lucky with buying and selling,and like I mention it has been years since I've sold anything on Ebay, just too many scam artists in the world these days. Will you be able to recover your $$$$ at some point?

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There responses largely sound like they aren't doing anything about PayPal because they want to funnel people into using Reverb Pay.  

Last response:
 

Quote

We have taken steps to prevent PayPal to PayPal transactions like this one by offering Reverb Payments in more countries and removing the option for new US sellers to sell through PayPal exclusively. For now, I recommend avoiding PayPal only sellers and this way you know you have full coverage through us. If you would like more information on our Buyer Protection, feel free to check out our page here.

Thanks again for your patience.


Like I say, they could do the last thing I mentioned as well if they wanted to help shore up PayPal transactions.  Sorry for being cynical, but my guess is they want a degree of uncertainty with PayPal.  They don't dare cut PayPal users off outright because it would be too much revenue lost, but if they can make it a little more uncomfortable...

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Seems like a couple months ago I read that Etsy had bought Reverb? IIRC the general consensus at the time was that Reverb would be going to the crapper. Looks like all those negative nellies were right.

Bummer for sure.

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PayPal made me whole today.  Seller used two different tracking numbers, one of which was an Oxford delivery the same day the order was marked shipped on Reverb.  The one I had was the Monday delivery.  Gave them those numbers.  

What clinched it was the lack of a signature requirement.  

Final thoughts:

  1. Fuck Reverb deep in the pink part. 
  2. PayPal actually has really good customer service and made good on their protection, but it still came down to the lack of that required signature to make it happen as smoothly as it did. 
  3. Be careful. This buyer protection stuff is not as ironclad, and yes, Etsy is running Reverb quite a bit differently. They are clearly trying to push people over from PayPal into their own transaction gateway and really won't do much for their PayPal customers.
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Update:  This actually must have kicked said scammer in the sack. All the sudden I'm getting emails:

"Hi sir, good day!

I'm Richard Dickinson's Virtual Assistant. Did you receive the item already? He's currently not replying to me.
 
Regards"

Fucker can't even keep his or her fake names straight.  The invoice was to a Perry Gonzales.  The PayPal account was to a Mary Theresse Pregon, who is apparently a "virtual assistant" to a Richard Dickinson.  

😂
 
Sucks to be you, asshole.  I hope you got overextended and someone takes a toe, you damned thief. 
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So??? Are you going to get your money back?? Unless I missed something(I’m on daily narcotics for pain) Paypal know’s it was a scam but did their insurance pony up??

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On 2/11/2020 at 3:34 AM, LucSulla said:

Lol, to be clear, I didn't know she lived in the Philippines or was a she when I bought it.  I thought I was buying it from a guy name Perry in New York.

Well in the Philippines Perry could be a “girl”.  😏

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