Warning to people who buy on Reverb.com

Voxman

Worrying stuff to be sure. I've not bought anything off reverb yet (Well, apart from a couple of  clip on tuners) but this thread has certainly put me off buying anything major through them. It would certainly be good to hear from our Reverb contact on all this.

hyperben

Voxman said:

Worrying stuff to be sure. I've not bought anything off reverb yet (Well, apart from a couple of  clip on tuners) but this thread has certainly put me off buying anything major through them. It would certainly be good to hear from our Reverb contact on all this.

Yes I agree. Certainly not so long ago the PayPal side of things wasn’t like this - you did used to pay the seller directly on Reverb if you paid with PayPal. They’ve only changed it fairly recently. Just hypothesising but I assume they changed it because being a third party as a go between means they end up with a huge pool of people’s money. If they wait a few days to payout the sellers they probably have a pot with £100,000s in it, maybe more. They would be able to make money from having a lot of capital stored in transit between buyers and sellers.

fandango

fandango said:

For the record, I've sold a number of things on Reverb without any problem. I wont touch Fleabay to sell. Too many chancers and bad eggs, who are now sullying the waters of Reverb. Sigh.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts: caveat emptor and buyer’s remorse. More of the former, and less of the latter, please.

I should have mentioned that I don’t accept paypal when listing on Reverb, but use Reverb Payments instead. I also clearly state on my policies that I don’t accept returns (except on new items, however as I don’t sell new items, it’s basically no returns as a default.

Never had a deal go wrong on Reverb, so please stop slagging them off. And no I’m not an employee, just a happy user of Reverb.

hyperben

fandango said:

fandango said:

For the record, I've sold a number of things on Reverb without any problem. I wont touch Fleabay to sell. Too many chancers and bad eggs, who are now sullying the waters of Reverb. Sigh.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts: caveat emptor and buyer’s remorse. More of the former, and less of the latter, please.

I should have mentioned that I don’t accept paypal when listing on Reverb, but use Reverb Payments instead. I also clearly state on my policies that I don’t accept returns (except on new items, however as I don’t sell new items, it’s basically no returns as a default.

Never had a deal go wrong on Reverb, so please stop slagging them off. And no I’m not an employee, just a happy user of Reverb.

I’m not slagging them off - just reporting factually on a personal experience. You can deduce your own opinions. When a seller misadvertises something, either intentionally or not, the buyer should be covered. This is especially important for sellers who do not accept returns.

TeleMaster

fandango said:

fandango said:

For the record, I've sold a number of things on Reverb without any problem. I wont touch Fleabay to sell. Too many chancers and bad eggs, who are now sullying the waters of Reverb. Sigh.

I’ll leave you with two thoughts: caveat emptor and buyer’s remorse. More of the former, and less of the latter, please.

I should have mentioned that I don’t accept paypal when listing on Reverb, but use Reverb Payments instead. I also clearly state on my policies that I don’t accept returns (except on new items, however as I don’t sell new items, it’s basically no returns as a default.

Never had a deal go wrong on Reverb, so please stop slagging them off. And no I’m not an employee, just a happy user of Reverb.

So because you’ve never had a deal go wrong, someone shouldn’t inform others of a massive flaw in the system, just because you don’t want them to?

That seems a little bit ridiculous in my book. People should be informed of potential issues with a service so they can decide whether to use it or not. 

Philtre

fandango said:

Never had a deal go wrong on Reverb, so please stop slagging them off. And no I’m not an employee, just a happy user of Reverb.

What is it with these Reverb threads? People have legitimate complaints and give reasonable details about their problems and suddenly it's "slagging them off". FFS.

If you want to hear someone "slagging off" Reverb, I'll bite - Reverb sucks. OK? (And so does eBay. And football).

Carry on... ;-)

meltedbuzzbox

So forum knowledge now dictates that you shouldn't use eBay because of the fees and dodgy buyers/sellers.
Reverb because if it's interesting third party selling rule (and desire to perform identity theft according to one member).
Gumtree can't be used because it's full of scammers.
The classifieds here are full of chancers/people won't post/tired of low ball offers/insert reason here.
So in short, don't buy or sell

hyperben

meltedbuzzbox said:

So forum knowledge now dictates that you shouldn't use eBay because of the fees and dodgy buyers/sellers.
Reverb because if it's interesting third party selling rule (and desire to perform identity theft according to one member).
Gumtree can't be used because it's full of scammers.
The classifieds here are full of chancers/people won't post/tired of low ball offers/insert reason here.
So in short, don't buy or sell

Well not really. I think you might’ve missed the point. It’s just nice to know the rules of the game before you play.

designerseye88

Yeah that's put me off Reverb. I'll stick to bricks and mortar 

matt1973

I've only bought one thing off Reverb and it was very poorly described by the seller who was pretty darn unapologetic about his inaccuracies. I suppose it wasn't directly Reverb's fault and it could be an uncommon experience that both I and @hyperben share. However, this apparent lack of buyer protection must surely be attractive to substandard sellers. I was originally quite relieved to see some serious competition for eBay but cannot help but feel somewhat let down by what I've experiences and heard about Reverb.

There is however one site that has never let me down on the buying/trading stakes. Keep up the good work Fretboard admins!

Alnico

These reflections don't sound very good ...

NelsonP

TeleMaster said:

KrisGee said:

Now I wish I read this thread before ordering a fender strat from France yesterday afternoon, my first purchase on reverb, apart from a £2 clip on tuner offer we all fell for.
Hope it all works out for ya, I believe you're still in good hands cuz you've paid with paypal, regardless of reverb being bad or good.

That tuner is the worst tuner I’ve ever used. 

That tuner is not a tuner!

Legionreturns

NelsonP said:

TeleMaster said:

KrisGee said:

Now I wish I read this thread before ordering a fender strat from France yesterday afternoon, my first purchase on reverb, apart from a £2 clip on tuner offer we all fell for.
Hope it all works out for ya, I believe you're still in good hands cuz you've paid with paypal, regardless of reverb being bad or good.

That tuner is the worst tuner I’ve ever used. 

That tuner is not a tuner!

I've only kept mine to remind me never to buy anything other than a polytune again. 

Utter dog shit! 

Hydra19

I'm not slagging Reverb off either, maybe my comments weren't complimentary but I have always said that I would still use Reverb, and I recently also sold a guitar on there, no problems. My feeling is that they are a smaller organisation than Ebay and even though they're not that recent, maybe they're having some teething problems that will hopefully be sorted out in the future.

I know myself I wouldn't be able to resist buying a guitar from there if I wanted to, and they have good gear on there so I hope they sort their issues out but I'm not looking for them to stop doing business. 

All I ever said was to be careful, and that there were some dodgy sellers on Reverb, which does not make the site itself dodgy. I was a bit surprised to read about other people's experiences, but all in all, I still like the fact that Reverb exists. I mainly bought pedals on there, but I did once buy an amazing Navigator Stratocaster for a good price, saved on VAT since I had it shipped to the states, brought back into the UK in a suitcase, and it is my best guitar so that was a great experience, and I would repeat it again (with paypal buyer protection). Funny thing was that guitar did get lost by USPS for 2-3 days, seller couldn't locate it either and refunded me my money, guitar came the next day, and I contacted the seller to pay them back immediately. So I can't deny it hasn't been all bad, but this was a Japanese guitar store I was dealing with.

And the last time I had an issue with a seller over there, it was sorted out in the end between us but Reverb put £10 credit on my account for my experience so the CS will listen and do what they can to sort out any problems. 

SimpleSimon

Im also done with Reverb, too many bad selling and buying practices/idiosyncracies for me. Looks like its ebay and the classifieds for me.

FastEddie

Has anyone spelt out the flaws to Reverb?
I would be surprised if they ignored measured and well written feedback from consumers.

There will always be flaws in any system. Conmen/women will always find them. I've been ripped-off on Ebay and they flipped me the bird. 

No platform is water tight.

Voxman

Legionreturns said:

NelsonP said:

TeleMaster said:

KrisGee said:

Now I wish I read this thread before ordering a fender strat from France yesterday afternoon, my first purchase on reverb, apart from a £2 clip on tuner offer we all fell for.
Hope it all works out for ya, I believe you're still in good hands cuz you've paid with paypal, regardless of reverb being bad or good.

That tuner is the worst tuner I’ve ever used. 

That tuner is not a tuner!

I've only kept mine to remind me never to buy anything other than a polytune again. 

Utter dog shit! 

Actually I'm quite impressed with mine which works really well. 

Hick81

Every secondhand selling platform has flaws - that is the risk/downside to buying secondhand. A risk/downside most people (myself included) are willing to take to get gear 30% ish cheaper than buying in shops. 

I think the OG was just pointing to some not so obvious nuances people buying on Reverb might be unaware of, so cheers for that. 

Jimbro66

There have been two or three threads of this nature recently so it's disappointing that @iain.reverb hasn't made an appearance to perhaps explain a few things and put folks minds at rest. However, he has not made any contribution to the forum since last September whereas he previously chipped in from time to time with help and advice. Perhaps he is no longer associated with Reverb UK or did he decide to have no further interaction here for some reason?

With so many members here now having reservations about using what previously looked like an appealing alternative to eBay/Gumtree it really would help to have a Reverb representative clarifying a few matters and perhaps offering to intervene where members are having frustrating issues.

rlw

Just to add, I had a problem with getting my cash out of reverb simply because they applied conditions after the transaction.  Had they been clearer that this might happen, or had those conditions been imposed before I started selling on reverb, I would have had no problem whatsover with complying.

I think their customer care side could try a bit harder but, essentially,  I like the idea and I will continue to use the site.  FWIW, I've sold seven guitars with transactions valued at almost eight thousand pounds that all proceeded without any problem.

I would much prefer to sell here but Fretboarders do seem to have an idea of a thing's worth which may differ from that held by the wider population.