Agile Tortoise
Greg Pierce’s blog
« Supreme court rulings The new guitar »
eBay saga
As I mentioned last month, I put a guitar and amp up for sale on eBay.
A month later, I think these transactions are finally concluded — but it has left me wary of using eBay as a seller in future.
The amp went for $190. Not great, not bad. I spent $80 for it, thanks to my uncles connections, sometime in the ’90s. I was hoping for $250-300, but considering it really does need some work, I’m happy with that price. The buyer was commicative, and eager to pay — but problems with PayPal delayed things. Finally, he sent a check — which I deposited immediately. I was trusting, and with a relatively small amount like that, I figured it would go through…so I shipped the amp. I then got an email from him apologizing, because he had written the check out of the wrong account — and it might bounce. It did…but, he then wired me the money the next day, so it all worked out OK. He also had me ship the amp to another address, as he had already re-sold it to someone else.
The guitar went for $2024! I was very happy about that. It’s a mid-40s Gibson, but has enough wear and finish damage that I thought it wouldn’t draw collectors value. I had paid $600 for in 1993 — but that was a steal, so I was hoping for something in the $900-1000 range.
I was a very responsive seller, and spent much time that week responding to email from potential bidders, taking additional photos, talking to a number of them on the phone, etc. An interested party actually drove here from more than an hour away to take a look at the instrument the day the bidding closed. With all these interested parties doing their homework, I was very dismayed to find that when I talked to the winning bidder on the phone after the auction, he clearly was not one of those who had done their homework and started asking me a lot of questions about the instrument.
Frankly, after the auction closed was not the time to be asking such questions. From there, it started to become clear that he was having second thoughts. He promised to send payment several times, even said he’d overnight me a check, only to not do it. He finally admitted he was disturbed to find that I wasn’t a dealer ( clearly stated in item description! ), because he wanted a money back guarantee! Couldn’t do that for him, geez.
It got a little frustrating. After 4 weeks of this, we finally came to an agreement that I’d send it COD ( money order or cashier’s check only ), and I’d pick up the shipping just to make him feel better about it. I had to quote the eBay buying and bidding policy for his benefit and threated to issue a buyer alert. He accepted delivery Friday, so that’s done — just have to wait for UPS to get the check back to me, which they appearantly take their time doing.
At any rate, I’ll still good with eBay — as I couldn’t have gotten that price for the guitar locally…but a bit more wary of the process, at least for a big ticket item.
