Pet peeves when buying or selling your online

mystixboi1

mystixboi1

Kick Henry Jackassowski
I do a good amount of buying and selling of gear online... Duh...

Over the years, I've noticed a lot of different things that just absolutely rub me the wrong way when buying and selling gear. Here's one of them.

I recently had a guitar for sale online on a different website. I have a guitar up for $1300 shipped and PayPaled. Forum member from the site messaged me and said if I was negotiable on price (even though my dad said firm on price). I told him my lowest price. He then offered me $300 less than the price.

He said that he wasn't trying to lowball but told me that market price was less than what I had for. I always make sure to research online The current market value want any piece of gear before I posted. So I know exactly how much it was worth and how much I could get for it.

I just hate it when people lowball and then try to validate why the are low balling.

On the other hand, I recently purchased a guitar to guitar center where I was told that it was in show room/mint condition. The store clerk I spoke to on the phone said it was immaculate with no issues. When I received the guitar a few days later, not only did I find Dings and nicks down to the wood on the back of the guitar as well as a chunk of finish off the other backside of the guitar, it was missing wood from the neck. Literally an inch of what was missing. I texted the sales rep the pics I took. He acted surprised. Said that he didn't notice them when he went over the guitar.

I'd say that one out of every four pieces of gear that I get from guitar Center falls in this category.

How about you?
 
I no longer buy guitars online. Period.

I have sold one or two online, but really, I found it isn't worth the hassle, in my opinion. I'd rather just trade them in or sell them locally.
 
I hate when I list an item on Reverb and have the make offer available only to get some jackass offering half of what I listed it for. When I list an item on a site, I check the site to see what others are charging and I offer it for less than the lowest price on there, so it is already a good deal. When they do that, I usually counter for $20 more than I listed it for.
 
I haven't done much selling online. Selling the Ultrasound acoustic amp went ok. On a Guild acoustic, a guy wanted to trade me all sorts of stuff for it except actual money. A friend ended up buying it anyway and I felt better knowing it was going to a good home.

Buying has mostly gone well but I'm the perfect craigslist buyer. If the asking price isn't within striking distance of what it's worth to me, I don't bother. I do negotiate a little but my offer is pretty close to asking price. If the first offer isn't accepted or a reasonable counter-offer made then I'm done.

The biggest annoyance has been the sellers who want me to buy a bunch more stuff. I just need the one pedal, not the whole studio. One of these was very persistent and a little creepy. I was worried I might not get out of there without some imitation crabmeat.
 
Chad said:
I hate when I list an item on Reverb and have the make offer available only to get some jackass offering half of what I listed it for. When I list an item on a site, I check the site to see what others are charging and I offer it for less than the lowest price on there, so it is already a good deal. When they do that, I usually counter for $20 more than I listed it for.
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Yeah. This.

Or when you say for sale only and they offer you a broken Squier tele in trade for your $3000 Suhr.
 
jelloman said:
It's like I always say about the auto industry..."this job wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the customers... "
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People who list something on Craigslist for what I can buy a new one for, and include in their ad, "NO LOWBALL OFFERS". Does that mean a reasonable price would be a lowball, since they are starting so high?

...and then I see the same ad for the next 3 months cuz, nobody is going to pay that much.
 
I hate the people who pop off an email a minute after the ad goes live and claim they are ready to buy at my price, then they spend a few days dicking around with when they can meet and make the deal and then ultimately disappear. I had the SAME guy do this two me twice on different items. Must be his hobby or something.

I also hate the people who want to trade junk for my gear. I mean real junk. There is no way I am going to take two broken vacuum cleaners and a 1000 CD cases for my strat. Offering a big bag of weed is also not going to buy my gear. What kind of idiot offers drugs in a trade with a random stranger. I could be selling the strat to get an acoustic for my DEA benevolent association band.

Even worse are people who want me to be their bank or credit card. No, you can't make me payments over a year for a 300 dollar guitar. No, I'm not going to hold an item for you while you wait to get paid on Friday. No, you can't pay me half now and half when you get your insurance settlement check.
 
Tiltsta said:
I hate the people who pop off an email a minute after the ad goes live and claim they are ready to buy at my price, then they spend a few days dicking around with when they can meet and make the deal and then ultimately disappear. I had the SAME guy do this two me twice on different items. Must be his hobby or something.

I also hate the people who want to trade junk for my gear. I mean real junk. There is no way I am going to take two broken vacuum cleaners and a 1000 CD cases for my strat. Offering a big bag of weed is also not going to buy my gear. What kind of idiot offers drugs in a trade with a random stranger. I could be selling the strat to get an acoustic for my DEA benevolent association band.

Even worse are people who want me to be their bank or credit card. No, you can't make me payments over a year for a 300 dollar guitar. No, I'm not going to hold an item for you while you wait to get paid on Friday. No, you can't pay me half now and half when you get your insurance settlement check.
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Give me your strat and $10k, and my cousin who is a Nigerian prince will send you one million dollars :embarrassed:
 
Email super lowball offers, right up front.."will you take $3?" when you have something listed at $500, which is priced under value as it stands.

Guys who fail to show up for an exchange, no call or text

People who show up to an exchange with less money than agreed upon

People who don't understand "as-is" on an accurately described item
 
I tend to agree upon the price asked, if it's a reasonable price. Often, it's someone that's fallen on hard times and needs to move some gear. I would feel bad if I took advantage of that. Being a bit older, and deal with people that are nearer my children's age, I would hope that people would deal fairly with my children, and so I deal fairly with those that are selling, then I hope for the best when going to see the item. Usually this works out fine, because I only deal with people that have clear pics of thier stuff. On rare occasions, I get someone that is misrepresenting what they are selling, because their chose to hide an important issue. Then I make a choice to change my offer, or to just walk away. The annoying ones are then ones where I traveled a fairly good distance, just to fine out that it was not as represented, or that they sold it just before I got there, when they knew that I was coming from a distance. Those have been rare for me, though.

As to selling online, I prefer to deal with my local store. It's a straight forward issue, because I know they are fair. I'll just trade in gear that they have an interest in, and I have yet to do the Craigslist nightmare that sellers can go through.
 
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