Tried to make a deal outside Reverb

mystixboi1

mystixboi1

Kick Henry Jackassowski
So I had a piece of gear on reverb for $1225 plus $25 to ship. Someone had contacted me and said that they would send me $1200 via PayPal gift if I sold it to him outside reverb. I agreed.

Reverb contacted me today saying that they saw I did the transaction outside reverb. They did this by going through my messages. They are now charging me their fee.

I guess, in the end they should collect a fee since the Buyer my listing and make me an offer through their site.

They are now going to send me an invoice for the 3%. I have done this through eBay a few times and nothing ever happened.

I guess I learned my lesson.
 
Sounds fair enough.

Their reaction could have been much more substantial, i.e. account suspension or restriction.

I'm actually surprised that they were fairly cool about it.
 
Draconian.

The thing that rubs me wrong most about Reverb is that Chicago Music Exchange uses it to buy from individuals, charges them the 3% sellers fee, and then jacks up the price for the same item once in their possession.

OTOH, I've bought a couple of pedals on the site now for reasonable prices. So I guess I'm part of the problem. :embarrassed:
 
@mystixboi1, I gotta agree with Reverb, although it sucks that they dredged through messages to find out.

About a month ago I actually refused a request for a deal outside of "the system" - not because I thought they would catch me, but 1) I thought it was the fair thing to do, and 2) accepting a Paypal gift without an actual transaction logged in the Paypal system could leave either party open to getting screwed.

FWIW, I would NEVER do a Paypal gift for something more than like 100 bucks unless the other person was unwaveringly trustworthy.
 
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I can't fault Reverb for this. Not only is it their business model, but it helps prevent people who use side deals to spot suckers to run scams on.
 
baimun said:
And Reverb is WAY more fair than the big E.
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I can tell you aren't a New Englander.
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I had a guy wanting to do a deal outside of reverb. I told him no. It's not a good way to operate. If you use Reverb to sell, why not give them the small percentage that they ask for?

Why would a buyer ask for a deal outside of reverb? Makes no sense, except that the guy that wanted me to do it also wanted the 3% off the price.
 
seems fair to me :shrug:

I don't think you can expect privacy on their site with messages while trying to avoid paying them the fees you agreed to pay when they brought you a buyer.
 
Fwiw, I doubt they have a pair of eyes reading your messages. It's probably an automated script that scans for keywords and phrases, which then flags messages for further review by a human. I'm sure it's probable that some private sales still slip through the cracks.

While I find this perfectly reasonable (the sale would not have been made without reverb, and they deserve to get paid), I wonder how they can assess a fee without knowing for certain how much the actual sale was for (they don't have access to paypal records). I would think the punishment could legally only be limited to suspending you from their site. And, please don't think I'm advocating contesting it - just thinking out loud!
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
Draconian.

The thing that rubs me wrong most about Reverb is that Chicago Music Exchange uses it to buy from individuals, charges them the 3% sellers fee, and then jacks up the price for the same item once in their possession.

OTOH, I've bought a couple of pedals on the site now for reasonable prices. So I guess I'm part of the problem. :embarrassed:
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And I've sold them about 3 guitars. :embarrassed:
 
Help!I'maRock! said:
The thing that rubs me wrong most about Reverb is that Chicago Music Exchange uses it to buy from individuals, charges them the 3% sellers fee, and then jacks up the price for the same item once in their possession.
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I don't really have a problem with it at all......CME doesn't really hide the fact that they're behind Reverb & since the whole intent was to create a platform to essentially replace ebay & gbase, I can totally understand how they didn't want to brand it w/ CME and limit the appeal. Buyers and sellers willingly accept their respective transactions. It's not really different than trading in a guitar or selling to your local shop; they are going to mark everything up for resale. Just because they happen to be they buyer, I don't see any obligation to knock off the 3.5% that the seller always knew they'd have to forgo.
 
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