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Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

33 by llllllllllllllllllll
llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Sun Jul 20, 2025 8:24 pm Anyone else getting a rash of partial refund and refund requests lately?

I take a million pictures, spend money on appropriate packing materials and charge actual shipping costs, write a million words, am careful about wild claims and conjecture and all that, but still encounter people requesting refunds now and again that I’m not sure how to handle. Or just need to vent ha.

One guy was reaching out because he wanted the original 3 prong plug that came with a preamp, which wasnt included or pictured or anything. Its the same 3-prong plug that goes on a million different types of gear and now wants $26 back because he “read somewhere it made a difference” that he didn’t have an original. Gave it to him so that I wouldn’t have to hear from him again and got good feedback, but it was not worth sweating over as much as I did.

Also have a guy who bought a part that is difficult to date - checked its features against a bunch of completed listings, websites, etc. Had every square inch of the thing photographed. When you’re listing something Reverb instructs that if a number of dates were possible, like 60s-70s, then to put that, so I did, and now I’m getting a refund request because it marched one decade and not the other.

I’m upfront about returns and am not out to screw anybody over. I also try to weed out the freaks, which I can generally sniff out quickly and have straight up given refunds just based on weird messages after they checked out, but I am also not doing this for a living and would rather keep something than send hundreds of dollars of gear back and forth through the mail.

Still, I understand that I’ve been in similar situations as the buyer, and know how it goes, but probably wasn’t always right then either.

Thoughts?
So I stood firm on this and eventually Reverb decided to:

*Honor the guys return - he gets his money back thru buyer protection
*Pay for the return themselves - I don’t have to pay back the earnings from the sale.

I don’t know what’s happening with the part, but its not my business at this point.

Guys, lesson learned: if you’re selling obscure, hard to date parts, a decade range isn’t enough to avoid a possible buyer complaint.. i am not talking about taking a Fender Strat off the wall and selling it as ‘possibly’ being from the 50s to the 90s. I am talking specifically about esoteric non-serialized stuff for which there is no generally accepted standard, even for whoever might own the name by now.

If I could do it again I might have included more of the methodology I used for the date range, but without being able to post links in your listing, I’m not sure how far that would have even gone. You’re also probably going off of the word of message board assholes at that point, and we all know that has its limits as well.

Anyways, glad I held firm, called bullshit, and backed up all my claims with sources and responded with 24 hours to all messages. Had I known all this was going to happen I would have immediately refunded the guy’s money before shipping - I will probably be one or those assholes that messages buyers with questions after they check out if I haven’t had a prior conversation about a certain item.

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

34 by llllllllllllllllllll
I’m also going to start adding language to my listings saying that I might take 2-3 business days to ship. I almost always ship next day, but am now getting a rash of assholes who think they own the rest of your day because they bought an $85 pickup from you.

There was one case last week where I gave a guy tracking at 11 pm, couldn’t make it to the post office the next day, and he was already messaging the next morning saying it had been 2 days with no movement on shipping.

I was already weirded out by his questions, which didn’t make any technical sense, and had told him before he checked out that he should reach out to the maker and buy from them directly. He didn’t want to do that, so again I’m on the hook trading messages for less than a hundred bucks, and then risking a return or poor feedback when he invariably gets the item and decides it wasn’t what he wanted.

I don’t mind returns on some things, especially if terms are worked out in advance, but parts and items that have to be installed or anything fragile that I don’t want bouncing around across the country, no thanks. I am not cosplaying as a guitar store with a royal we.

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

35 by thecr4ne
DON'T:
List an item with a Buy it Now price of $85 and block users who make offers you consider too low, having not made use of the "Decline offers below a certain amount" feature of the Best Offer service. Then when the same potential customer has to resort to using a different account to try again, and makes an offer much closer to the BIN price, also block that account and raise the Buy It Now price to $199, more than double what it was initially listed at.

What a shit seller. Kinda want to buy something else from them just to leave brutally negative feedback.

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

37 by llllllllllllllllllll
For the esoteric stuff I tend to like, local ads are mostly a waste of time. Sometimes if I was planning to be in Houston or Austin for a day I’d post an ad in advance, but it never quite worked out. Didn’t stop the weirds from sending unsolicited pictures of their own gear or whatever.

Speaking of; had to refund a guy last night because a Prunes and Custard just stopped passing effected sound. It didn’t work so that I had the drive and mix maxed and it was just a boosted guitar sound. Just pulling the listing altogether until I have time to fuck with it, but it was totally fine the other day.

Also raised prices much to some people’s chagrin because I have melting down over work and school getting so busy. For the next week or two its looking like its not worth trying to make it to the post office except for fuck you money.
thecr4ne wrote: DON'T:
List an item with a Buy it Now price of $85 and block users who make offers you consider too low, having not made use of the "Decline offers below a certain amount" feature of the Best Offer service. Then when the same potential customer has to resort to using a different account to try again, and makes an offer much closer to the BIN price, also block that account and raise the Buy It Now price to $199, more than double what it was initially listed at.

What a shit seller. Kinda want to buy something else from them just to leave brutally negative feedback.
I know this isn’t me because I didn’t even know you could block people on Reverb! I’ve lowballed stuff I thought was seriously overpriced on there and have gotten attitude from them about it too. Like just deny w/o a counter offer and move on if the offer is too low to consider.

I had a couple guys complain but prices were much lower for a good while so I’m not sorry that they missed out. I guess dynamic pricing does kind of suck, but that’s how it goes.


The resale talk in the Warmoth thread has me thinking, this grift is all part of the game though. If I don’t do this then I don’t get to have five guitars and three basses or whatever - all the extra stuff has to hold value to justify the expense. Otherwise then I only get the one guitar or whatever.

If I had gear that only depreciated on a steep slope then I would be spending way, way less money on it. At least this way there’s a buffer.

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

38 by thecr4ne
llllllllllllllllllll wrote: Fri Sep 05, 2025 9:51 pm I know this isn’t me because I didn’t even know you could block people on Reverb! I’ve lowballed stuff I thought was seriously overpriced on there and have gotten attitude from them about it too. Like just deny w/o a counter offer and move on if the offer is too low to consider.
This was on ebay and unless your seller id is "NewEnglandIndustrial" I doubt it was you.

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

39 by VaticanShotglass
I need advice on shipping.

I haven't sold anything online in many years now, but I've been looking to finally get around to selling some stuff I don't use. I've also bought a number of things over the past year to experiment with, and some I'm going to sell while others are replacing old things I'd like to sell.

I used to sell on Reverb every so often. It seemed pretty painless for simple stuff like guitar pedals. But looking lately at shipping prices, I don't have a clue what I should list for shipping. Previously, I'd just ship with whatever recycled box I had around and it would be 6-10 bucks. I see Reverb has a little calculator now, but I've not used it.

What do you guys do for smaller stuff like pedals or pickup sets? Does USPS have flat rate options you like for that sort of thing? Anything to be wary of?

Re: Selling gear on eBay/reverb.com - do's and don'ts

40 by llllllllllllllllllll
Don't use the calculator.

Just overshoot a little and then refund the buyer.

Costs damn near $25 to ship guitar pedals insured continental US priority mail, so that’s what I charge. Ofc Priority Mail is sort of premium shipping but nobody cares and everyone is happy when there’s a short turnaround.

Priority mail boxes are also free, so you can send them a nice new box that they can reuse later.

Shipping costs increase incrementally depending on how expensive the item is too. I estimated $50 to ship a 19” rack preamp in the US and Reverb charged $100. I ate shit on the one because for all sorts of reasons, but the moron also wanted a refund $25 for the goddamn generic power cable that was never included.

Anyways, it sucks having to overcharge but they will nickel and dime your ass to death, and its never quite clear how much you’ll clear until it hits your account.
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