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Reverb another nightmare and reason to avoid. I wish there folks would read this forum and the joke it happens to be. I myself would need direct contact with the seller. It is true that buying used gear is pretty much a gamble.
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04-16-2021 02:04 PM
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I did have direct contact with the seller. It's now been 4 days since I received an unusable piece of gear, 4 days since I contacted reverb support and all I get are crickets. I informed them via email that if I don't hear back from them by EOB today I will be disputing the transaction with my CC company. I suspect I'll hear from them then.
Originally Posted by deacon Mark
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One time I had a conversation chat with a reverb specialist about paying import taxes and they were lost. I keep telling the person is was an american made guitar and there would be no import duties all. They just keep texting the chat saying the fees would be sales taxes and any import duties. I told them it was an American Made Gibson so no duties........the person was worthless for helping and clueless. Since that conversation I lost all respect for the outfit. Originally Posted by jzucker
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so they lied. they said they'd get back to me within 3 days. I contacted them tuesday. It's EOB friday and no response. This will be the last big purchase on reverb for me.
Also, when you call their support number, you get an automated message which tells you to use their website and then disconnects.
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I agree with Jack, just because you communicate with the seller doesn't mean the outcome is likely to be any better. I find the problem here is that people don't know anything about what they're selling. I recently went through a nightmare experience on Reverb. The seller seemed reasonable and intelligent, so we made a deal for a heritage 535 that ticked off what I was looking for. What I found when the guitar arrived was that the fingerboard had severe damage from aggressive cleaning/scraping, a low factory neck set that left the bridge adjusted all the way down to the body, and a huge rising tongue. With all this it wasn't clear that a refret could even salvage the guitar. The guitar was unplayable of course but the seller claimed it played just as well as the rest of his 50 guitars! He did allow a return but it cost me $175 in shipping to and from. I was polite and professional in our messages, but he was a jerk and just insulting. Then after the guitar arrived back to him he left me bad feedback despite the fact he wasn't out one dime while I suffered a $175 hit for the privilege of doing business with him. Reverb customer support was largely unsympathetic, although they did give me a $75 credit towards future purchases.
It's clear to me that the Reverb community, at least in the market I'm interested in mainly consists of collectors selling guitars to other collectors. Cosmetic issues are what these folks are interested in, not the functionality. I've purchased guitars with bracing falling off, cracks in the neck, maxed out truss rod nuts - fatal flaws that weren't disclosed. I think the best you can hope for is that the seller is a brick and mortar music store and they'll stand behind the sale if there's a problem.Last edited by vejesse; 04-17-2021 at 10:41 AM.
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Even the brick and mortar stores are painful to deal with. I bought an archtop from a fairly well known dealer in atlanta and the dealer seemed pretty reliable. I went through my standard set of questions: Originally Posted by vejesse
- neck straight, no humps, no tailrise?
- Action can be adjusted to 4/64 (high E) and 6/64 (low E) without buzzing
- truss rod functions in both directions?
- frets do not show significant wear and will not need refretting ?
- neck joint solid with no sign of separation in the finish?
- braces are solidly attached to the body?
- top does not show any signs of sinkage?
- parts are all original other than indicated in the verbiage of the ad?
- any modifications or repairs not indicated in the ad including pinned/glued bridge?
- do you agree to give me a 48hr trial period from the day I receive it?
Many times people get upset when you ask this level of detail. I figure if they do, it's a sign I shouldn't deal with them. If they answer all these questions then I have a laundry list of data to compare to when I get the instrument. But in the case of the archtop the body sunk to such a degree at the neck pickup that the pickup ring couldn't conform to the sinkage and there was a 1/8" gap at the center of the pickup ring due to the pickup ring having to be bent to accommodate the sinkage of the top in that area. Additionally, the guitar buzzed almost as badly as the bass in the video on this thread.
The dealer was ok about letting me return for a refund but when he refunded me, he subtracted out his shipping from ATL to CLE. So basically, I paid $200 because he was too lazy to do a real quality check and I had to pay shipping both ways.
But in general I've found that the majority of folks just don't know enough to even answer those questions. I don't think they are necessarily con artists. It's just that are collectors or don't really care about the same things I care about.Last edited by jzucker; 04-17-2021 at 08:44 AM.
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Whenever I sell a guitar on Verb, I take meticulous pictures of the neck. Usually no less than six. Looking all the way straight down along high e and low e, then back up the other way, and good shots from the sides. When I am considering purchases, I have asked others to take a shot looking straight down the neck. If they don't, I walk away. Of all the issues on a guitar, for me the neck is by far the most important.
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Still no resolution on this issue. Apparently, the resolutions team was off-site for team-building on friday so my issue didn't get addressed by the promised deadline. I contacted them again today and they said they would try to push my issue to the top of the queue to be examined today. Again, the fact that you cannot call them when you have a problem is a big issue IMO. When you call their support line, you get a pre-recorded message that ends up disconnecting at the end.
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Do you have a link to a sale of one of your guitars. I'm thinking of selling a couple and would like to see how to take pictures. Originally Posted by Woody Sound
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Their support is beyond atrocious. After promising to get back to me friday, i called this morning and they said they'd get back to me by 5. I didn't want to waste another day so I called at 3pm and was told that it was in the queue. I asked Alex L. if I could speak to a supervisor and he told me "no". He said there are no supervisors. I asked him if he had a manager and he disconnected the chat.
Pretty unbelievable...
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look at their BBB rating!
https://www.bbb.org/us/il/chicago/pr...-0654-88654144
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Wow!!!
Originally Posted by jzucker
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and they are closed. They promised to get back to me again by EOB today. Nothing. I just filed a complaint with BBB, cc company is next.
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I actually would like to see this forum do some sort of a formal process of calling Reverb out on what they do and charge. I believe we could maybe help all our causes here because they practices they have with shipping and payment. Then of course the usual garbage we get they have zero customer support and customer include sellers.
There are some large big name dealers who do not deal with Reverb. Ebay is a much better way but certainly for focused guitar buying right now Reverb has the upper hand......just not if you need any help.
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i agree, i would like it if these forums empowered users to get good service from organizations like reverb. It's too bad their service has deteriorated to such a great degree. Folks used to complain about ebay but ebay is 10x better. I was really shocked when the tech support person in the chat flat-out refused to allow me to speak to a supervisor and then disconnected the chat. That is just unfathomably bad customer service. I guess they're too big to fail?
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BBB:
"Customer Reviews are not used in the calculation of BBB Rating"
I think a company has to sell you something and not ship it- ie, outright fraud- for the BBB to count as negative in their metrics.
Now you (& I) know which side they're on....
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that's not what I'm pointing out. I'm not talking about the BBB rating, i'm talking about their 1 star customer review rating. Out of 60 reviews, they have an average of 1.05 stars. Originally Posted by Joseph2
https://www.bbb.org/us/il/chicago/pr...stomer-reviews
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I pretty much do not need any more guitars in this lifetime. After reading threads like this one, I have to remind myself of that fact.
Reverb.com, EBay and Paypal are all big corporations that will beat you in the end. They are so big and control such a large share of the market that they can get away with it. Where else are people going to go?
Where is Teddy Roosevelt when you need him?
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The problem with EBay is that they always side with buyer - I had a fellow flat out lie during the arbitration process (claiming the color wasn’t as pictured in the listing). In reality he just didn’t like it for one reason or another and he realized taking advantage of the system was as simple as that. Selling online sucks even more than buying. On the bright side the hassle at either end has greatly abated my accumulation of gear.
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Frankly I have NEVER seen what I considered a really good deal on Reverb. Add to that a high risk buy and Reverb not being customer focused.
Jack file a cc dispute, get back your $ and cut the rope with Reverb forever. Reverb sounds as bad as UPS is.
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Originally Posted by Chris236
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Ebay doesn't always side with the buyer but they are limited by CC company terms and conditions. And the CC company is very picky about "all sales final" terms and will generally give a refund to the buyer if he shows that it was returned. In one case, I bought a guitar that had a warped neck. The seller claimed that it must have happened in shipping and advised me to file a complaint with UPS. I told him that he was the client of UPS and not me and that he needed to refund my money and take up a dispute with the shipper and I volunteered to cooperate with the shipper and take the instrument and box to UPS for them to examine. He flat-out refused. And ebay sided with him. So I contacted my CC company and they advised me to return it. I contacted the seller and asked if the return shipping address on the label was valid and he refused to validate the address so I paid for a reverse find on his name and phone # and confirmed it was his address and shipped it back to him. I emailed him and said he would be receiving the guitar back and gave him the tracking #. He advised me he would refuse to accept it. Originally Posted by Chris236
AND.HE.DID...
The guitar got returned back to me!
My CC company then sided with me and said he had forfeited any type of seller protection since he refused to accept it back. They reversed the transaction so at this point, they credited my account and then ebay/paypal debited *HIS* account. I figured they would cancel my account after that but they did not. So now, he doesn't have the guitar or the money.
He contacted me a few days after he got charged for it, demanding I send it back to him AT.MY.COST!
I refused and told him that I would ship it back if he sent me a pre-paid shipping label. He called me all sorts of names and insisted it was my fault that he refused to accept the package. I told him that legally, I could keep the guitar, get it fixed and sell it and that I didn't owe him anything. Unfortunately, he was totally unable to see any point of view but his. Eventually, he sent me a label and got his guitar back.
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Add to this that when you factor in shipping and tax, the deal you think you got is many times negated... Originally Posted by vinnyv1k
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by the way, i just received a message from reverb saying they were asking the seller to confirm his return shipping address. Nothing else, just that. This is the 8th day since I originally notified them of the issue. I replied back to the email saying that I already had his shipping address and that wasn't the issue. The issue was him paying for return shipping. Nothing from that email. They said they will followup in 24 hours. Onto day 9 of this debacle...
I did submit a BBB report.
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Caveat Emptor . . . would you ever marry a mail order bride? Nothing like a good workout to check the quality!
Play live . . . Marinero
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Couple of entry level arch tops
Today, 01:28 PM in For Sale