Ebay DISASTER. Anyone else????

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jcooke
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Ebay DISASTER. Anyone else????

Post by jcooke » Thu Feb 16, 2006 11:50 pm

I bought a Furman IT-1220 on ebay for $800. I plugged it in and waited, and waited, and waited. The damn thing is busted, complete with loose parts jangling around inside of it. I filed a claim with paypal who supposedly pays up to $1,000 insurance on ebay purchases paid for with paypal. We shall see.

Anyways, I'm guessing it was damaged in shipping. I of course did not get any shipping insurance. In hindsight I believe that's what you call a mistake.

Anyone else have any ebay horror stories.

Jeremy

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Girl Toes
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Post by Girl Toes » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:48 am

How was it shipped?

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Jeremy Garber
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Post by Jeremy Garber » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:17 am

I haven't had much experience with eBay, but I have had a couple mail order problems. When I ordered my PC case a while back, it arrived here with all the pegs holding the front panel on, snapped off. Luckily I fixed it with some super glue. Worst experience I had was paying a CD duplicator to press some CDs for me, and the CDs never came. Repeated attempts to contact the company were unanswered. That still ticks me off. By the way, don't ever give your business to Dollar CD, or any of their 'sister' companies.

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Post by inverseroom » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:34 am

FedEx automatically insures everything, and I think UPS does too. Only USPS makes you buy it separately...

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Post by Dave Nutz » Fri Feb 17, 2006 5:53 am

inverseroom wrote:FedEx automatically insures everything, and I think UPS does too. Only USPS makes you buy it separately...
i think ups is only up to $200 by default...an extra $1 for $200 more of insurance(or was it $2 for $100 worth of insurance?)
01010100 01100001 01101011 01100101 00100000 01001101 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01101100 01100101 01100001 01100100 01100101 01110010 00100001

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Post by mingus2112 » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:41 am

Not a gear related story, but it's ebay related. . .

I ordered this flatware storage chest for my mother on ebay. Long story short, he shipped it USPS parcel post instead of UPS and it took 32 days to reach me. When it had finally gotten here, it had been "in transit" for so long that the stirafoam that he packed it in BUFFED certain parts of the laminated wood finish. Now every part that was touched by the packing material looks like someone just pulled a sticker off it. Really bad news there.

-James

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Post by Rufer » Fri Feb 17, 2006 6:45 am

Crossing my fingers for my ebayed Epi Hollow-body scheduled to arrive today.

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Post by jcooke » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:07 am

The package was shipped either fedex or ups, I can't recall.

Jeremy

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past ebay experience

Post by jcooke » Fri Feb 17, 2006 7:11 am

I really have bought tons of gear off of ebay without any problems. I probably still will. This one bad experience though could be an expensive lesson, although hopefully paypal will cover it for the up to $1,000 that they say they will.

Jeremy

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linus
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Post by linus » Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:30 am

I've lots of great experiences with Ebay but a couple bad experiences.

I had a seller rip me off on a shock-mount rack case. I paid, he never shipped (ripped off a couple other people during the same week). I eventually got MOST of my money back through Ebay's buyers protection program. (I think I took a $30 hit).

I shipped a vintage effect pedal to a ebay buyer in Japan. It arrived busted. I refunded his money (including shipping both ways. Not cheap...). I had it repaired when I got it back and eventually sold it again but I lost about $100 in the end. Getting the shipper to pay for the damage in transit turned out to be too difficult as there was no obvious physical damage (it wasn't crushed). Very frustrating experience.

I recently won a vintage effect pedal on Ebay and the tracking number that the seller sent me doesn't work. The pedal just seems to have vanished. I think the seller is on the up and up. He's checking into things on his end. It just happened this week so I don't know how it will turn out but we'll see.

And in the non-ebay department:

I bought a pair of NOS tubes from Angela Instruments (great buisness). FedEx lost them. About two weeks later they showed up but the tracking number never did work. Angela was really cool about it.

I bought an eq module from a guy through craigslist. It showed up OK (after a short delay). He later wrote me to say he had another one of the same model in mint condition, did I want it? Of course, then I can rack them as a pair. The second module just showed up today. It's NOT the same model (slightly different - rack ears vs no rack ears and a few other things) and is not quite mint. Very frustrating.

Sometimes I feel like I spend more time fixing broken equipment, and chasing down loose ends (like this stuff) than I actually spend recording...

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Post by audiogeek1 » Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:39 am

Both fedex and ups insure automaticly up to $100 with ups it is $.35 per hundred after that and I think fedex is about there. I never ship anything without insurance after seeing what happened to a compressor properly packed coming from the DBX factory. It looked like a Semi truck ran over it and then dropped from 30000 feet for good measure. This was shipped Ground not air. Fortunately for insurance it was taken care of. Kind of a hassle dealing with UPS though. They do not like to pay but will when they are at fault.

My advice only do insurance when you ship. Worth the extra few dollars in the end. And good luck with Paypa.

As for ebay I have had good experiences so far with all the deals I have done on there. Only about 25 in the last 7 years though.

MIke

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Post by Garthplinko » Fri Feb 17, 2006 12:33 pm

Sometimes I feel like I spend more time fixing broken equipment, and chasing down loose ends (like this stuff) than I actually spend recording...
not to get far off the thread but fixing broken equipment is a pet peeve of mine and it's my own damn fault. I have so much broken stuff hanging around and yet I still comb ebay for new-to-me gear. Right now I have the following repairs that need to be done:

- bad output jack on my backup bass
- frozen pots on my other bass
- Prophet 600 has something wacky w/ one of the oscillators - the polyphony is not right...
- old Synare 4 that doesn't work (but used to sound so neato)
- busted lug on my homemade bass drum
- my Otari 8 track needs serious repair - new heads, the works (probably not worth the money it would cost to fix it)
- horn out on one of my P.A. cabs
- a pile of headphones that don't work
- a pile of cables that have shorts
- ADATs (are always XXXXing broken anyway)
- Record player needs a belt
- bass cab needs a new speaker...

This list doesn't include the mod I want to do to my Bassman. Wow. I had no idea the list was this long until i started looking at it - good lord, what's wrong with me? Anyone else get themselves into this boat? This sucks! And (to get back on topic) I STILL am on eBay every damn day!
"Just because you don't like it don't mean it ain't no good."

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Post by tommy » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:13 pm

A pretty large percentage of my studio gear is from ebay and I've yet to get ripped or have anything damaged en route. I think it's very important to do a couple of things before you even consider placing a bid on an item (in the very least) to bid with a little piece of mind or confidence.

So anyway, here are a few tips to consider when ebaying:

ALWAYS ask the seller a question even if you know exactly what the item is. Ask how well the item will be packed if it's a fragile item for example. If it takes more than 2 days for the seller to respond, dont bid on the item.
This kind of gives you an idea of how on top of things the seller is. You can also sort of get a vibe from the seller based on his or her response when they do respond. The other thing that asking questions does is it lets the seller know that you a serious bidder that is interested in the item and will more than likely keep the seller honest.

check the sellers rating.

NEVER send payment through wire or bank transfer. The last couple of sellers that asked for payment this way looked super fishy and as it turned out got busted by ebay when I reported it.

If it looks like too good a deal, it might be.

knobtwirler
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Post by knobtwirler » Fri Feb 17, 2006 2:30 pm

Good points. I also have not gotten a bad deal on ebay yet. I've learned that if the seller doesn't show enough pics, the pics are suspect, or not enough information, AND, most importantly, if you can't think of a barge of questions to ask about the item to cover your ass, you probably shouldn't buy it. That said, I bought my car on ebay, and I made the decision without seeing it first. Well, at least it was a great car.

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Post by jv » Fri Feb 17, 2006 3:21 pm

From what I understand, USPS insurance only covers you if something is lost, and even then it's a hassle to get the money. I sold somebody a Quadraverb on ebay, and the box was basically crushed in shipping, and the Qverb was messed up. It worked but it had weird noise. I had it insured when I sent it, but at the post office they told me I couldn't file a claim unless it was lost, even though it had obviously been damaged in shipping.

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