Buying Gear on eBAY?

[AlexHall74]

Hey people,

Just some quick wisdom regarding safe purchasing of gear on eBAY. I've bought alot of music equipment on eBAY and only had one bad incident. The following is a little list of "rules of thumb" I abide by when considering a gear purchase on eBAY. If you have any good info to add that you use to make smart purchases online please share it as I'm sure all of us have or will consider buying used pieces of kit on eBAY at some time or another.

ALEX'S RULES OF THUMB TO SHOP SMART ON EBAY:

Whoa! Be careful. Is it eBAY you are looking at the Akai on? If so, common sense will keep you safe:

(1) No Payments via Western Union outside of the auction,

(2) No payments with anything other than Paypal as they give you $1,000 buyers protection, your credit card should also,

(3) Only deal with sellers that have a decent amount of transactions (20 or so) over the course of a year or more with as close to 100% feedback as possible.

(4) Look at their profile to see if they have sold any music gear before if you can.

(5) Also, ask them a question or two about the piece of kit to test their knowledge of it and read the reply to see if they are at least knowledgeable about its basic functions.

(6) Ask them to post an additional picture, something a little obscure, like the item with a small stuffed animal on top of it, as doing so is a good way to prove that they have the item in their possession and that they are not just grabbing JPEGs of gear off Google and listing them for sale on eBAY in an attempt to scam gear whores like us.

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This info is important, it would have saved me from getting scammed a year or so ago. I bid on a Mackie Onyx Satellite before Christmas in 2007. The seller actually had decent stats, 30 or so transactions, 99.xx% positive feedback, looked normal. I didn't ask any questions of the guy, I just kind of bid on good faith, bad move. It turns out that the guy's eBAY account AND PayPal account had been hijacked by some dude in China. Since the guy's username and password were the same on both sites the hijacker changed the payment details to be accessible to him in China, then listed a bunch of gear on eBAY, with stock pictures and a few others that he Googled (I researched this after the incident). The Satellite did not arrive after a month, I emailed the seller, no response for a week. The seller's name on eBAY was "AndyKee." When I tried to access the same user's info on my PayPal profile it was a very Asian name, like "Xiao Ying" or something like that. PayPal recoverd $260 0f the $285 I paid, but it took almost a month. I've bought alot of gear on eBAY, and luckily only been scammed once and not too badly, but this incident was a wake up call.

Good luck.

-Alex