Anyone sell stuff on Reverb?

MrInsanePolack said:
This is me also. The above example is who I expect to meet. Just not at my house! Sometimes the doberman comes too.
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I have a Great Pyrenees. As far as he's concerned, my family is his heard, and he would die for us. I've seen him get riled, and it ain't pretty.

Love dobermans!
 
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Macarina said:
What are your red flags?
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I've been selling on CL for years, and I've had really good luck. I've met lots of cool people, and I've been able to network with other drummers because of it. With that said, I had one incident last fall when I was selling a higher-end guitar. I always thought that we drummers were the lowest rung of crazy musicians.

This guy contacted my wife about my guitar (she had posted it on FB Marketplace for me). I gave him my phone number b/c he was asking her all kinds of questions, and I was happy to answer his questions as opposed to passing info to her. I texted him answers to all of these questions. Then he absolutely started blowing up my phone with texts...these long, rambling texts about how I should sell my guitar, how I should get it set up, how bad he wanted to play it, a guitar he was trying to sell, etc. I'm a college instructor, so I know some writers out there are long-winded, but there was just something about this guy that didn't sit right with me...almost scared me a little. I told him I was putting it in a local store to sell on consignment, and if he wanted to try it out (he lived an hour away), he could go there and pay the price that was on the ticket. I then blocked his number, and I never heard from him again. This was the only time I was uneasy about anyone I've sold to.

It ended up selling to someone locally. Thank God.
 
Mastiff said:
I think the point is that if I added on $30-40 shipping and $10 fees, I would be out of line with everyone else price-wise and probably pushing new. Of course, that must be my problem in that I have in my head I should clear more than $20 for $100+ sale. All I can figure is that people selling, e.g., guitar/amp combos for $120 with free shipping are moving a lot of stuff and hardly making anything per item.
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Yup, and it’s the price one pays to reach a wide audience.

Around 2003 I sold all my film equipment on eBay. Lenses went to Romania, Andorra, Fiji, and Hong Kong, and other countries. The customs forms included in the shipping forms was a godsend and made things easy.
 
MrInsanePolack said:
Hi, I want to buy your drums. My grammar is good and I look like a normal guy. My text messages make me seem pretty okay. What you don't know is I am carrying a pistol in my waist band. My intentions are bad. There are 3 dead bodies buried in my garden. That girl from the Amber Alert, I know where she is. And the seemingly regular Toyota Camry I will be pulling up in is actually stolen. Oh yeah, I'm high on meth too. Life is hard, I'm outta my freaking mind, I have your address and will be there in an hour. But you can trust me because my grammar is good.

Remember: Criminals are LIARS! It's what they do.
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I mean...I’m their huckleberry, I guess? I don’t really care one way or another that much. LOL
 
PorkPieGuy said:
I've been selling on CL for years, and I've had really good luck. I've met lots of cool people, and I've been able to network with other drummers because of it. With that said, I had one incident last fall when I was selling a higher-end guitar. I always thought that we drummers were the lowest rung of crazy musicians.

This guy contacted my wife about my guitar (she had posted it on FB Marketplace for me). I gave him my phone number b/c he was asking her all kinds of questions, and I was happy to answer his questions as opposed to passing info to her. I texted him answers to all of these questions. Then he absolutely started blowing up my phone with texts...these long, rambling texts about how I should sell my guitar, how I should get it set up, how bad he wanted to play it, a guitar he was trying to sell, etc. I'm a college instructor, so I know some writers out there are long-winded, but there was just something about this guy that didn't sit right with me...almost scared me a little. I told him I was putting it in a local store to sell on consignment, and if he wanted to try it out (he lived an hour away), he could go there and pay the price that was on the ticket. I then blocked his number, and I never heard from him again. This was the only time I was uneasy about anyone I've sold to.

It ended up selling to someone locally. Thank God.
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Had a somewhat similar occurrence when trying to sell my 2 electric guitars last year. The guy asked if I'd do payments. . .No. "I need to sell of part of my coin collection, but I want to buy everything." Ok. Man, I can't sell my coins, do you want to get together and jam? No. Then the, "How ya doin?" txts started. Wow, I'm wondering if he just needed a friend. Creeped me out, told him I sold them. Later, Block, bye. He would ask to stop by and "hang out". Dude. . .



To the OP, selling local is nearly always easier, more profitable. Unless you're selling something really sought after. I sold an Oakley watch on eBay last year. I bought it used on eBay for $85 (barely used), 15 years ago??? Sold it for $140. Sometimes it works out.

Charges, taxes, shipping--they all suck. But unless your dealing with "small and lightweight" items, it's just not going to go your way usually. Or, as I said "sought after" stuff.

Definitely get accounts with the USPS etc.
 
Greetings,

I used to sell quite a bit of drum stuff on ebay. It's been a few years, but the reason I stopped was because that sellers virtually had no rights and were basically powerless to enforce ebay's rules. I had lots of problems with non-paying bidders. Ebay does nothing about that. I also had several auctions that were won by fake or spam accounts (all had zero feedback and were very recently set up), again without paying. Again, ebay did nothing. As a seller, you cannot even leave negative or neutral feedback for a buyer, for any reason. That is just crazy. If someone wins what I'm selling for $850 and then just decides he doesn't want it so he's not paying? Totally against ebay's rules and what they stand for, yet ebay does nothing to the buyer. And I can't leave negative feedback? Ridiculous! I know that was a problem that a lot of sellers were having, so that's why I stopped.

Fast forward to last week. I listed about 30 things just to test the waters again and see if things have improved. Well guess what? All 30 items sold and 4 people did not pay (almost 14%). 3 of the 4 non-payers didn't communicate with me at all. The one who did asked if I would do free shipping (after the fact). When I said no and the shipping charge was clearly stated in the auction, his exact words to me were, "Oh, well I don't want it then. I'll bid on another stand with free shipping". This is AFTER he already won the auction! Once again, ebay does nothing. How do let that kind of crap to go on?? To make matters worse, all of my bigger ticket items had high bids (with less than a day to go) with all brand new ebay accounts with zero feedback (even though I supposedly have any bidder with zero feedback "blocked" on my buyer preferences page!) I manually cancelled all of those bids. All the accounts were literally set up in the last two days. I'm willing to bet they were all fake/spam accounts that never would have paid for my items anyway. Ebay is out of control. The saddest part is, sellers is where ebay makes all of their money. They don't make a dime from the buyer, so you think they would bend over backwards to try and protect their cash cow. Un-frickin'believeable!

Because of this, I'm thinking about switching over to Reverb. I have no experience selling on Reverb, but have bought multiple things. Does Reverb run a tighter ship, or do let that kind of crap happen there too? I've also heard that Reverb is pretty tough on you when you first start out. From what I understand, they hold your money "hostage" for the first 20+ transactions, and only release it to you when they can confirm the item has been delivered (not just shipped). Is that accurate?

Anyone have some pointers/tips/pros/cons of selling on Reverb?

Thanks for all of your help!

V
 
I used eBay from 1999 until 2015 but I've never had an issue like you mention.

I began using Reverb about 4–5 years ago and, yes they sat on the transaction until the buyer approved of the deal. No biggie. As a buyer, I like that protection.

Probably the biggest benefit of Reverb is that the ecosystem is musicians & audio engineers. There's still cheapskates and guys who want to deal regardless of the price, but it feels like there's a better signal:noise ratio.
 
eBay is a cesspool any more. I listed 12 (non-drum related) items, all over $250 in value, in January. I received 32 offers at or less than 60% of the price I was asking (out of 48 total offers), and had 3 no pays on BIN auctions. I get it that people are looking for a bargain, but it was just stupid. This is after I researched prices on sold items going back a year, and then placed my price(s) within $10 of the average and offered free shipping (25-30lb boxes). I have many more items that I would like to sell, but if eBay is the only nationwide option, I'd rather donate the stuff than deal with idiots.
 
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Reverb has been great to work with, and they will stand up for the seller, not just the buyer like Ebay. They do hold payment for the first two or three orders until they are recieved, but after that you are paid out within a few days.
 
I've had better luck selling on eBay than Reverb over the years. I certainly like Reverb better since their fee is almost half of eBay's. I just think more people use/know of eBay.

sidenote: it really sucks there's sales tax when buying online now. really great deals are kinda cut down a bit having to pay an extra 7%. I get it for new gear, but I shouldn't get stuck paying sales tax for drums that are 40+ years old.
 
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I have used reverb to buy sell a few items. I think they held my money until the buyer checked off on it. That just seems like normal business I don’t want to pay someone till the merchandise is been received.
 
Yeah, eBay has really gone downhill in recent years. I used to get stuff there all the time with no problem, but anymore I don't really risk it. I think people bid on multiple things and when they get what they want just bail on the other auctions. And sellers will often put things on eBay, Reverb, Facebook, etc. and wherever it sells first it sells, so buyers sometimes get screwed. eBay is more ubiquitous than Reverb, but Reverb seems to be a much nicer community and safer place to buy and sell.
 
eBay is a joke for selling, I had a gear sell off last year.

A lot of the gear was too bulky to post and I wasn't posting full kits or cymbals. If anything gets damaged in transit that's another problem.

I had people buy things who wouldn't collect, bid on something and then start asking a million questions. The biscuit taker was some bloke who bought a kit from me for £200, it was a custom built kit, needed some tlc, a re-wrap, plus I needed the space (hence cheap price) but the shells, edges were perfect and it had brand new heads which were over £120 alone. This cretin starts examining the kit like I wanted £3000 for it and then says he wasn't going to pay for it until he was happy with it. All in my lockup too, the balls on this guy were impressive. I don't think he appreciated how close he came to losing teeth.

Reported the guy to eBay heard nothing, people like that should be banned from these kind of sites.
 
After being on Ebay for nearly 20 years, I have to agree. It's wretched there. Has anyone noticed the price gouging of "cleaning products" and or Toilet Paper? 4 spray cans of Lysol for $100+. How is that legal?

There are scam sellers ALL THE TIME. You have to be very careful and particular there anymore.

I just don't sell much. It's not worth it. Maybe specialty or sought after stuff.
 
"Feebay" sucks.... get you coming and going. As a seller, it's tough to make any cash and it makes it hard to give people a deal because of all the fees associated with selling stuff on there. I have used Reverb as well and it's ok, not quite as popular for buyers maybe so traffic is a little less.
 
Although it's not perfect, Reverb is many,many steps above ebay in terms of stress when buying or selling. I hate ebay. I have a bunch of architectural books I need to sell on ebay because there's not really another good venue for used books, but I dread listing them. Half Priced Books just gives pennies on the dollar these days. Not worth the gas and time to drive over there.

My biggest rant is about the damn internet tax. I agree with a previous poster that if you are selling new stuff and you're a legitimate store, like Steve Maxwell, etc, then maybe the sales tax is appropriate, but I really hate paying sales taxes on old drums or whatever, that I then restore. I especially hate that they tax you on the price you have for shipping. They tax the buyer for the 40 bucks you get from the buyer for shipping and then you get taxed when you actually ship it. If done fairly, you should not profit from shipping. It's everywhere though. I sold some BS little thing on Facebook marketplace for like ten bucks and they charged tax. Pretty soon, tax people will be assigned to drive around and shake down yard sales for a cut.
 
I sold a handful of cymbals on eBay. Although I never had an issue with buyers, the fees and the trouble of packaging didn't seem worth it to me.

A good avenue for selling gear seems to be DrumSellers. I haven't bought or sold from that site, but I visit frequently. The only issue would be the narrow group of users, relative to musicians at Reverb, and the world at-large at eBay.
 
Noisy said:
I got an eBay account in May 2020. I was not able to bid on an auction and had to contact support. After a call one day and a chat a second day and wasting an hour, I was able to bid on an auction. They wanted to know how I was going to pay for the auction. I had already entered a credit card but I needed to chat with their special restrictions support team.

Here is the form email that I received after the first call. So, maybe eBay is trying to keep fake new accounts from bidding.

Thank you for contacting us about your account. To make sure buyers don't bid on, or buy, more than they're comfortable with, we occasionally place limits on a member's buying activity. We may also restrict buying if we believe a member has violated an eBay policy.

To help protect your eBay account, you may be able to increase the limit on your account by verifying some information about yourself.

Call us to speak with an eBay Customer Service agent about the limits on your buying activity.
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Weird, because the penalty for non payment is no penalty at all - and banning for about 3 days(!) for repeat offenders!
 
I have tried Ebay, but all buyers wanted it for free and no shipping fees. Now I do Craigslist, or Facebook Market place and have little to no problems. The market is smaller, and for me that is a good thing. Come and look at it, bring your cash, go away happy.
 
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