I have a friend who does computer work for ebay. i was told that their area of highest complaints for seller fraud is the guitars subsection of musical instruments. Hearing that gave me pause.
That said, i've only bought one guitar on ebay, a new instrument that a reputable dealer was selling as used to get around MAP pricing. i had a good experience.
I've bought several amp heads on-line. Even when I'm careful to buy from a good seller, I always seem to end up having a problem with an amp that arrives in "not as described" condition, either because it was misrepresented or because it was damaged in transit.
Now that I think about it, EVERY amp that I have bought on-line has ended up being delivered in not-as-described condition, either due to seller fraud or shipper mis-handling. The ONE exception was a Fender VibroChamp that I bought in broken condition as a fixer-upper. It arrived as-described (aka: broken), and it undamaged because it was so small and lightweight. But every other amp ended up being not-as-described in one way or another. Here are a few examples:
Mesa Mk IV: Had a defective 5-function footswitch due to broken wiring. The seller conveniently forgot to mention that with the channel-changing footswitch plugged in the amp could not switch channels. I had to find the problem in the footswitch's internal wiring and fix it myself.
SF Fender Bassman: Seller fraudulently misrepresented the amp by using a picture of a different amp in his auction. The pictures were of an early SF with a blackface circuit, but the amp that was shipped was a late SF model with a different circuit. I had to eat the return shipping on that one and use VISA to effect the refund.
Ampeg SVT-2 Pro: two of them damaged in transit, one from eBay shipped FedEx, one from GC shipped UPS. Both of these were so prohibitively expensive to ship back that I had to have them repaired locally on my dime, and then try to recover the cost from the merchants. It was a royal PITB that took a month of my time. Not worth the effort.
I'm at the point where i don't like buying guitars and amps online any more. There are too many places in the chain of events where something can go wrong, and because Murphy's Law always seems to prevail, something always manages to go wrong. Then I end up spending a lot of my time trying to fix the problems that wouldn't have occurred if I had just paid what it cost to buy locally. My preference is to find a local brick and mortar store and buy there. In the days of MAP pricing there isn't much difference in what you pay online vs. at a real store, and buying locally eliminates a lot of the potential headaches.
I've had surprisingly good luck buying used amps and cabs locally on CraigsList.
On the subject of shipping a guitar back to MF for $50, that's painful enough to convince me that I should buy the same instrument from GC, getting GC to price match MF, rather than buying from the MF side of that company. If you buy on the GC side, at least you have the option to execute an in-store return at your local store, which saves you the $50 return shipping cost. My only complaint with GC is that like most music stores, their used instruments are typically over priced. But they do have a good return policy.
