my favorite are the peepholes on forums that list as local only but don't have a location mentioned.
Enjoy the benefits of a premium membership!
Upgrade Account
-
TalkBass has been independent since 1998. Add your voice.
Create a free account to reply to discussions, view embedded media, and browse with fewer display ads.
Join free Log in
Want zero display ads or expanded classifieds tools? Compare plans.
"Local pick up only" (Reverb) rant...
- Thread starter Mr Wilson
- Start date
This is it for me. Too many horror stories of unreasonable buyers and outright scammers. There are 5 million+ people living within an 90 minutes drive from me, so things will sell sooner or later with a local pickup.
I really don't see why the OP is so worked up over this. Just move on as if that listing were never there.
Hello. The key here is that you don't value the item enough to justify the overhead needed for you to acquire it in that deal.
Car collectors travel to wherever to buy cars. They value the car enough, so they will either do it personally or arrange for someone to do it. I have seen this myself. I drove a support car behind a collector who was buying a vintage Lotus. I drove him from Oakland to L.A., then followed him back up. It was a sometimes harrowing (occasional tramlining in the old Lotus), but beautiful road trip.
For items that I valued enough, I have driven up to several hundred miles round trip (in heavy snowfall once) to retrieve them. We're talking about items so rare that not only are they unavailable in stores, but they are expected to be seen for sale again rarely or actually never. I met a couple of cool people this way and took some scenic drives. Oh, and: I acquired the rare items.
Reverb.com is a just marketplace within a larger market. A deal is just a deal. A seller can list an item for sale on Reverb with terms. A prospective buyer can negotiate those terms and/or compensate for any that are non-negiotiable by making a needed effort to close the deal.
When those terms don't include shipping, and you are unwilling to make the needed effort, you don't get to close that deal. I'm not seeing any surprises or injustice there.
Well, if I were selling on Reverb I probably wouldn't want to ship either. Big pain and any fragile item runs the risk of being damaged and you'll have to make it right. If you sell in person, soon as the buyer puts it in the car it's his responsibility to get it home without breaking it.
It's free to list, so why not. Shipping is a hassle, and it's risky. I won't ship a bass, but I'll list it multiple places. You can filter out local pickup from your search results.
AH I am a Receiver at a Distribution warehouse for my day job . So yeah I ship alot of stuff that size ,Daily .
"Thats there choice " ? Ok Thanks for "your Help " ....
Try shipping a bass without a "corporate" account with discounts. Clearly you have never shipped a bass on your own.
It is certainly annoying when you find a "grail" that's "local pickup only", but I understand why some might do that. Good luck in your search.
Yep. I have made pretty long road trips to pick up rare amps. If you want it bad enough, you find away. It's entirely the seller's prerogative whether to offer shipping or specify local sales only. IMHO the seller takes on way more risk with shipping. My impression is it's not a matter of if you will get burned, but when.
There are plenty of people here on TB who have told horror stories of shipping a perfect item and then Ebay or Reverb siding with the buyer and forcing a return when the buyer decides they don't want the item. Worse yet, in some instances it seemed fairly likely that the buyer had intentionally damaged the item to facilitate the return. So the seller was out round trip shipping and also the gear was damaged.
There is no guarantee that the carrier will honor any damage claim, even if the packing material has been obviously damaged in shipment. I saw one thread where a bass was damaged in a hard-shell case that was double boxed. The impact went through the boxes and the case into the bass. The carrier claimed the packing material did not meet their specs.
I would think a hard-shell instrument case would significantly exceed their specs. So maybe they were justified in not paying to replace the case, but not covering the damage to the instrument seems out of line.
I had to eat a $200 amp repair over this. I'm hesitant to do a lot of flipping via shipping now as a result (the local market is dead). Lemme guess - FedEx? You can't buy insurance with them, only pay for them to agree to a "limit of liability".
I sell on Reverb but of course I offer shipping.Shipping absolutely is becoming more expensive.I haven't sold anything as heavy as a bass and imagine it'd be at least 50 bucks plus what a suitable box is worth.Usually I will split shipping cost with customers and this has worked out for me.The fees on Reverb are becoming unsustainable for me in general but it reaches the widest audience.It's never easy is it?
"Local pick up only" also offers it up to the sneaky seller who can be contacted via Reverb message. Once the local buyer contacts the seller, they can work out a deal with cash or whatever, then un-list the Reverb posting. That way the seller avoids the margin taken from the sale for Reverb, they don't have to ship, and the buyer usually gets a better deal. It's not exactly a best practice, but it has been done.
Guitar Center !!! Shipping is usually about $30 or less on a bass. Plus, if you dont like it, you can take it back. I hesitated & hesitated buying a Fender Jazz from Reverb. Asked a lot of questions, but sellers do not offer a return. If bass shows up with a twisted neck, poor fit/neck pocket really wide, excessive fret wear etc. you cant send it back. All of the above listed things are basically seller's opinion. I bought a beautiful Fender jazz from GC, about to take it back because a 'jazz' is just not for me,,,, :-(
Been burned on both ends of the shipping cycle and yes, I don't trust it for good reason, having necks broken, speakers separated from magnets (how did they do that?) on both ends, selling and buying. I mostly sell locally only now unless it is something small. Been burned too many times, it has become a really big hassle, not to mention pricing going up.
So yes, I can totally relate to sellers doing that, they are casting a wide net hoping someone in their area sees it and wants it too. Actually pretty improbable, but hey, I don't fault them for it. It's a free country.
Like the farmers around here say, Grow Local!
So yes, I can totally relate to sellers doing that, they are casting a wide net hoping someone in their area sees it and wants it too. Actually pretty improbable, but hey, I don't fault them for it. It's a free country.
Like the farmers around here say, Grow Local!
+1
Not to mention some Richard Cranium having buyers remorse and sending it back on your dime by claiming it was broken.
If these people didn’t list it, you still couldn’t buy it, so I’m missing the part where you are inconvenienced or harmed by this.
For a brief moment I forgot we were talking about basses and thought this involved the mob
Yeah, I don't get it either on Reverb, unless it's for a fairly large item like an 8x10 or something. It's especially silly because on Reverb you can essentially charge the buyer whatever you want for shipping.
Maybe we need a forum here on TB for finding local buyer's agents for these Reverb/CL/etc postings. That could even be a decent side business for someone - inspect, take local delivery and ship to the buyer.
Whats with the trend of everyone making all their reverb ads "Local pick up only ?
I'm assuming its the ever rising Fees involved ,but man Its really preventing my deals.
I really want a second Jazz 24 to back up my #1 . Theres 4 on reverb that have been there a while. One is too expensive ,the other 3 are "Local pick up only " . I am in upstate NY and no where near any of these guys . I have messaged 2 of the sellers saying Dude I'm Legit ,will you ship the thing ? and they both said "no local pick up only " . I mean do you guys not wanna sell these things ?? If not dont list it .
As someone that used to buy and sell quite a bit of gear, like others, I've grown jaded and frustrated with the hassles of shipping. It seems that not only have the prices gone WAY UP, in part due to the fact that sites like eBay and Reverb also charge fees for the shipping costs too, the hassle factor has also gone up. Getting boxes, insurance, etc have also somehow become a bigger PITA.
I went from buying/selling about 10-20 pieces of gear a year to maybe a handful.
In fact, the last bass I bought was from a seller that was also selling local only. I just got lucky and had a family member a few minutes away.
The takeaway for me is the systems that people use to sell gear have become so greedy that it's getting hard to sell something without taking a loss. Might as well keep it if you don't Need to sell....
Absolutely not, but it's kinda baffling that someone would go to the trouble to list on a global platform, then refuse to take advantage of that reach. I sell on national platforms a lot but only items easy to pack and ship that stand a reasonable chance of arriving intact. Large unwieldy items with high potential to become a major PITA I tend to stick to local or regional sales, or have a crystal clear understanding with the other party as to who is responsible for what. I'll ship a bass or amp but only if the buyer picks and pays for the shipper, and agrees that once I hand it over to their shipper I'm out of the responsibility loop with the exception of filing a claim if the item is lost or damaged.
I've also planned day trips and mini vacations around picking up or dropping off a bass or amp too big to ship. For me, what I'm willing to do really comes down to how bad I want to get it done and how good a rapport I've built with the other party.
There's also a very good idea already posted, of contacting a pack and ship local to the seller so all they have to do is drop it off.
Last edited:
