reverb.com scam?

[BaileyMan]

WOW. Everyone is so quick to call foul.

Seller has it listed on Reverb, could be the usual stupid price tag or maybe a bargain. OP makes their 20% less offer and it's accepted. If the bass was at a bargain price then the seller is now down 20% for the offer and down Reverb and any other fees; can't say I blame them for looking to step away from the platform.

Wouldn't he make more money on Reverb selling for full fee than a 20% discount off Reverb? I agree the cost of doing business on Reverb is higher than most of us would like, but it's less than 20%.

I took that into account recently when selling a bass on Reverb and adjusted the price up accordingly.

 

[9c1ny]

Amazing how many folks are worried about ' ethics' in regards to a corporation that couldn't care less about you. I have zero love lost for Etsy.
They force you to purchase " shipping protection" for higher dollar orders. Problem is there is no protection. The item is NOT insured through whatever carrier you have purchased a label through. They take your money and hedge their bets the item will arrive safely. If its damaged they will fight the seller tooth and nail looking for a way out. I've had several unsavory experiences as a seller and a buyer that required weeks to straighten out. Also they protect big volume sellers, on several occasions I've gotten a misrepresented product and had a heck of a time returning it even when sellers policy allowed it. In one instance the seller, a store with 5000+ feedback threatened me and called me 4 letter words. I finally got a refund but was not able to leave negative feedback nor did the seller suffer any consequences even messaging me again after the refund to mock me. Their suggestion " ignore them"
Why use them? eBay is a ghost town, gbase never got off the ground and talkbass is good but not a slam dunk.

Eventually competition will undercut their greed and lack of customer service.

Sweetwater is working on a marketplace as we speak.


Ethics aside a Paypal goods and services transaction is just as secure as any deal you'll do on talkbass

 

[Joebone]

Great thread. Have wrestled with a lot of these issues, as a buyer and seller. My evolving seller rule of thumb - If I've listed on Reverb/Ebay/TB, I stick with the rule system applicable to the platform through which a seller manifests. If I get a sale only through Reverb eyeballs, then I'll pony up the fees, even if unhappy about it. If it's on all sources but I deal with a buyer off of TB, then it's a TB deal, and Reverb/Ebay should have no part of it - they didn't bring the result, and should not get the fee for brokering a deal that they didn't broker.

 

[Topkat13]

Stick with Reverb.

 

[truand85]

Reverb itself is a huge scam just look at the shipping options.

 

[Ellery]

This is the one that seems a little phishy

"Outdated"? "PARTLY non-functional"? These are not the words of a bassist!

 

[Wilmingtonian]

Amazing how many folks are worried about ' ethics' in regards to a corporation that couldn't care less about you. I have zero love lost for Etsy.
They force you to purchase " shipping protection" for higher dollar orders. Problem is there is no protection. The item is NOT insured through whatever carrier you have purchased a label through. They take your money and hedge their bets the item will arrive safely. If its damaged they will fight the seller tooth and nail looking for a way out. I've had several unsavory experiences as a seller and a buyer that required weeks to straighten out. Also they protect big volume sellers, on several occasions I've gotten a misrepresented product and had a heck of a time returning it even when sellers policy allowed it. In one instance the seller, a store with 5000+ feedback threatened me and called me 4 letter words. I finally got a refund but was not able to leave negative feedback nor did the seller suffer any consequences even messaging me again after the refund to mock me. Their suggestion " ignore them"
Why use them? eBay is a ghost town, gbase never got off the ground and talkbass is good but not a slam dunk.

Eventually competition will undercut their greed and lack of customer service.

Sweetwater is working on a marketplace as we speak.


Ethics aside a Paypal goods and services transaction is just as secure as any deal you'll do on talkbass

You get to choose if you want to give Reverb your business or not. There is no “force” involved. If you want to use their service but not abide by their policies then your ethics aren’t in question, they are demonstrably non-existent.

 

[N. Kentucky Bass]

Aside from breaking reverb's terms of conditions, this scenario is like buying something from a guy on a local craig's list 2,000 miles away.

 

[JDA04OSU]

Is the seller in the US? If not, I'd have very little doubt that it's a scam. If they are, well... I'd still avoid it because it always feels sketchy when someone is trying to push me off the site.
PayPal, with all its claims of buyer protection, can be difficult to deal with once you've been victim to fraud on Reverb.

As an aside, Reverb is overrun with scammers and my experiences in the past year are a testament to that. I made the mistake of jumping on a too-good-to-be-true deal on a Fender Jazz Elite (coming from Australia)... after some kind TB'ers talked some sense to me, I attempted to cancel the order within just a couple hours. Notified both Reverb and PayPal of my suspicions for fraud the same day, and both were content to let the whole thing play out.

Seller then sent a 2 lb package to a different address in my zipcode and provided tracking that made it look like it was delivered, though without a specific address listed on UPS tracking. Seller sends PayPal a scan of a label that looks like it was addressed to me. Even though this was the exact scam I predicted to Reverb and PayPal customer service, I got nowhere. PayPal sides with the seller since their fraud bot believes shipping was confirmed. Reverb does nothing but tell me they'll be happy to work with PayPal if I have any issues (though there's really no way to make the 2 talk to each other).

Nobody seems to care that an electric bass sold from Australia ends up being a 2 lb package sent from Germany. Tried appealing but wasn't getting anywhere. PayPal then bowed out completely when I took the dispute over to AmEx. AmEx initially made the same default decision to side with the seller based on tracking, until I was able to show them that UPS confirmed by email that the recipient address on the package did not match my address. The whole thing took about 2 months and a lot of wasted time to get my money back.

I can say with certainty that this particular scam is common on there, as I have seen 2 of my own personal bass listings (originating from my Craigslist ads) get re-posted to Reverb with partially copied/pasted descriptions, coming from foreign countries, at below market price. I have also gotten numerous bogus messages from buyers on my actual Reverb listings, asking me to email them to discuss a sale. To me, the platform seems pretty unsafe at baseline. So I'm easily sketched out by what was described in the OP.

 

[jdwinva]

If Reverb finds out that the deal was done outside the platform they will typically the seller.

 

[Jack Butler]

Definitely a scam against Reverb by you and the seller to deny Reverb fees for hosting your sale, one that neither of you would have entered or known of without Reverb's service. Some view this as theft, others see "violation of user agreements" for buyer and seller, while the majority chant, "screw Reverb" or "stick it to the man."

Make sure to pay "friends and family" for the next associated buyer and seller scam of a transaction such as this (denial of fee to legitimate service provider by payer misrepresentation).

Then, if you get scammed by the seller, you'll be in good company of parties scammed in the transaction. Misery loves company, so maybe consolation would be that you weren't the only injured party in a scam you perpetuated.

I have to agree. As much as I think Reverb's pricing model is not what I'd prefer, and the state tax on used items is total fraud by the government(not Reverb's fault), using their platform to advertise and then completing the sale offline is not cool. Reverb is upfront about their(bad) pricing model. So if you don't like it, you should sell elsewhere in my opinion.

 

[Grahams Groove]

Amazing how many folks are worried about ' ethics' in regards to a corporation that couldn't care less about you. I have zero love lost for Etsy.
They force you to purchase " shipping protection" for higher dollar orders. Problem is there is no protection. The item is NOT insured through whatever carrier you have purchased a label through. They take your money and hedge their bets the item will arrive safely. If its damaged they will fight the seller tooth and nail looking for a way out. I've had several unsavory experiences as a seller and a buyer that required weeks to straighten out. Also they protect big volume sellers, on several occasions I've gotten a misrepresented product and had a heck of a time returning it even when sellers policy allowed it. In one instance the seller, a store with 5000+ feedback threatened me and called me 4 letter words. I finally got a refund but was not able to leave negative feedback nor did the seller suffer any consequences even messaging me again after the refund to mock me. Their suggestion " ignore them"
Why use them? eBay is a ghost town, gbase never got off the ground and talkbass is good but not a slam dunk.

Eventually competition will undercut their greed and lack of customer service.

Sweetwater is working on a marketplace as we speak.


Ethics aside a Paypal goods and services transaction is just as secure as any deal you'll do on talkbass

This. I'm surprised how many people put the ethical ball 100% in the end-user's court given the climate of corporate behavior and policies.

Yes, a buyer and seller are "choosing" to use the platform. No, this does not mean they want to - it is a result of a lack of options/competition since CL is local, TB is niche, and ebay is a dinosaur. Aren't we seeing the same thing in Reverb that we did from ebay monopolizing the online sales platform for so long? Increased fees, declining customer service, less protection for users, more scams, more huge businesses using it and getting perks you mentioned, etc...

I don't understand why so many humans are so willing to apply ethical and moral value judgements to themselves and their peers, without batting an eye at the fact that large companies/corps have no desire to adhere to the same set of rules. In fact, they'll often leverage their scale/power/money to ensure policies don't get in their way and often become more favorable for them. If someone sees my listing on Reverb as well as TB/Ebay/Instagram/Facebook, and they hit me up on the latter platforms, I'm happy to use whatever route I deem safe and cost effective for the two parties doing the negotiating. If Sweetwater, Guitar Center, and some other sites become major players in the P2P/used gear market in the coming years, that could change my decision as it drives real competition.

 

[buldog5151bass]

@Grahams Groove

Yes, it IS a voluntary choice. You don't want to use Reverb, use CL, FBM, newspaper classified, other on line sources, etc. Even better, YOU spend the time and money to develop your OWN selling website. No one is holding a weapon to your temple. If you want to use the services of a company, abide by their rules. Don't think the rules are ethical, don't use the company.

 

[instrumentlevel]

The term that folks are looking for is "commutative justice." This is a widely used concept in law and ethics covering a specific type of interaction between people or groups of people: namely right action in exchanges. Justice is done when parties to a contract live up to what they said they'd do in that contract. If either party fails to do what they agreed to (or "commute to the other"), they are said to be failing to act justly—or as people generally say it, they are wrong.

And it doesn't matter if one side doesn't like the terms of the contract. The terms may suck and the other party to the contract may suck, but if one freely agreed to the contract, one has to abide by them. (For instance, when a mortgage gets sold by a bank to a scummy mortgage company one might not like, it doesn't become any less of a valid contract.)

In this case, the Terms of Service is the contract one agrees to.

Of course, there are always exceptions (like fraud, etc.). But not liking the deal after after the contract is signed is not considered grounds for breaking it (as Elon was on the way to finding out). And that includes changes that a party makes to the contract if they are allowed by the contract to do so—and Reverb's TOS says that they can.

One may think that Reverb sucks in various ways, but it also does have its benefits. But the principle of Commutative Justice suggests that if one agrees to the ToS, one is obligated to live up to them (even those one didn't read because, well, terms and conditions).

That companies suck is also true. And folks should work to change their practices. But that's a different issue (covered under social and distributed justice) and that sort of change is rarely made by not fulfilling contracts.

And to be clear, I'm just describing a broadly accepted legal and moral concept. Others can evaluate the situation on their own.

Just thought that might be a handy term. Carry on...

 

[Scott Lynch]

The purpose of a site like Reverb is not just to provide an online marketplace for people all over the world to sell gear. This is, of course, an amazing benefit, especially for a relatively small community like ours with niche gear interests. How likely is it that someone in one’s local community has the exact bass, pedal, etc. that they want? Reverb connects people that otherwise wouldn't, and does it well.

Another, perhaps more important facet of the site is to establish a trusted place for musicians to have a specialized marketplace for new and used gear. Knowing that a third party is there to help in the case that a bad actor is on the other side is a reassuring prospect for many. Many, but clearly not all.

The internet has changed many things about how we live life today, and those changes range from great to awful. One awful thing is the sheer number of people who use the anonymity provided by the 'net to rip off others. It makes sense, right? If one were going to do that, wouldn't it be preferable to know as little about the person they were scamming as possible to minimize the guilt?

Knowing this, the fees associated with Reverb, eBay, PayPal Goods & Services transactions are worth it to me. I don't have to worry about trusting the person I am dealing with because these companies have staked a reputation on ensuring that online transactions go smoothly and that scammers are dealt with. In other words, those companies are selling us their trust. If they can't follow through on that, what incentive would we have to use their services?

It does amaze me how much trust some folks place in these fee-free and thus protection-fee transactions. Sure, there are lots of trustworthy people out there, but one can never truly know if they're dealing with a scammer in these types of situations until it's too late.

 

[Grahams Groove]

@Grahams Groove

Yes, it IS a voluntary choice.

I know - I clearly stated that in my post...

Yes, a buyer and seller are "choosing" to use the platform.

@Grahams Groove
You don't want to use Reverb, use CL, FBM, newspaper classified, other on line sources, etc. Even better, YOU spend the time and money to develop your OWN selling website. No one is holding a weapon to your temple. If you want to use the services of a company, abide by their rules. Don't think the rules are ethical, don't use the company.

I do use all of the above, except paper classifieds. I'm not a software engineer or a web developer. So I won't be developing my own platform. Thanks for the suggestion though - will spend some time mulling that over this weekend.

You seem to like hyperbole - nobody said Reverb was holding a gun to their head. I don't think all of Reverb's rules/policies are unethical or 'bad'. I bought/sold through Reverb often, especially before their price hikes and waning customer support hit after the buyout. As someone who has been using their site for ~5.5 years, I had no issue with the policies and fees during the first half of that. In fact, I have no issue with paying them their cut if I list something there now and sell it to someone who closed the transaction through the site. That provides a great service for both of us, and I'm not a person who asks to go offline for deals brokered on Reverb to avoid paying the service fee.

That said, there's an argument that I'm not violating their terms of service if I make the effort to list my gear on multiple platforms/marketplaces, and a buyer chooses to contact me through a non-reverb platform. I've also seen gear on Reverb, realized it was a local seller, and then found their CL/FB/TB ad and contacted them that way. Call it justification, but I browse TB, Reverb, Craigslist (nationally), and FBM thoroughly when I need something. Which one I search first is completely arbitrary. So I don't see Reverb as a broker of a deal if I happen to search there first, and subsequently see that same listing on one of the other platforms I choose to utilize.

 

[Gorilla Monsoon]

This debate has devolved from the OP’s original concern, one of whether or not the listing in question was legit to a discussion addressing the ethic of circumventing excessive fee(s) inherent with the site in question- Reverb- and any voluntary decision to avoid these fees that CL and TB avoid. We are CAPITALISTS!!! If the owners of Reverb refuse to recognize the fact that out of state taxation is hurting their business, they need to zig when their competitors zag. IMO, the onus of advertising on Reverb and settling outside the site rests solely on the seller: the buyer is simply being smart to follow suit. Rest assured the owners of Etsy are a relative Goliath to their customers’ David here. They enjoy corporate protection, their customers are forced to pay redundant fees that make fair pricing for used gear impossible. In order to realize a minimum of 25% off on said gear simply cannot be done if the site takes 5%, state tax another 7%, and PayPal another 3%- thats 15%!!!...SOMEONE is getting fat here, and once again, ad nauseum, it is not the consumer. This is a true double standard here.Why is the consumer expected to be ethical when corporate entities are not???

 

[Wilmingtonian]

I know - I clearly stated that in my post...





I do use all of the above, except paper classifieds. I'm not a software engineer or a web developer. So I won't be developing my own platform. Thanks for the suggestion though - will spend some time mulling that over this weekend.

You seem to like hyperbole - nobody said Reverb was holding a gun to their head. I don't think all of Reverb's rules/policies are unethical or 'bad'. I bought/sold through Reverb often, especially before their price hikes and waning customer support hit after the buyout. As someone who has been using their site for ~5.5 years, I had no issue with the policies and fees during the first half of that. In fact, I have no issue with paying them their cut if I list something there now and sell it to someone who closed the transaction through the site. That provides a great service for both of us, and I'm not a person who asks to go offline for deals brokered on Reverb to avoid paying the service fee.

That said, there's an argument that I'm not violating their terms of service if I make the effort to list my gear on multiple platforms/marketplaces, and a buyer chooses to contact me through a non-reverb platform. I've also seen gear on Reverb, realized it was a local seller, and then found their CL/FB/TB ad and contacted them that way. Call it justification, but I browse TB, Reverb, Craigslist (nationally), and FBM thoroughly when I need something. Which one I search first is completely arbitrary. So I don't see Reverb as a broker of a deal if I happen to search there first, and subsequently see that same listing on one of the other platforms I choose to utilize.

No one, no one, is saying you owe Reverb anything if you make a deal not initiated through Reverb. Not even Reverb says that. But seeing it on Reverb then seeking out the buyer through another means is a different story. Yes, it is a justification to you but that doesn't mean you are justified.

 

[LBS-bass]

Calling foul because it's foul.

Exactly. Why would you trust a seller who is already advertising their dishonesty?

When you use a service, pay for the service. Sites like that are not there to provide free advertising.

As for all the other rationalizations, sorry. Two wrongs will never make a right.

 

[Wilmingtonian]

This debate has devolved from the OP’s original concern, one of whether or not the listing in question was legit to a discussion addressing the ethic of circumventing excessive fee(s) inherent with the site in question- Reverb- and any voluntary decision to avoid these fees that CL and TB avoid. We are CAPITALISTS!!! If the owners of Reverb refuse to recognize the fact that out of state taxation is hurting their business, they need to zig when their competitors zag. IMO, the onus of advertising on Reverb and settling outside the site rests solely on the seller: the buyer is simply being smart to follow suit. Rest assured the owners of Etsy are a relative Goliath to their customers’ David here. They enjoy corporate protection, their customers are forced to pay redundant fees that make fair pricing for used gear impossible. In order to realize a minimum of 25% off on said gear simply cannot be done if the site takes 5%, state tax another 7%, and PayPal another 3%- thats 15%!!!...SOMEONE is getting fat here, and once again, ad nauseum, it is not the consumer. This is a true double standard here.Why is the consumer expected to be ethical when corporate entities are not???

Another guy using the word "forced."
Also, buyers are, per Reverb's Code of Conduct, forbidden from cooperating in taking transactions off-site.