Reverb slapped Ebay into submission ¡No mas No mas !

So glad to have a MUCH BETTER buying & selling marketplace, with REVERB- so far i havent had any problems with rip-offs on Verb. If their shooters, they'll be fair & even handed- looking at all the evidence! Wish there were a TOOL REVERB!! Anyone know where i go to update my payment info??

 

I don't like Reverb because there's no way to filter by location.

 

And... That is why Reverb will still win this battle... for musical instruments at least.

 

Not necessarily true.

A couple years ago, I bought a used laptop (from a corporate lease), knew before hand the battery was toast so ordered one of the (new). Also knew the HD was tiny (20G), probably since their sales force would plug them into a charging dock at the end of the day and automatically download everything new.

Ordered a new much larger HD.

Was supposed to have been wiped and reformatted, came with a new licensed copy of Windows.

When I got it I was looking through it, and saw files going back 3 years. Had not in fact been wiped or reformatted.

When I removed the old HD (easier than most, since it was right on the side 1 screw and a plastic cover were all it took) and slotted in the new one, booted the machine it didn't recognize a HD.

Put the original back in, and still couldn't see one was there.

I was taking computer science classes at the time, and took it in to my hardware professor. She looked at it and diagnosed a bad motherboard.

Emailed the seller telling him what I'd found, and how. Requested a refund as "item not as described" (hadn't been wiped for reformatted AT ALL).

Seller told me it had been, "I can assure you that every laptop that comes through here has been wiped and reformatted. It was tested and working 100% when it left our shop. Anything that you did MUST have damaged it. Therefore I will not be issuing any refund."

I opened a case with feeBay, and they after a day sided with the seller.

Probably should have emailed him that I'd found some company's files going back 3 years.

 

I only buy and sell on Reverb now for music gear. I might buy the odd thing I need on eBay once in awhile.

 

I sell on both but Reverb is so much easier to deal with! Got a problem? Easy to get thru to them.

 

Another satisfied Reverb customer weighing in here.

 

I have sold on both. Other than a few odd listings, I have stopped selling on ebay. As a seller, Reverb is a much easier platform. If you manufacture or re-sell your items, you can put a cost of goods with the item, and Reverb will calculate your net profit on your statements. That's a big plus for me. Another big plus is that you have technical assistance pretty much instantly with their chat window. With ebay, I would sometimes have to wait 2-3 days before I received a response that wasn't automated.

 

I think it's important to consider (every tech company's) business model. My guess is this is the reason some very simple tools a buyer might want aren't available.

You can't change how many items load per page, because every page has the Reverb Bump at the top, which represents a very small amount of money with every page load, paid by the sellers who have bought Bump points. If the buyers could navigate the site more easily/directly, there would be fewer page loads.

I think all the items marked 'Local Pickup Only' are annoying, and similarly there is no way I know to filter them out.

Every once in a while I see a camera or other consumer electronics on the site. I wonder if Reverb will squash that to maintain the integrity of music gear only shopping, or if they will try to grow into something more like ebay (yuck).

Edit: this is all guesswork, because tech companies often don't like to make their business model obvious

 

Ebay's turned into a crap site. I buy alot of stuff on ebay for business, obscure electronic repair items etc. It takes forever to find anything, after you enter a gazillion search words to exclude all the nonpertinent items, in the meantime popups all over the screen - before you can even read the results of the search, and crap that really means nothing like "5789 people searched for this" - why do I need to know this?

many,many times my "watched list" won't load, it will tell me "try again" or "you don have a watched list" Its just too unwieldy, no place for user feedback - they really don't care what people want .

I've bought over a 1,000 items off ebay and if there are better places to get things, beleive me I go there first. Ebay is the last resort, if I can't find it anywhere else. Been on ebay since very early days and it doesn't seemed to have improved at all in the last decade, it was much better early 2000's.

 

EBay is the walmart of the web. I only go there when I have to and have no other choice. They've rolled out the red carpet for fraud and abuse. No thanks.

 

Ok, so no one is mentioning the prices on Reverb are really high compared to other places you can find gear and instruments. Anyone care to address that? Not saying I love ebay either because I don't with all their fees. There are other places however where you can find items cheaper than Reverb, which is why sellers love it.

 

I recently bought some tuners on ebay, the tuners were gold, the screws and grommets were chrome. I tried to contact the seller, no dice. I had to request a refund, to do this I had to link a bank account?? Really? So I have requested a refund, although I do not want a refund, I want the incorrect parts replaced, no option for that. I haven't heard anything from ebay or the seller. At this point, I can only assume I need to find a way to paint the grommets and screws gold. If I dont' hear something by the end of the week, I am leaving negative feedback for the seller and probably closing my ebay account.

 

I used to think that, but there are several examples of where Reverb is actually cheaper, here is only one.

TC Electronic Spark Mini Booster Used

https://reverb.com/item/4777705-tc-electronic-spark-mini-booster-used
$40+$10 shipping

http://www.ebay.com/itm/TC-Electron...472903?hash=item46633a4147:g:PqcAAOSwkShY991-

$53.29+$5.25 shipping


If you want cheap, then check out aliexpress or dhgate
$16.14+$1.05 shipping

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Min...lgo_pvid=6316fc0c-7817-41dd-8b54-c74447d843bd

 

Ebay is the safest place to buy and the most dangerous place to sell. So don't sell there.

 

Somehow I still find the better deals on ebay. It seems much of the gear on Reverb is priced a little high. Any time I try to find a Weber speaker on Reverb it seems like they cost more used, than if I had bought one straight from Weber.

I've not had much luck selling gear on Reverb, either

 

Gear is such a trivial % of E-Bay while it is 100% of Reverb. Seems to reason if you are selling gear to gearheads that is the way to go.

 

I buy high end pro audio gear i.e. mics, fx processors, comps and EQs. Reverb.com is exceptionally bloated in that category as well as guitars and amps. They cater to the Rock Star crowd who will pay those prices to have the best gear.

As much as I hate ebay, you can still get a score there. But overall yeah, buy on ebay, sell on Reverb to maximize your needs.

 

I lament the fact that ebay still has such general domain over the online auction business. I surmise that everyone would like to see more competition.

One of the things that has made ebay a less hospitable place is beyond its control, and that is all the attempted fraud in the world. The policies to counter the fraud make it a more difficult place to do business.

 

If what you received is not what you ordered, you qualify for a refund. The seller is then given the option of paying the return shipping or losing his item. When you get the wrong item from China, there is no way they are going to pay the return shipping.

I bought a Fender MIM Strat neck at auction ($135+shipping) that was described as in great condition with minor fret wear and when it arrived, several frets were worn down to the fretboard and there were deep gouges on the back. The seller sent postage to get his neck back and when the tracking indicated it had arrived, eBay refunded.

If you are a scammer, unloading crap, yes, someone might complain and you are responsible on eBay. I think that Paypal also takes a very dim view of careless sellers and will get you a refund within six months of a sale. This is definitely not a no-questions-asked process, but yes, when you sell on eBay you risk dealing with unreasonable people. Just like real life.