most of the stuff I sell is done locally on an adverts site, and it’s mostly all done in person either having some random possible psycho arrive at your house or meeting someone in a shady carpark.
it always feels like a weird tinder date… or dogging 
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I feel it’s best to go thru eBay or Reverb just cuz there is seller/buyer history. I roll fees into my price.
I have MADE CERTAIN anything you buy from me is top notch. If there are any issues I state them. Like when I sold my Juno 106 for, I think it was $100 or $200, I noted a dying voice chip, left out was shaky and wear.
Never have to “sell” something to someone. They either buy it or they don’t. No meet ups, no getting shanked in the parking lot 
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I had a guitar for sale on Reverb. I really just wanted to ship it, like most things I sell on there, because it’s easiest just to take it to work where UPS comes daily for pickups.
One guy sent some enthusiastic messages, but wanted to save a little money on shipping. He had over an hour drive, and wanted me to meet him half way. I explained that I was not interested in doing that. So he said he would come pick it up, but wanted a discount for that. I told him that there are no discounts for pickups. So he suggested circumventing Reverb, and he would just use Paypal. That way I could reduce the price a little, and I would make it up by not paying Reverb fee’s. Ok, fine, no problem. Then he couldn’t find a time to meet up. But he was definitely going to buy it, so he asked if I could take the Reverb listing down until we complete this transaction. Sure, no problem. This part went on for another couple weeks. Then he asked me to drive all the way out to him to drop it off. I told him that he would have to pay extra for that, and he agreed. Then he changed his mind on that. Then he decided that he didn’t want to just pay through PayPal, and that he wanted to go back to using Reverb. That was no problem for me, as I had already resisted it on Reverb, because this was all taking so long.
This all went on for weeks, and the sale to him never came to fruition. It sold not long after that to someone else in another state. I think about that guitar sometimes, on a warm summer day such as today, with the clouds in the sky, and the things doing things.
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Ha!
“Mate, you either pay the full price, or you’ve driven two hours for nothing”
Collection from home has always worried me. I’d rather not let random people see my stuff.
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I was selling my OP-1 a few years back when I was living in London. Some kiddies from Brighton got in touch. They had a gig in London apparently and said they’d be there by around 11-12 at night latest. I said that was fine, sent them the address on Ridge Road in North London and made sure to send a pin on Google maps so they knew where it was. Anyway, get a call at 2 in the morning saying they’re outside. I go out, street is dead silent, no one around, so ask them to describe what’s around them. They’re clearly very drunk btw. Anyway, eventually I realise they’re at some other Ridge Road on the other side of the city. They eventually made it at 3:30 in the morning, bought it straight away and then ran through the streets carrying the OP-1 above their heads, shouting ‘woohoo we got it’ etc etc. My neighbours were not happy. All I can say is it’s a good job I was working nights at the time and didn’t go to bed earlier than 4 or 5. Kinda felt happy for them tho, bless ‘em
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Very good story! Reminds me of my first time in Berlin, I was supposed to go to a “Müller Straße”. It is a huge one and an airplane could easily land there. Instead I found myself in the middle of a farming area in the middle of the night, the other “Müller Straße” was a dead end between a barn and and a swamp.
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Fortunately I never had such problems.
Always very courteous people, some of them became friends.
The guy that bought the PreenFM2 I had assembled even invited me twice to play a 1 hour set for his birthday 
I rather like such times spent with other musicians, talking about/playing with/demoing the gear.
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Nothing to do with music gear, but last Autumn, The Duchess decided that she wanted rid of the sofa futon in the spare room. She said we should sell in on a local buy and sell website. I supplied her with pictures, measurements and even a link to the exact sofa on The Futon Company’s website, as I thought the £600 original price and our £50 tag would clinch a quick sale.
Within an hour of it being on, she gets an email from Margreet, saying it was perfect and she’d be round in an hour. Margreet and her husband Gerald arrived an hour later and proceeded to go over everything with a fine tooth comb. She then asked if I could reassemble it, so she could see it properly? I explained that I had obviously broken it down to get it downstairs and for the buyer’s ease of transport. She said she couldn"t really get a proper idea from the photos and website link. At this point, I should done as @Leo-iSL did and escort them from the property, but as The Duchess was in attendance and she gave me “the look” I dutifully obliged.
45 minutes later, it was built and M&G sat in it, swapped places and sat in it some more. I then had to pull it out into “bed mode” and they lay on it, only to swap sides and lay on it some more.
“Oh, it’s lovely. It’s so comfortable. It’s actually more comfortable than our bed, isn’t it Gerald?” she said.
“Oh yes dear” Gereld replied like he probably replies to everything she ever says to him.
We then went through this whole “well, how will we get it home?” nonsense. I asked where they lived, as they walked round? They said just around the corner. I asked what kind of car they had, the replied “A Volvo V90 Estate”
Very specific but oh so predictable I though but I told them I’d transported in the back of my Audi A4 estate with ease and the Volvo was bigger. Much umming and arhing ensued.
By this time, I’d had just about enough. The Duchess has buggered off, so I volunteered to drive it round myself. Margreet said “Oh no, we don’t want to put you to any inconvenience. Gerald, do you think it will fit in the mobile home?”
“Well, probably not assembled Dear” was his blindingly fucking obvious retort.
At this point, I started checking for hidden cameras in my garage and up the street, as I thought these people must be on the wind up!
She then said she needed to go home and measure the gap into which the thing was going, but they would take it and did I want a £5 deposit? I laughed and said I trusted them.
Half an hour later, she emails The Duchess to tell her that unfortunately, it would not fit and they were really after a 5ft 6" futon.
THE THING WAS 5FT 6". IT SAID IT IN THE AD AND ON THE LINK TO THE WEBSITE!!!
Cut to early Lockdown and I had to put my push bike in to the local bike shop for a service as it was totally knackered and beyond my sorry abilities. The bike shop, although open, were obviously practicing social distancing and serving everyone outside the shop. There was a long cue, but the couple at the front had the bike shop chap going in and out, getting every single helmet they had, de-boxing them and trying them on thus presumably rendering them unsellable afterwards. I stood there for an hour, gradually moving up the cue as another bod was serving as well. When I got closer, I realised it was our old friends Margreet and Gerald. When I was nearly about to be served, Margreet told the young man (who was a bit of a fuckwit) that she would go home and have a think as to which helmet she would have.
I guess some people just enjoy wasting their and other people’s time.
Apologies if I have wasted yours.
Edit: I would have loved to be able to follow @Fin25 's lead and punched them in the back of the head, but being a confirmed pacifist, it’s possible not the best course of action! 
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They sound like the twats I saw in a frighteningly packed tescos today comparing (and therefore touching) identical packs of baby vests. And when I say identical, I mean identical, in size, colour, packaging, price etc. They must have looked at at least half a dozen identical packs and stood there for a good few minutes before deciding they’d touched enough and left without any of them.
God I hate people.
Sorry for the slight thread hijack.
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I suppose this applies/is on-topic:
About 20 years ago, one of my first eBay sells was a $2000 88-key Fatar MIDI keyboard. The buyer was a school teacher who was buying it with school funds for his classroom. A week or so later PayPal reversed the funds in my account and opened an investigation. Turned out the guy was a teacher but was misusing school funds. I eventually got my money back.
Another guy bought my Sager gaming laptop and claimed that the internals were missing. Had some IT guys help me out there. Macaroni and cheese address, etc. Turns out he did this regularly. PayPal locked the funds, we supplied them with all the evidence, plus I had a perfect record with eBay and PayPal. Took 2 months, feds were involved, and his ass got deported back to Russia. Got my money back too.
Over 500 transactions and only a couple of hiccups in over 20 years. Stopped selling a few years ago, got tired of taking photos of every square inch, maintaining my html selling templates, low-ballers, scam attempts, etc. Selling guitars is especially painful. Never know what UPS/FedEX will do but I box well. Good idea for buyers to video-tape the ‘unboxing’ and testing, in case it’s damaged or is missing parts. Plenty of malicious sellers too.
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I try to avoid eBay when it comes to selling music gear. Had some absolute nightmares on there.
Never had issues on collection, but I don’t fuck about. I think that comes across pretty clearly in person. Always happy to show something works properly, but I’m not a demo room.
People will take the piss if they think they can get away with it.
I went to check out a Mother 32 a while back, asked if I could check quickly that everything’s in order, and whether it was totally smoke-free. The guy said yes, absolutely, but of course I showed up and the Moog smelt like it’d spent the majority of its days smoking meth in a brothel. I very politely walked away, and then got bombarded with ten or so messages detailing how he was going to rape and kill my family.
I’m not sure about this ‘no demos’ policy some of you have, with timewasters in mind. Would you hand over hundreds / thousands for a piece of gear with zero clue if it even works at all?? But after this experience I’m more inclined to buy and sell online if possible
I do think “no timewasters” might put off some people from pissing you about. But it also comes across as pretty unfriendly, and given the choice I’ll buy from someone who doesn’t write things like that, as they’ll likely be cooler to deal with
Did you report to police? I would.
No. He had no way of tracking me down, but he was a proper intimidating dude… Balkan mafia vibes. Didn’t want the stress of going down that road
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Talking of reporting things to the Police,
There’s the 2nd night of a party going on in the next road up and a load of pissed/nos’d up Grammar school kids singing Coldplay and Ed Sheeran very badly at the top of their voices (not that you can sing that shit well)
Mummy and Daddy are obviously both away at their second home or whatnot. A bloke has just gone mental screaming at them to be quiet with no success.
Now I like to party… everybody does! (Shut it Cheaton!) But as I said, it’s gone 1, it is night 2 of this bullshit and I’m getting seriously fucked off with it. I LOATH COLDPLAY WITH A PASSION YOU CAN ONLY DREAM OF!!.
Is calling the Ol’Bill a waste of their time?
Your advice please?
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About 25 years ago I had an Akai s700 sampler and boss dr550 drum machine I wanted to get rid of and saw a local ad for a korg M3r for sale. I thought I want that, multitimbral etc, so I rang the ad and asked the guy if he would do a trade for the Akai and boss. He ummed and arred and then said he’d have to look at them cos he didn’t know what they were. So I agreed to come to his house. When I got there the guy was about 80 years old and all he had was this m3r and some keyboard and speakers, think he just used the piano sounds on it to mess around with , and it seemed like all his family were there to check he wasn’t getting scammed, children and grandchildren etc. Anyway I set up the sampler and drum machine and showed him and his kids were like, dad what are you going to do with them, and I loaded up some daft sounds and said look you can sample anything and play it blah blah, and his body language was like I don’t really want these. But I wanted the m3r and this went on for about an hour, and eventually he caved in and did the trade
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Preach, id so much rather sell anything but a guitar, or buy for that matter. I largely don’t f with used guitars because the market is the worst out of any hobby I’ve had so far. I’ll pay the premium
Walk over there with a 4 pack of your own cans and mingle, they’ll leave fairly quickly
Not sure whether I need to look either more or less scary
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Maybe it’s this old boy?
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He looked about 30 years older than him god knows what he did with the sampler after I’d left
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