Most of us know that the statement the Guitar makes the Guitarist is not true, but lets face it know one wants to play a guitar that you need an iron grip to keep it from buzzing.
And no one wants to play a guitar that sounds like you took it out back and beat it with a baseball bat a couple of times.
That is why no one dreams of playing a $100 Walmart special (no offence if you own a $100 Walmart Special). Not everyone can afford a six or seven hundred dollar guitar, that is where places like Ebay come in handy.
Did you shutter when you heard me talk about buying an instrument off the Internet? I know I would have a couple years back. You might be surprised hear that you can actually feel pretty safe about buying an instruments from Ebay. It’s not that you can’t buy a guitar off other Online classifieds sites (and there are a lot of them, check out this list of free classified sites), it’s just that they don’t give you the security that Ebay does.
The trick is to distinguish from those trying to rip you off and those that are honest. This lesson is all about how you can feel confident about the product you are buying and the person selling it to you on Ebay.
The Description
The first thing to look at is the description and the pictures. They should tell you if it has any problems or scratches. It is important to read the description carefully. If the seller is going to trick you it is going to be in the description.
Here are some tips that can help you to determine whether or not you are being tricked by the description page on Ebay.
Is it Too Good to Be True?
If it seems like it is too good to be true it probably is. If you see a thousand dollar guitar for sale for fifty bucks, it is probably too good to be true.
One time I was on Ebay and I saw an ad that said they were selling 80 gig ipods for $15. I read over the description about 10 times before I finally realized he was trying to con me into buying a raffle ticket that could possibly win an 80 gig ipod.
My point is make sure you are paying $400 for a stratocaster, not a $400 stratocaster case.
Seller Feedback
Another very important thing to look at is the feedback and score of the seller. The feedback is the number with a percentage and basically it is a happiness meter. It represents the average feedback of each person that he has either bought or sold from. If the seller is tricking people in the description, people will give him a negative feedback, which will affect his overall percentage.
The feedback is located on the right hand side under the subheading Meet the Seller (Pictured below) this is the number with a percentage right next to the word feedback. It will say something like 99.7% positive.
Bad Service or a False Description Gets Bad Feedback
Different offences will rate accordingly. If the item comes a day or two late he might get bumped down to a 99% or a 98%. If the item has a false description it may get a 50% or lower and that will dramatically affect their overall feedback.
Number of Sales
Another thing to look at is how many times have they sold or bought on ebay. This is located next to the user name. In the case of picture above the username is Shoguitars and he has sold 1889 items. The larger number of sales and buys a user has the better. This adds power to the feedback percentage the seller got. Shoguitars has an average percentage of 99.7% from 1889 people. You can feel pretty confident he is not going to rip you off.
If you want to look more into the seller’s feedback and see individual feedback ratings you can click on See Detailed Feedback under Meet the Seller. This will show you the sellers record of comments and individual feedback percentages. You can see how many positive and negative ratings the seller got and you can also read why someone gave the seller a good or bad rating.
Hopefully these suggestions will help you in buying items off of ebay and help you to feel more comfortable with buying instruments off of the internet.