Is buying from Reverb.com pretty safe?
I usually do Ebay and haven't tried Reverb.
Anything to look out for?
I've only purchased one item but it went smooth. I have sold a couple of things on there too without any issues. I'd say go for it.
I've bought and sold on Reverb. It seems much safer than Ebay and the fees are less too.
Bought and sold there. I haven't had to test what happens when a deal goes bad but as long as you are paying with credit card or paypal you have some recourse as a buyer.
I haven't bought anything, but I've sold a few things with great success. I wouldn't hesitate to buy there, unless the seller or post looks really sketchy
It's legit.
No problems here.. To much of my money has traveled through Reverb.com, just ask my wife.
Cody
You probably have the idea by now....
...but I'll add my .02 anyway. ;)
I've bought a few times from Reverb, never a problem.
I think they do their best to weed out the sketchy ones.
Had one experience with a seller that was terrible. Poorly described item. Packed a guitar body in a cardboard box with 2" of space on all sides. The only padding was 4 pieces of junk mail. I mean... come on. Had some good dings and scratches. Forgot - it also took two weeks to get it in the mail. After a very slow conversation, I finally had reverb step in, who basically asked how much money do you refunded, and the money showed up in a few days. The guy was a total skeez, but Reverb was completely awesome. Have used them quite a bit since then too... just paying more attention to reviews
Bought and sold a bunch on there with no issues.
Cool, thanks guys.
I figured it was fine but at least wanted to hear from some people
I've bought and sold plenty on Reverb. I don't always agree with all of their policies, but at least they give rationalizations for what they do (and mostly they make sense to me).
My gripe on the seller side -- and this only applies if you are running a business and keeping books -- is that they split out the fees in multiple places. For example, the actual item-sold fee (including bump cost, if any) is assessed monthly in a lump invoice for all items sold that month, while the credit card processing fee and shipping label cost is deducted from the payout amount. So you have to look at least two places to get an itemized view of the cost structure. There's no single statement that has everything on it. If you're just doing a simple setup with a single account for Sales and a single account for Expenses, it's no bother. But for FFX, we have the expense types sliced/diced to track with our invoices. So it's more work every time we sell something on Reverb.
BTW, we have an "outlet" store for blems and one-offs: https://reverb.com/shop/function-f-x-outlet-store ;D
I love Reverb.com it's great imho. I'm sure there have been exceptions, but I've found Reverb to be much more hassle free or safe than eBay. I just wish more people would use it. The only benefit, again in my opinion, of eBay is that there is much more traffic/buyers.
A colleague of mine is the 'guy on the ground' here in Australia. Good, passionate person and knows his ~gear~. I think any qualms should be with the seller, though I'm sure if something went wrong they'd sort it out for you.