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Safe audiogon transactions; lowering the bar.

It appears to me that a large number of people send bank
checks / money orders to pay for used equipment sight
unseen. Most private sellers insist upon this form of
payment. The culture appears to require buyers to take
significant risk in order to benefit from lower prices.

Although this is not surprising in itself, it seems to me
that Audiogon could preserve the long term health of this
website, and its priviledges with more proactive policies.

e.g. providing guidelines on how to conduct a proper
transaction; a list of important questions to ask,
what the seller / buyer should have in writing before
a transaction should proceed, and perhaps provide a
summary of the most common problems which develop between
sellers and buyers.

There are nagging questions: Who owns the equipment once
it has been shipped? Who should be insured?

Perhaps some experienced sellers and buyers would share
their own approach to transactions on this site and how
they get people to put their best foot forward despite
themselves.
hindemith

Showing 1 response by kthomas

kthomas
911 posts
 
I agree with Lakefrontroad that if buyer or seller is out to rip off their counterpart, it's going to happen. Furthermore, as his $16K example shows, if it does happen, don't kid yourself that you're going to somehow use the arms of justice to rectify the situation. You're going to find a way to deal with losing $16K.

I lost $1800 to DSSMAN last summer with the phony COD check. It taught me that 1)a phony COD check looks pretty darn good if you only glance at it, 2) that anybody who wants to pass off a phony cashiers check for COD can, and 3) if you receive a phony cashiers check as payment for COD, the only real retribution you have is to spend a lot of time talking to law enforcement agencies about how they can't do anything for you. Mind you, they were very attentive and responsive, they just truly couldn't do anything about it.

I probably won't do COD as a seller again, based on the fact that I have positive feedback here and on ebay established over a couple years and that I'm easily contactable and verifiable that I am who I say I am. That said, I might do it again as well - in retrospect, I probably broke every rule about insuring a positive transaction that I have ever defined in getting burned. Almost any of them, if self-enforced, would have allowed me to avoid that. IOW, shame on me.

I didn't have a transaction for many months after DSSMAN, largely because I didn't want to buy or sell anything, but partially because it left an obvious bad taste in my mouth. Recently, I both bought and sold items over $1K and both transactions went totally smoothly and were very satisfying. Once again capturing the good feeling of getting great performance for a fraction of the cost and remembering that I've saved oh so much more than $1800 through this type of transaction.

The bottom line, for me, is protect yourself every way you can, recognize that there will always be risk, and never make a deal that puts you in a situation that you can't absorb if you do happen into a rip-off. -Kirk

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