HiFi Subjectivist ¦ Audio Forum ¦ NVA User Group

I have used ebay quite a bit over the last year or so. Before that never had a single problem. But that lucky run had to end didn't it.

Bought a snare drum with some bent parts (internal that could not be transit damage) that meant the snare could not actually touch the bottom head. Seller said he had tested it and it was fine. What a load of bollocks.

Today received the wrong item and invoice in my name with wrong item on the invoice. How could they get that so wrong. If they think i am paying return postage they can think again.

Mini rant over.

I bought an old Audio Technica AT14SA which was supposed to be in perfect working order, tested by the vendor.
I received the item, then set about having a look at it. The stylus has some much dirt on it, I was reluctant to clean it.
I popped it on my deck, lowered it onto a laser fisc, where I saw it rode really low, and sounded distorted.
I photographed it playing, then carefully cleaned it. It got no better, so I contacted the vendor.

He told me he had marked the cantilever with permanent marker, so he would know if I changed the stylus.
I told him that this was probably the reason why the cartridge was not working, and I had photographed every stage of me receiving the cartridge, and cleaning it etc. He ended up refunding me full costs and paying the return postage.
Ok, it was not expensive, but the guy was an absolute arse.

When someone got into my account and put mechanical diggers up for sale for thousands of pounds. It took a while for me to sort things out with eBay.

I sold a cheap turntable a couple of years ago, only for about £50/£60 so not high end. Worked fine when I shipped it but the buyer claimed there was something wrong with it. When I asked exactly what he said he didn't know but he had a mate who could fix it for £20! Cheeky bastard. I said why don't you just say you want a £20 discount rather than go through this pantomine of pretending there is something wrong with it? It was pointless arguing the toss as Ebay would have just sided with him. I couldn't be arsed asking him to send it back etc. so just gave him a discount and I've never sold another piece of hi-fi on there since.

BillyBones wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2019 7:29 am I sold a cheap turntable a couple of years ago, only for about £50/£60 so not high end. Worked fine when I shipped it but the buyer claimed there was something wrong with it. When I asked exactly what he said he didn't know but he had a mate who could fix it for £20! Cheeky bastard. I said why don't you just say you want a £20 discount rather than go through this pantomine of pretending there is something wrong with it? It was pointless arguing the toss as Ebay would have just sided with him. I couldn't be arsed asking him to send it back etc. so just gave him a discount and I've never sold another piece of hi-fi on there since.

That is a common thing to do apparently. Puts me off selling anything there too.

I've got no horror stories as a buyer or stellar.

Ebay is by and large positive for the buyer and seller. Horror stories is a thread, therefore, for audio addicts.

Daniel Quinn wrote: ↑Fri Aug 09, 2019 8:10 am I've got no horror stories as a buyer or stellar.

Ebay is by and large positive for the buyer and seller. Horror stories is a thread, therefore, for audio addicts.

You have a high opinion of yourself.

Nope, my usual spelling mistakes.

The first thing I ever sold, a Harman Kardon CD player. I bought it new and the sound just seemed to get worse and worse so I sold it at a decent loss on eBay. Bombproof packaging, bubble-wrap, cardboard, original box in a packing box, etc... I got a message from the seller accusing me of misleading him by not mentioning the HUGE dent/scratch on the base. Could he please have a discount? Could he bollox! 3 times I asked for a photo of the damage and eventually, the most blurry image of something that could have been anything arrived in my inbox. Basically, I told him very politely to go away and I would contact eBay who would, no doubt contact him. I never heard from him again, but the funny part was he left me a 5-star review. I do wonder if he actually put a dirty great scratch on the CD player himself to photograph. I hope so.

I now know never to engage in communication with a buyer or seller outside of the eBay system, and if there's any sort of a problem, to involve eBay straight away.

We have a pair of Mission MX1's from my lad's former desktop system which we put onto the end of a 3 channel amp to amplify guitars in church. Eventually one of the tweeters went AWOL (in the midst of a funeral would you believe?). Took them out and looked for a replacement and all I could find were parts from MX30's which use the same tweeter. Ordered them and when they arrived it looked like the "packaging" had been through a mangle. I didn't worry to much as it was only the tweeters I was after. Looked around and couldn't find them anywhere. Following contact with the vendor, I found them on the magnet of one of the woofers. They were not in good shape. Both domes were "dented" and neither would move - so useless to me. One tweeter had the captive wires taken off leaving no chance of connecting it to anything! There was also damage to other parts. Took photos and asked for a refund. It took a while but I eventually got my money back. Not the outcome the vendor or I wanted.

As an aside, I put a new tweeter from Amazon in one speaker, replaced the crossover with a single capacitor and rewired the lot. I put it on the end of a Denon DM31 we use for playing CDs. The outcome was amazing. I'd just put the speakers down on the pew to see if they worked OK. The stereo image was to die for and there was no attempt to optimise it. Happy days.