You Knew Etsy Would Ruin Reverb

All of the increased rates and whatnot certainly suck. But what are your choices? Craigslist? Facebook marketplace/groups? Forums? They've all got problems too.
 
The e-mail's list of "reasons" claiming increased service to their customers was laughable.
Maybe I don't buy or sell enough to have gotten that email. Too bad, I could use a good laugh :)

Unfortunately they know they can do almost whatever they want with their pricing. Lots of people use them, and not many other options.
 
On eBay if you add up to eBay fees plus the Paypal fees it's around 6.5% of the final value (for musical instruments). I rarely use eBay anymore after getting burned by a couple buyers. One guy even sent me the same item back but with a different serial number and it was broken. And eBay usually sides with the buyer.
I had the exact same thing happen on eBay. Guy bought a piece of recording gear from me and returned the exact type of preamp with a different serial number that was DOA and that his kid had drawn all over with an orange crayon. I even had before and after photos and eBay still sided with the buyer. I had to refund the entire amount including shipping both ways. I was out about $250. I still haven’t gotten over that.
 
Maybe I don't buy or sell enough to have gotten that email. Too bad, I could use a good laugh :)

Unfortunately they know they can do almost whatever they want with their pricing. Lots of people use them, and not many other options.
Here's what I got:
To Our Community,


I’m writing to share upcoming changes that will enable us to significantly grow our marketplace so that we can help you reach even more buyers all over the world. Beginning on August 4, 2020, we are increasing our selling fee for the first time ever⁠— from 3.5 % to 5%.


When Reverb launched in 2013, the idea was simple—an online marketplace built specifically for the musical instrument community by a team of musicians. Our team thought about everything that we, as music makers, wanted in a site for selling gear and put it into Reverb: A live support team staffed with musicians, tailored tools to make things like price negotiation easier, a personalizable feed and useful content to help buyers find exactly what they want, and more.


Today, Reverb is the largest online marketplace dedicated to buying and selling musical instruments. In the past year alone, our community has achieved tremendous growth. More consumers are buying instruments than ever before, and players of all levels increasingly are buying gear online. As more buyers move online, we’ve heard you loud and clear: You want more support and more tools to help you get your gear in front of Reverb’s expanding audience of high-quality buyers and grow your sales.


We take the role that we play in supporting your business very seriously. Over the past seven years, our team has worked tirelessly to improve our marketplace to support your business and to find new ways to help you grow your sales. Now is the time to deepen our commitment to these efforts. We are modifying our selling fee to help us invest more to sustain our community’s continued growth. This year alone, we plan to increase our investment from 2019 by:

  • Investing over 30% more in marketing initiatives—including SEO, online video advertising, and other digital advertising—to get your inventory in front of more buyers from around the world.
  • Expanding by more than 25% the capacity of our global customer support team focused on assisting you and your buyers as we grow.
  • Increasing by more than 40% the capacity of our product team focused on creating and enhancing seller tools and services to increase the visibility of your shop and inventory.
Our team comes to work each day to ensure the success of our sellers—our marketplace simply doesn’t exist without the independent shops, makers, artists, experts, and individuals that form our vibrant seller community. These changes will enable us to bring more buyers to Reverb on your behalf, support the long-term health of your online business, and continue growing together.




Sincerely,

David Mandelbrot

CEO, Reverb
 
To Our Community:
Well, that all sounds great. But bottom line, the proof is in the follow through. Everybody can say the right thing. And I'm in marketing, so I've written a few of these corporatespeak letters myself :rolleyes:

Will it actually amount to better service, more fair procedures to protect both sellers and buyers, and still support individual musicians who want to sell and swap gear? Or will it just become another auction house for bigger companies and mass sellers? Only time will tell. I won't be holding my breath.
 
I used to love reverb, but so many little things are trending in the wrong direction lately. Oh well. Nothing lasts forever.
 
Well, unlike FB Marketplace & Ebay, I don't have potential buyers cursing at me when I reject their low ball offers with a "no thanks" on Reverb.

I always used to ask those people, "Where did you learn this negotiating tactic of cursing someone out? What percentage of the time does it work?"

I never got a response to those questions from those individuals.
 
I’m going to keep listing items on reverb but with a higher price and a hint that maybe a buyer could find this exact same item on a different site for less money. Then I’ll just take the listing down when it sells elsewhere.
 
I'd avoid ebay. I have been burnt by a few buyers. They give the buyers incredible power over the sellers.


It's no different on Reverb. I actually just had my first bad sale on there. A guy wants this rather expensive pedal, and fast, so I make sure I ship it next day. He immediately calls me the day he gets it, and says it's not really what he's looking for, and wants a refund. I tell him this isn't really a test drive situation. He issues a "damaged" refund request with Reverb. I haven't got the pedal back yet, but I'm half wondering if I'm going to get back something with the guts swapped, or who knows.
 
It's no different on Reverb. I actually just had my first bad sale on there. A guy wants this rather expensive pedal, and fast, so I make sure I ship it next day. He immediately calls me the day he gets it, and says it's not really what he's looking for, and wants a refund. I tell him this isn't really a test drive situation. He issues a "damaged" refund request with Reverb. I haven't got the pedal back yet, but I'm half wondering if I'm going to get back something with the guts swapped, or who knows.
If you show Reverb your correspondance that has him saying, "It's not what I expected" and you replying "All sales final" does that not CYA?
 
If you show Reverb your correspondance that has him saying, "It's not what I expected" and you replying "All sales final" does that not CYA?

It was over the phone. I don't have any proof he said it. All I know is I'm out a bunch of money, and that's even if I get the pedal back the way I sent it.
 
It's no different on Reverb. I actually just had my first bad sale on there. A guy wants this rather expensive pedal, and fast, so I make sure I ship it next day. He immediately calls me the day he gets it, and says it's not really what he's looking for, and wants a refund. I tell him this isn't really a test drive situation. He issues a "damaged" refund request with Reverb. I haven't got the pedal back yet, but I'm half wondering if I'm going to get back something with the guts swapped, or who knows.

Wow, that's just criminal. Seems like the criminals are getting away with A LOT of things these days...
 
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