The Steel Guitar Forum

Hi folks.. just a note about selling your stuff.

EBay now charges 10%. So your $3000.00 guitar sale will cost you $300.00

Bobby is giving us a break with his fee requests.

I tried to sell my two guitars on the SGF, but they were purchased on my eBay sales.

Lesson learned.

It's been 10% for a while now. Add to that the 3% PayPal fee. So you're paying 13% in fees. Still a pretty good deal considering the massive audience you reach. I use eBay to sell small items, and this forum to sell steel guitars, occasionally.

It just blind sided me... if there is a next time, those exorbitant fees will be added to the mix.

Thanks for your reply

I learned that the hard way. I recently sold a used Martin 000XM that went for around $400, and was shocked when I got my eBay invoice showing I owed $40.

Now I have my stuff listed here (2.5%), Reverb.com (3.5%) and TDPRI (free).

I stay away from ebay. They really screw around allot. The fees are one thing but the other stuff they do like holding your money gets to be a real problem. They also made my paypal account useless until I unlinked them.

I use reverb.com, craigslist and the forum to sell stuff.

Doug Beaumier wrote:It's been 10% for a while now. Add to that the 3% PayPal fee. So you're paying 13% in fees. Still a pretty good deal considering the massive audience you reach. I use eBay to sell small items, and this forum to sell steel guitars, occasionally.

If you have an ebay store, you pay 7% flat rate final value, without a store you pay 10% plus 3 or 4 % paypal for domestic or international respectively.

I use Craigs List. If you're price is right It'll sell. One other reason is I wont ship anything large and fragile. T.L.

Ebay is not for everyone and certainly not the best outlet for some things, but it IS the best outlet for many things.

The 10% fee can be deemed as high or excessive but it should be placed into perspective. The audience for each for sale add is ridiculously high.

Price the items appropriately and don't look back.

I recently sold my LAST 1966 VOX Super Beatle on the 'Bay...and no we didn't use PAYPAL for payment . It is not mandatory that PAYPAL be used , work it out with the seller/buyer.

Tony, do you know if it is possible to pay on EBAY by Bank check of Postal Money Order? I believe one can use various credit cards rather than Paypal. I liked it in the good old days when a person could use the Bank check MO and even a personal check.

Lee makes a good points for using Craiglist. Shipping has also become way too expensive especially considering the price of oil. Of course fuel is not the only cost for shippers but it is a contributor and one they point to when they increase charges as the price of fuel moves upward.

I like selling items on this forum because of the low fees. I like selling items on ebay because it reaches more buyers and often yields higher profits. Well I sold my Jim Vest Sho-Bud the highest offer I received on this forum was $1900 (I was asking $2400). It sold on ebay for $2400. So in that case I made out MUCH better profit wise on ebay. I recently sold my MSA Legend here on the forum for the asking price and paid the 2.5% gladly to B0B.

Why would I want to charge the extra 7.5% fee to the ebay buyer when he paid me $500 more than the highest forum offer?

I usually try here first. I have a Fender B Bender for sale here now that is quite a bit below anything offered on ebay used. If it does not sell soon I will move it to ebay where I am sure it will sell fast at the asking price because it's reaching a much larger audience of guitar players.

There is a huge amount of fraud with postal money orders and bank money orders. These are easily forged! Person checks are pretty hard to guarantee that they have cleared. Just because the bank deposits the money in your account after so many days does NOT mean that it has cleared. Banks often hang onto personal checks until they get a stack of them from a particular bank them submit the whole batch. When they finally submit the checks, if the check handed to you from your buyers bounces (often 6 weeks after it was credited to your account or "cleared") the money will be taken back out of your account.

The ebay fees have been at %10 for a while now. That's no secret and you closely estimate the fees using the ebay FAQ or by using a Google query.

Craigslist is great for some things and in many cases avoids shipping, PayPal and seller fees. The best deal if your item sells but it does not reach a national audience and will not reach the global steel guitar audience if your item is steel guitar related.

We are fortunate to have a lot of great options to sell items. Knowing which selling venue will yield the fastest sale and the best profit is of great benefit. No one selling venue is the best for every type of item.

Tony Prior wrote:
It is not mandatory that PAYPAL be used , work it out with the seller/buyer.

Sadly, some sellers will accept nothing but PeePal, and when bBay started "pressuring" people to use that, I just quit using eBay. There's just no way I'll link any bank account of mine to a commerce site.

You really have to be careful on Craig's list. It is so full of scam artists. I have two items listed now, a Trundle Bed and a RBI Scroll saw. I was contacted by two different scammer's on both items. One guy named "Tommy" has too bad of a memory to be a scam artist. He contacted me twice with the same story, not realizing that he had done the same thing a few weeks ago.

Both scammers had very complex stories as to why they could only pay with a bank cashier's check and why they could not personally pick up the item but would send their courier do it. Both scammers wanted my home address to mail a check. Once I informed them that I only take cash and I do not let anybody from Craig's list know my name or home address. I inform them that I only meet buyers in the sheriff's department parking lot, they both crawled back into their holes very quickly with no more communication.

I feel pretty safe using PayPal to buy. They will debit the charge back to the seller if I have a problem. Since buyer's don't know me, I recommend they pay me via PayPal for the protection it offers. I don't have to wonder if a money order or cashier's check is good or not or give them my name or home address. The 3% cost is no big deal to me.

MANY Sellers require PAYPAL on EBAY, true, but if YOU are the seller you do not have to.

I have used the contact seller/contact buyer feature and called them ! I do not sell much on EBAY, but I have recently sold 2 or 3 HIGH DOLLAR items and I will not send anything to anyone without talking to the buyer first.

One thing I am very leery of with PAYPAL is BUYER fraud. Someone buys from you, pays with PAYPAL then claims there is a problem and the money is locked up. True anyone can do that with any credit card purchase at anytime . I have requested a money order be sent and I took a CC though my wifes business for the last two large transactions. This was agreed to between the buyer and me...


People wondering about linking bank accounts to PAYPAL, folks, it's a no brainer, go to your bank and open another debit card with NO over draft. Just like the old days. Use that CC account for any and all internet transactions, link THAT card to your PAYPAL account. Move some money in and out as needed. Quite frankly, the local stores where you shop and get gas everyday are more of a risk to your debit card than PAYPAL is.

Bob Hoffnar wrote:They also made my paypal account useless until I unlinked them.

Thanks for the tip, Bob, your post cleared the picture up for me.

Tony, this information about Paypal and Ebay is very useful information which I will use from now on. Mucho thanks.

Although I list on The Forum as my first choice, as of late, my last several items listed languish there for months at a time. When they do, I turn to the "Darth Vader" site as I call it, as a last resort. Usually the items sell there, perhaps as was mentioned above, because they reaches more members. steve t

George, thanks for your take on Craigslist too. stevet

Tony Prior wrote: People wondering about linking bank accounts to PAYPAL, folks, it's a no brainer, go to your bank and open another debit card...

"Another" debit card??? I don't even have one! Most debit cards offer none of the protections of a credit card, and that's why I won't have one.

Quite frankly, the local stores where you shop and get gas everyday are more of a risk to your debit card than PAYPAL is.

I always use cash in stores, gas stations, and restaurants. The only place I'll use my credit card (I only have one) is for a hotel room, a car rental, or an occasional Amazon purchase.

BTW, I listed my cell phone # for calling or texting. Tommy the terrible texted me from area code 541. I looked it up and it is Oregon. Quite a ways from TN. My listing was for the Tri-Cities in TN, not a very big area. It makes me wonder if he found this tiny dot in the world of Craig's List, how many others lists has he tried or if there is a way that you can look at all the Craig's List locations at one time. Either way, it sounds like it would really take a lot of time and effort. For these guys, it is a numbers game. Put out 1000 requests hoping they will find a small percentage of pigeons.

If the law had time to pursue it, they could take his cell phone number, which I have, and find where his phone is located(and him) It would be an easy arrest when you know exactly where the criminal is located.

Tommy is not the sharpest tool in the woodshed. He doesn't realize how easy it would be for somebody
that he has scammed to sick the dog's on him.

For anyone who doesn't want to pay eBay's 10% fees, Reverb.com is only 3.5% (disclaimer, I work at Reverb, but am also a forum member and long time steel player).

Reverb is an online marketplace, like eBay, but strictly for musicians. They provide full buyer and seller protection (payment processing, fraud prevention, customer service, etc.). The site gets over 20 million page views a month. Most importantly, everyone that works there is a musician and knows what it's like to buy/sell online.

www.reverb.com

Not discouraging anyone from using the forum, which is fantastic, just bringing up another potential way to sell for anyone interested.

Kevin

Donny Hinson wrote:

Tony Prior wrote: People wondering about linking bank accounts to PAYPAL, folks, it's a no brainer, go to your bank and open another debit card...

"Another" debit card??? I don't even have one! Most debit cards offer none of the protections of a credit card, and that's why I won't have one.

Quite frankly, the local stores where you shop and get gas everyday are more of a risk to your debit card than PAYPAL is.

I always use cash in stores, gas stations, and restaurants. The only place I'll use my credit card (I only have one) is for a hotel room, a car rental, or an occasional Amazon purchase.

But you can't pay cash when you buy on the internet and you can't take cash payment when you sell on the internet... which is the entire point of this discussion, EBAY.

I've used Craig's list countless times over the years and have never had a problem with a local buyer. I once had an out-of-town guy try the check-for-larger-than-purchase-price scam but we all know how that works.

Mike Harris wrote:I've used Craig's list countless times over the years and have never had a problem with a local buyer. I once had an out-of-town guy try the check-for-larger-than-purchase-price scam but we all know how that works.

One potential problem with buying from Craigslist is sellers who can't be bothered to take down the ad once they sell or change their mind. A while back I saw what looked like a good (but NOT too-good-to-be-true) deal on a Roland Cube. I sent 3 replies through Craigslist and left 4 or 5 messages on the phone number supplied with the ad, and never received the courtesy of a simple "sorry, it's sold". I eventually figured it out on my own.