Ebay is the devil's playground

montrealbreaks · Post by **montrealbreaks** » Fri May 21, 2004 2:38 am

DAMN...

After I sold a ton of hardware gear, Ebay continues to get me into trouble...

A dude in Japan bought my Andromeda A6 and flight case for a pretty fair price. But together, they weighed 79pounds!!! Shipping alone was almost $600! He must have REALLY wanted it.

Anyways, I went and blew $3,500 of my gear liquidation sale money on an brand new Alienware Area-51m laptop. Dual hard drives (60 GB 7200 RPM with 8 mb cache each), P4 Extreme edition 3.2 GHz (with 2.5 megs of cache), a gig of 3200 RAM, big ass screen, and all that. This thing is totally spec'd out from top to bottom - I checked Alienware.com and every maxed-out option available for a computer is on this bad boy. I checked with their customer service dudes to see if this thing was stolen (got the serial number from the seller), and it wasn't reported as such - it was only assembled and sold a month ago!

I wasn't intending on paying that much for a laptop (and I didn't need one that spec'd out), but after contacting the seller, apparently his kid bought one online with good-ole dad's credit card - and Dad wasn't impressed at paying $5400+ (after tax) for a laptop for his 12 year old geek. Soooo, it goes on ebay to minimize the damage, and I take advantage of this unfortunate turn of events to the tune of $1900 savings.

I figured that $3,500 would be the cost of a brand new 17" G4 powerbook 1.5 GHz anyways, so I wasn't doing too badly.

But remember kids... Ebay is a DANGEROUS place to leave 12 year olds unsupervised (or 31 year olds like me, or synth nuts from Japan for that matter)

L8er
Montrealbreaks

PS: If anybody out there is in the mood for trouble, and wants to get their hands on a Powerbook 500 MHz with a gig of ram, send me a PM. It goes on ebay as soon as I have my data moved over.

cosmosuave · Post by **cosmosuave** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:25 am

Hope it came with a bonus gold plated pocket protector!!!! Good score...

Moonburnt · Post by **Moonburnt** » Fri May 21, 2004 5:15 am

Those laptop specs are truly insane.

Who needs a desktop with a lappy like that?!

The heaviest thing I have bought on ebay was a pair of monitors @ 60lbs. That was pretty <ouch> for the shipping from USA to New Zealand, but even taking that into consideration when bidding, I've still been able to get a lot of stuff cheap. And if I change my mind, i've generally been able to resell things here for more than i paid anyway.

All kneel and praise the dark forces of the almighty ebay.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 21, 2004 5:57 am

Moonburnt wrote:
All kneel and praise the dark forces of the almighty ebay.

For sure - the best thing about ebay is that if you buy something used, you can usually sell it for the same price, if you are smart.

Right now European and Asian buyers are having a field day on the weak US dollar. If you buy a nice expensive piece of rare gear listed for delivery in the US only, you can usually turn around and dump it immediately if you list worldwide, and its really cheap for Europeans and Asians to snap it up at 20% more than you paid in the first place - and that pays for paypal and ebay listing costs.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 21, 2004 11:43 am

Ha! Ebay is indeed the devil's playground...but do what I do: only buy things like a Rhodes 73 when it's IN TOWN!

But the big news is that I finally snagged my most sought-after, lusted-after synthesizer ever. The big boy. The fantasy. The Fatness.

The MemoryMoog.

Oh yes.

It arrived from L.A. two days ago. One out of 5 keys don't work, but that's to be expected with a piece that's been sitting for years. In general, it sounds...well...it's a MEMORYMOOG.

Now to save the 3000 dollars or so it will cost to send it to Germany for the LAMM upgrade to turn it into the Greatest Synth On Earth.

The point of this story is that yes...Ebay is dangerous. Especially on your credit cards. And it helps to have a very understanding wife.

"This is it baby! No more! I don't need anything else!"

Solovox
www.solovox.com

Layla Nahar · Post by **Layla Nahar** » Fri May 21, 2004 12:50 pm

Anonymous wrote: And it helps to have a very understanding wife.

"This is it baby! No more! I don't need anything else!"

Solovox
www.solovox.com

or you marry a synthesist - but then, she'll never keep her hands off your equipment!!

Rx · Post by Rx » Fri May 21, 2004 2:35 pm

my wife can't keep her hands off my 'equipment'.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 21, 2004 3:43 pm

Rx wrote:my wife can't keep her hands off my 'equipment'.

Funny, your wife can't keep her hands off myequipment either!

ethios4 · Post by **ethios4** » Fri May 21, 2004 4:51 pm

i'm sure many of you already know this, but i didn't at one time, so here goes....
ebay is great - good deals, easy way to sell stuff... incredibly easy to pull scams on people who don't know better/are greedy.
Selling scams -- you put somthing nice up for sale, recording equipment, synth, laptop, etc. - a buyer from, say, Indonesia, wants to pay an exorbitant price for it, and needs it quick. can only pay by credit card. so greed takes over the rational part of the mind and you sell, only to find out later the card was stolen, and the bank wants its money back, if you ever got it, and wants to know why you're using stolen credit cards.
There are lots of selling scams, this is the one i got hit with, but you can find out more on the elusive ebay section on scams
Buying scams - "send me a payment through Western Union" bam! you never get what you bought. In the US its almost impossible to investigate Internet crime across state lines, and Western Union payments are about the most insecure there are. Again, check out ebay's scam FAQ for more on this kind of stuff.
Ebay's great i guess, just riddled with scams. There is no 100% secure way to buy or sell on Ebay. Escrow is the most secure. I will only use escrow services for buying or selling expensive items, now. It's pretty horrible to watch someone get scammed out of $2000. Be careful.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 21, 2004 5:43 pm

all this is true. That said, don't buy from people with under 20 feedbacks, or people who have good feedbacks but have never been a seller. Never buy from someone with less than 95% good feedback, and read the negative feedbacks of any seller always to see why they got negative feedback (usually from jackasses who abuse the feedback system). Always use paypal. If you follow these tips, you should be 99% trouble free. I've made about 100 transactions of ebay, mostly buying, and the only time I had a problem was when I got greedy and bid on some HR 824s from a seller with 0 feedback (FUCK YOU NILO BROWN!!)--dude tried to charge sales tax and ridiculous amount of shipping. Follow the smart guidelines, it the deal is too sweet on either end of the table, beware.

Ryan

forge · Post by **forge** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:29 pm

he he, devil got me good and proper

I've been in the throes of a nasty internet spending habit to the tune of nearly £15 000 UK pounds - thats just under $30 000 dollars at the moment.

This is due partly to novelty - discovering just how easy it is to spunk loads of imaginary money in this surreal internet environment. Money which you don't even really find out about if you're a complete music geek sad case who spends far too much time in front of computers, you just get the minimum payments direct debited from your bank account, and so long as you keep turning up at work you hear nothing about it - aside from the odd statement which you half heartedly look at cause it's not very interesting and just another bit of time wastage taking me from my machine.

Add to that a lifestyle of late nights, usually with the help of drugs and alcohol and that's me fucked. A commodity (software) which has no resale value whatsoever, and so once it's bought, it's bought.

But I'm having a fantastic time - it's just a solitary one. I feel enourmously priviledged to be around in this time because these laptop/software CPU supermachines that can do completely incredible things by the standards of my high school 8 track tape recording studio and 7 second sampler and crappy general midi gear audio education and I'm starting to feel light deficient from sitting in front of machine for so long.

So ebay, for me is a small fry next to the terrifying world of online instant download software purchases.

And guess who started the ball rolling?? Ableton bloody Live, that's who - discounted upgrade from live delta 1.5 to live 2 online - playing with live 2 within 20 minutes from going online, penny dropping that all these programs I read about in magazines probably sell online too and that's where the same demon that took Robert Johnson's soul at the crossroads for the Blues is folding up the deed to mine and packing it in his briefcase.

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Fri May 21, 2004 8:54 pm

Montreal: Please let us know how this new rig runs - I just upgraded to a 1.5 PB (after looking at the Alienware rig you got...). I went with Apple because I have experience with them (and MOST of it is good). After discovering a dead pixel on my 3rd day of new-rig bliss, I almost cried when the Applecare rep said "a few dead pixels are in the acceptable range". Damn you Steve Jobs! The Woz must be SICK!

So keep ust abreast of the working with your new toy!

Congrats.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:26 pm

acceptable?, thats f-cking ridiculous. This Apple Care stuff sounds like total crap in some cases.

kabuki · Post by **kabuki** » Fri May 21, 2004 9:49 pm

Anonymous wrote:acceptable?, thats f-cking ridiculous...

No shit. Alas, I have an insurance Waiver, so If more go out and Apple won't own up to the fault screen, I might have to retire the PB and get an Alienware Lappy. Would hate to put it out of my misery, though...

Ebay is the devil's playground

Ebay is the devil's playground

ebay scams

Montreal: Please let us know how this new rig runs...