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"Please don't buy it off him"


Westenra

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To be fair it's about equal of a 'crime'... someone buying legitimately to sell on for profit with the use of the OP's pictures without consent Vs someone trying to contact the seller to buy the bass knowing the auction has ended and been won by someone else. The only way I suppose you might have the morale high ground is if you did manage to get the bass you'd need to never sell it for a single penny more than you paid for it even years down the line, else you run the risk of falling into the hypocrite category!

I suppose the REAL morale high ground would be yours had you of informed the seller about their bargain price and offered to pay him a sum more in line with current prices... 

Interesting debate though... 

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2 hours ago, Westenra said:

I would've used the bass for its main intention, not as a item to get richer from.

Irrelevant, on pretty much every online trade group I'm a member of backdooring other people's deals is considered the lowest of the low, as bad as scammers and an instant ban if caught.

Not the brightest idea to come on a bass forum marketplace and admit you try and scupper other people's bass purchases on the sly.

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It's capitalism.

 

The same as someone buying shares in a company owned by the state that's being sold off cheap by the government, with full knowledge that it's undervalued and the shares will be worth two or three times more within hours of the sale, i.e BT, British gas, Royal mail etc.

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12 hours ago, ambient said:

It's capitalism.

 

The same as someone buying shares in a company owned by the state that's being sold off cheap by the government, with full knowledge that it's undervalued and the shares will be worth two or three times more within hours of the sale, i.e BT, British gas, Royal mail etc.

I've never understood why people get their bloomers in a twist over someone being a capitalist in a capitalist society.

Mind you,  the Govt should be shot for Royal Mail  shares, etc

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There's a guy flipping Harley Benton deco Basses for more than Thomann sell them for as Perfect at the moment. He uses the Thomann photos of perfect ones and makes no mention that they are Decos. He's not breaking the rules, calls them 'New Other' but it leaves a bad taste in the mouth as he's being economical with the truth.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Not a bass, but I recently purchased some stage lighting from Gumtree for £60. When I went to pick the gear up (from a private school, as it turned out, who just wanted to clear some space), I thought to myself, "these look pretty good quality!". There were 8 Selecon fresnels, and 4 zoom spots, with very substantial tripod stands, T-bars, and two dim/chase controllers.

Anyway, I sold 4 of the fresnels for £260, a controller for £100, and two of the spots for £230. A very tidy little profit, and I'm still left with 4 fresnels, 2 spots, the tripods and a controller. Not sure whether to even keep them, because they take an extra 45 minutes or so to cool down after a gig. LED is the way to go for a pub band that just wants to pack up and get home after the show ...

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5 hours ago, HengistPod said:

Not a bass, but I recently purchased some stage lighting from Gumtree for £60. When I went to pick the gear up (from a private school, as it turned out, who just wanted to clear some space), I thought to myself, "these look pretty good quality!". There were 8 Selecon fresnels, and 4 zoom spots, with very substantial tripod stands, T-bars, and two dim/chase controllers.

Anyway, I sold 4 of the fresnels for £260, a controller for £100, and two of the spots for £230. A very tidy little profit, and I'm still left with 4 fresnels, 2 spots, the tripods and a controller. Not sure whether to even keep them, because they take an extra 45 minutes or so to cool down after a gig. LED is the way to go for a pub band that just wants to pack up and get home after the show ...

Classic illustration of sellers not doing any research/homework. Good on you for spotting a bargain. I agree about LEDs. I have old world lights that get/stay hot and they are going as soon as I can afford replacements.

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The very moment the bass was sold the old owner doesn't get a say in what happens to it anymore.

That could be if it was repainted, split for parts, used as a baseball bat or sold on for more money.

 

It doesn't matter if that was the buyers intention or whether on the morning he got the bass he lost his job and needs some cash fast. 

To complain about what the new legitimate owner wants to do with his property is pathetic and infantile.

 

A few years ago I sold a pair of Markbass cabs on here to a guy somewhere in europe. Might have been France. Can't remember.

Anyway - after about 6 months he decided they weren't for him and put them up for sale. I didn't notice until a prospective buyer sent me a PM to demand to know what price I had sold them for (and it was really a "demand" and whether the current owner was ripping me off.

 

Turned out that the prospective buyer didn't even think about shipping costs to another country (seller was doing an inclusive price) or market changes (the cabs had been discontinued and there was a bit more interest in them) or any other factor - like changing in shipping fees or even the use of a different speed of shipping service.

 

He also seemed amazed that I genuinely did not give a flying flip at a rolling donut about the new price for the cabs, and he got quite upset that I wouldn't tell him the final sales price or the shipping cost to get them abroad in the first place. Apparently not divulging the content of private discussions is "against the community spirit" or some other bollocks.

Absolute tool.

 

 

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I've really enjoyed this thread, it's made me feel better about my unscrupulous money making shenanigans... 

My most recent; I bought a bass earlier this year for a tour that didn't happen... played a few rehearsals and one gig... then listed it on Ebay for more than I bought it for, cuz I love the cash.

Just to make the story even more perfect, it sold back to the original seller, for more than he sold it to me. To his credit, he didn't complain once, he just accepted that it was now mine and I could charge what I liked... and ultimately he's just happy to have the chance to buy it back and hopefully won't make the same mistake of letting it go again

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/26/2017 at 12:40, Westenra said:

 Not loosing sleep over it, just had to get on my hands and knees and look for my eyes after they rolled out of my head after seeing the second listing. I'm all for making a profit, but things like this grind my gears as it sets precedent. If someone was to list the same thing they would look at similar listings and set a price reflecting of that, now if the prices they see are hugely inflated theirs will be too. Then if a buyer decides to sell the item on they wouldn't want to loose any money on it so they'd ask the same price if not more. It just makes the whole second hand business infuriating for buyers when prices fluctuate more than bitcoin.  

 

It doesn't set a precedent: an instrument sells for whatever other person things it's worth. If the price is truly ridiculous, then chances are it won't sell: it would be the seller's problem and nobody else's. Asking price is one thing, whether it ever sells at that price is another matter.

Frankly, I don't understand why you'd have to contact the original seller or the new seller with a £350 offer, adding "that's what you bought it for". To me, THAT is pretty bad taste. :/

It sounds like you missed on a good deal. I sympathise... I know how it stings, and it does sting more when the buyer just wanted to make a profit out of it... but ultimately nobody did anything wrong and it's not your business to call anybody a 'crook', in fact it's just wrong.

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On 11/25/2017 at 22:00, Westenra said:

Well first of all it isn't worth £780 and it just comes across as greedy beyond belief. Secondly he uses all the original sellers photos and descriptions, posting the ad several hours after picking it up. It's just all in very bad taste to me. It's people like him that cause the price hikes on other second hand items, I've seen it happen with strymon pedals and now Korg minilogues. He's also taken the opportunity for an actual interested buyer who wanted to actually own the bass away at a reasonable price.

 

I agree with the issue about the pictures. Using somebody else's pictures without permission is not cool. But it's a pretty minor offence if it represents the very same item. Once I found a guy using the pictures of my bass to sell a similar one... a similar one that turned out to have a completely different control layout (his had 3 knobs, passive, mine 5, active...) so I contacted him and gently told him off. Turns out he wasn't a crook, just a lazy seller... and he posted his own bass' pictures straight away. 

But the price... look, the 'reasonable price' was there for one person only. You missed out. What does it matter if the new owner sells it on, plays it, puts it on display untouched, or burns it when he's cold? If you were the one grabbing the bass at lower than you'd expect to fetch, would you contact the seller with "here's £100 because I think your bass is worth more than it fetched at auction"?

Didn't think so.

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2 hours ago, Westenra said:

It was the original seller saying that, not myself.

 

Oh, maybe I misunderstood, you added a link to the buyer's ad and labelled it as "the crook's ad" so I assumed you agreed with that label:

 

On 11/25/2017 at 19:53, Westenra said:

So last weekend I was scooping out eBay and came across a lovely Yamaha BB1024 in caramel with upgraded tuners, real bargain at £350! Unfortunatly my phone didn't remind me and I missed out; it finished with a single bid at £350. 

Cursing my luck I searched eBay and gumtree the day after and low and behold the exact same bass was listed again, same photos, same description, the only thing that was different was the price which was now over double - £780!!  

I messaged the guy saying I'd buy it for £350, he replied "for you £790", to which I replied "Well that's what you bought it off eBay for" and surprisingly I didn't get a response.

I tracked down the original eBay listing and sent the seller a message asking if he knew the buyer was already flipping the bass for over double. He promptly replied thanking me for bringing this to his attention, said the buyer asked for a big favor, called the price rubbish and said he would contact eBay regarding the same photos and description being used without his consent.

On the off chance he hadn't actually posted the bass yet I replied back asking that I'd actually buy it off him and pick it up this weekend, sadly the buyer had already picked it up and replied with this;

"Yes, he's a crook. Too bad he's already got the bass. Please don't buy it off him"

Original ad - https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-BB1024-Bass-Guitar-P-J-pickups-in-Caramel-Brown-immaculate/322893660632?_trksid=p2504926.m5232.l9681

The crooks ad - https://m.ebay.co.uk/itm/Yamaha-BB1024-Bass-Guitar-P-J-pickups-in-Caramel-Brown/282740010684?_trksid=p2504926.m5232.l9681

 

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