Audio Black List Coming Soon

Tim, I have to commend your actions. I look forward to this project. People such as the flowerpot guy especially are bad news because they artificially inflate the cost of gear, other sellers take note and start listing their own similar items for insane prices and on it goes.....
 
miro' has a point. Something is worth exactly what someone is willing to pay for it, aside from the "market distortions" you mention. Like my econ 301? :eek:

You might do a "price comparison" like put a listing by 9flowerpot, next to a listing on say craigslist somewhere with a reasonable price . Just a thought.
 
LOL @ 9flowerpot. He aggravates me too some extent. I understand that he just wants to troll his stuff for top dollar by just listing it over and over and over.
But I hate when he bids against me on something I want, only to see it on his table a week later often broken down into components. :cursing:
 
I sell mics on eBay and would love other sellers to raise their prices. Some do it as a hobby and are happy to make a very small margin. I'd prefer to make a living profit. Equally, I like a bargain as a buyer. You can't have everything. There have just been a couple of BBC auctions for professionals, and loads of this has appeared on eBay at crazy prices, seeing them sell for £40 and appear on eBay for £200! However, if people are willing to pay it, good for them. I buy when it's a bargain. Scrap 30 year old lighting kit is my favourite giggle. Taken from a skip, polished up, and sold as a room decoration for hundreds of pounds. Lighting people just smile. If people are willing to pay silly prices, let them. There is no right to a bargain, and if people are stupid enough to pay, so what? If somebody buys something, and splits it and resells, that's good business isn't it?
 
altruistica said:
I've seen this seller's ads before. I think he/she probably waits for someone to buy it, then sources the item from Tascam US or UK or elsewhere.
Al
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Well that price is just silly. Anyone can do what Tascam did and use a readily available brand new 1/2 " clamp with the old spacer used on the original 1" clamp. I put up complete instructions on how to do this a few years back. It was on the old Tascam forums iirc. Might be exactly what he is doing. It makes a perfect 1" clamp.
 
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rob aylestone said:
Its a great idea, but in the UK it would be a non-starter. Sadly, litigation here can gag this kind of really useful idea. For example, if an individual or a business are taken to court, the public records reveal the names of the individuals, their addresses and other details. This is perfectly legal stuff for people to download. However, publish these details, even though true and accurate, on a web site and it's very different. Legal advice provided to websites, like this one, would be to remove the detail or risk being taken to court - the reason being that the information is detrimental to the person or business, and they could then take action for loss of revenue - and few people will take the risk. A complaint to the server owner or hosting company also gets the 'offending' pages removed. Wwe usually view the states as the place for legal clever stuff like this, but no - the threat of action is enough to scare people!

Here, it is just too risky to speak the truth because the publisher is the one responsible.
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We're speaking the truth here in the states... and that's why we're the USA. We speak the truth about these sellers all the time in these public forums.

As for the notion that something is worth exactly what it sells for...

No, I don’t think so at all. There are ethics involved. When sellers are conspiring to inflate prices through deception they should be exposed. The idea that many of these items are so rare is simply untrue. Anyone who would start a single cassette tape at $40.00 US should be taken into an alley and beaten into unconsciousness.

But since that’s not lawful the next best thing is a list exposing bad sellers. We’ve discussed sellers like this for years on this forum and similar forums. A site hosting a backlist of sellers to avoid is simply a little different twist on something like prepal.com, which also is there to help people get a better idea of what something is worth.

When the list gets big enough and well-known enough, sellers won’t want to be on it. And stupid buyers should not want to be stupid. We're working against bad sellers and stupid buyers to try to keep prices within reason.

If I sold all the new-old-stock tapes I have for the prices some sellers are asking, I could retire. I won’t do it simply because it’s not right. That’s all the reason I need.

These inflated prices hurt our hobby/vocation… whatever it may be to you. Allowing this nonsense to go unchecked allows the potential to kill it altogether. People won’t be buying tapes anymore to record, but rather to put on a shelf with their rare Coca~Cola bottles. Sellers that try to give tape and gear that kind of status are trying to deceive.

It's all about educating the public, which is always what we've tried to do here one topic at a time. It's just too difficult for people to wade through it all in a forum.

You can also think of a blacklist as something with a bit more drama than the usual reviews you see online where people give a business 1 through 5 stars and comment on their experience. It should make no difference if that's a restaurant, a car dealership, a motel or an ebay seller.
 
I really don't understand the price thing. I'm all for reducing scams and dodgy dealers, but surely the old caveat emptor rule applies, do any of us actually bid on an overpriced item? If others are stupid enough it's not our fault, and the one we sell happily at half the price will sell well. If somebody pushed the bidding well past it's value, would any of us say no?

I'm thinking of stopping selling on eBay because I can no longer make the money I used to. Somebody always sells the same or similar for less.

If we wish to play fair, then having multiple eBay identities is not playing the game at all, it's no different than dodgy seller having them. I'd expect anyone complaining about a review to get eBay to zap your membership.

eBay isn't perfect, but it's just becoming another amazon. In the UK people are buying scrap theatre lights, polishing them up, fitting a domestic lamp and selling them for maybe five hundred pounds. As a theatre light, in that section they would go for maybe twenty five pounds! Now that is good business, but even though annoying, it breaks no rules.
 
The other thing that these stupid sellers are doing is raising the price of things in places like pawn shops. I have bought a bunch of cool old guitars and basses years ago for cheap prices in pawn shops, pre ebay.
Now when I see similar ones, the prices are through the roof. Got a cool old Silvertone guitar for $90 once. Really nice one from the late sixties, early 70's. Mint shape. Now I see the exact ones listed for around $500 plus. I used to love old pawn shop finds, but now with ebay around, it's just not the same anymore.
 
^^^ Very true. Guitar center does the same thing. They get a piece of gear in dirt cheap, then to price it they go immediately to eBay and base their price off of the highest one they can find. Not only that, they arent honest about it. They quote buy it now prices as market value. They get pissed if you ask them to do the same search for auctions that actually sold. So while 9ripoff is perfectly in his right to list his pitiful portable picnic player 2300 for an absurd amount and he never sells it...it drives prices up to the same levels many other places.
 
I just don't buy from GC. :)

You can't really stop sellers from having some "unity in pricing". Sometimes it's the manufacturer that controls that because they don't want one store blowing out one of their items at silly pricing just as a draw, while everyone else try's to sell it at a higher price.

On eBay, with multiple sellers of the same item....I always look for the listings that have "make offer" options, and I almost always get the item for what I offer.

Right now, I want the new Pigtronix Rototron...but at this time onle Sweetwater is selling them by exclusive agreement.
So....I'll just wait until it's available with other sellers, and find one taking offers, and I'm sure I'll get it much lower than what Sweetwater wants for it.
 
miroslav said:
Right now, I want the new Pigtronix Rototron...but at this time onle Sweetwater is selling them by exclusive agreement.
So....I'll just wait until it's available with other sellers, and find one taking offers, and I'm sure I'll get it much lower than what Sweetwater wants for it.
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It'll make your head spin! Not the first rotary cab simulator, but I'd hope it's a good one. People used to say, "Nothing beats the sound of a real Leslie." Vintage 122/125s have a great sound, but are very inflexible. The new 3300 and the 12/18s did not have the same sound. I think the good plugs (like Reason Rotor) or the actual Hammond Leslie pedal lose the tube warmth of those old Hammonds. Very sweet. Haven't heard the Rototron, but I'm going to bet they did a good job with it.
 
BroKen_H said:
Haven't heard the Rototron, but I'm going to bet they did a good job with it.
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I have a bunch of Pigtronix pedals....and I've not been disappointed by any of them. With some of their pedals, they do a hybrid analog/digital design, but they are always analog focused AFA the audio quality. The Rototron is 100% analog if I recall correctly, and so far getting top reviews.

I want something I can use both with guitars....and my Hammond L organ. I've looked and looked for a Leslie that wouldn't be priced crazy and that works with the L series, but these L series weren't the best organ for matching up with a Leslie, especially if you wanted a Leslie with dual rotors and all the control bells-n-whistles.
I'm hoping the Rototron will cut it. I've tried a few others, and they were always half-lame. I don't mind spending $300 on the pedal....but I'm hoping the price will come down closer to $250, which I'm sure it will by the holiday sales. :)
 
I really don't get this at all! You object strongly to high prices because you can't get a good deal? Good deal for whom? Surely it depends on if you are a buyer or a seller. As a buyer, yes, sure, the bargains are gone and that amazing guitar you know is worth a grand that you bought for 500 isn't going to happen, but as a seller it's the total opposite. If I sold my guitar for a grand, knowing it was worth 500 that's a good deal. If music is your job or your hobby you have no right to insist anyone who makes money from it is bad, and those who just break even, or make a modest profit are wrong? USA is, I'm told, the land of the free - unless you successfully make money?

If somebody buys an item from Tascam and IDIOTS pay double for it because they are STUPID that is not a crime. If Tascam source a product from another source, stick Tascam on it and sell it for double or more, is that bad? Trouble is, they do, and if you knew the supplier you can do the same.

I'm all for naming and shaming bad sellers, but being expensive and making profit from eBay is not even morally wrong, it's business! Selling counterfeits, selling damaged items not described properly, selling dangerous goods - these are bad, and eBay already have a system. You guys are wanting people to make less money, and not take advantage of a market who may well have a poor understanding of value. If this is the case, then I'd expect your laws to support the rights of an individual to make a profit as long as it's not illegal. If I was put on a public black list for conducting business legally, I'd be talking to a lawyer damn quickly and I'd win if I'd not broken the law. Do you have defamation laws over there? You mix one legally trading person in with one crook and you're in pretty hot water.

I like the idea of shaming crooks, I hate the criteria you are using for deciding who is one! Why not include Microsoft, Steinberg, Apple and others, because they have products with prices far above their real value, but buying them is our choice in a free society.

"Thou shall only sell things to home recordists at their idea of a fair price" is a little communistic rather than democratic isn't it? Who sets a fair price? You want it to be the buyer, I think it's the seller. If this prices me out of a deal, that's how it is. I moan about it, but the idea of naming this person publicly is simply a joke. Your reasoning is because it artificially keeps prices high. Which is what both our governments have been doing for years with the banks.
 
But this isn't just about ebay sellers. The ebay sellers rediculous prices are spilling over into other markets. An example I brought up before....
A seller on an online classified ad was selling a small rackmount tascam mixer for $60. A week later he relisted it at something stupid like $285.
Stating in his ad...."These things go for $285 plus $50 shipping on ebay" Lol!!!! So I checked ebay, found the same model mixer, and sure enough....the one listed for $285 had flower pots in the picture. I kept checking up on this sellers ad and he was getting no bites and droppped the price back down to $60 after about a month.
Sellers can ask for what ever asking price they want. It's just that it really jacks up the prices elsewhere.
 
j.harv said:
Sellers can ask for what ever asking price they want. It's just that it really jacks up the prices elsewhere.
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Only if you actually pay for it. ;)

There was a guy just a couple of weeks back on eBay, listed an Otari MX-80 with 16-track heads for $12,000!!!!! :D
The thing was used, though apparently the heads "looked good"...etc...etc.

So I sent him a message and said that at most, the deck was worth $3k...maybe a couple of bucks more if someone was obsessed about the 2" 16-track heads.....but that MX-80 decks go for around $2k, and the 16-track heads don't add $10k more value.
Of course, he didn't like my message, and he asked me to make him an offer.....to which I replied that I already owned a nice MX-80 and wasn't looking for another on.

Anyway....a few days later I saw he dropped his price from $12k to $8k....which was still ridiculous, but at least he's reevaluating his perspective, and when it sits like that for another month or two, he will realize that he's not going to get even $8k and if he wants to sell it the price will need to come down more.

Just like this other guy from Texas who's been trying to sell an MX-80 for $4k for the past year. I sent him a few messages telling him he was NEVER going to get $4k, and I was suggesting he part it out and I was interested in some of the parts myself....but he felt if he parted any of it, he would never sell the rest (possibly true)...but he refuses to drop his price, and the thing just sits there.

So....it's not the sellers, it's the buyers who actually drive up prices. If shit don't sell for anyone at some inflated price.....they'll come down eventually if they want to sell it.
Buyers just need to be patient and wait them out..... :)
 
miroslav said:
.. So....it's not the sellers, it's the buyers who actually drive up prices. If shit don't sell for anyone at some inflated price.....they'll come down eventually if they want to sell it.
Buyers just need to be patient and wait them out..... :)
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Now there's a thought- 'The High Buyer's List O'Shame ;)
 
:D

Hey...I've seen very reasonably priced items, get bidded up PAST the normal MSRP for the same item elsewhere!!!
I want to contact those buyers and say, "Hey STUPID! You could have bought that same item for less here __________!"

You get that one buyer that just has to have it at any price.
I die laughing when they end up paying 3x the value.....but then, the next seller sees that and figures he might as well ask the same 3X amount for his item. :facepalm:
 
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