Igor Alexander
Member
I've been doing some shopping on the used market lately (especially for a tape deck) and have been surprised at how dishonest and unprincipled many sellers are. For every good one, there's at least two or three trying to take advantage of naive, inexperienced, or overeager buyers.
The following are a set of rules and warning signs I've come to rely on when shopping for used gear. I learned most of this stuff the hard way over many years and hope someone can benefit from my experiences.
If anyone has any tips of their own or horror stories they'd like to share, I'd like to hear them.
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The two cardinal rules of buying:
* Never try to negotiate a deal that you're not prepared to walk away from if you aren't satisfied with the terms being offered.
* Never pay more for an item than what you would be able to sell it for.
Signs you're being hustled:
* Seller tries to pressure you into buying by telling you that "someone else is coming to see it" (this is seldom true, especially when the price is high and he's been trying to sell it for a while).
* Seller claims a machine has been professionally serviced but is unable or unwilling to provide a receipt or to even tell you who serviced it.
* Seller is unwilling to let you fully examine and test the machine.
* Seller won't answer simple, reasonable questions.
* Seller makes contradictory claims.
* Seller says he is unable to verify that the machine works and is thus selling it as-is but is nevertheless asking as much as a working machine in good condition would cost.
"Deals" to avoid:
* Don't buy anything off eBay on an "as-is" basis, unless you're buying it dirt cheap as a parts machine or as a fix-it project.
* Don't even bother responding to classified ads or online auctions in which the asking price is grossly exaggerated. In my experience, the person who places such an ad has an unrealistic idea of how much the item is worth and nothing you can say will persuade him to offer you a fair price. You want to be dealing with people who actually want to sell their items, not with opportunistic punks who found some "vintage" gear with "famous" names in their grandmothers' garages and think they've hit the jackpot.
The following are a set of rules and warning signs I've come to rely on when shopping for used gear. I learned most of this stuff the hard way over many years and hope someone can benefit from my experiences.
If anyone has any tips of their own or horror stories they'd like to share, I'd like to hear them.
***
The two cardinal rules of buying:
* Never try to negotiate a deal that you're not prepared to walk away from if you aren't satisfied with the terms being offered.
* Never pay more for an item than what you would be able to sell it for.
Signs you're being hustled:
* Seller tries to pressure you into buying by telling you that "someone else is coming to see it" (this is seldom true, especially when the price is high and he's been trying to sell it for a while).
* Seller claims a machine has been professionally serviced but is unable or unwilling to provide a receipt or to even tell you who serviced it.
* Seller is unwilling to let you fully examine and test the machine.
* Seller won't answer simple, reasonable questions.
* Seller makes contradictory claims.
* Seller says he is unable to verify that the machine works and is thus selling it as-is but is nevertheless asking as much as a working machine in good condition would cost.
"Deals" to avoid:
* Don't buy anything off eBay on an "as-is" basis, unless you're buying it dirt cheap as a parts machine or as a fix-it project.
* Don't even bother responding to classified ads or online auctions in which the asking price is grossly exaggerated. In my experience, the person who places such an ad has an unrealistic idea of how much the item is worth and nothing you can say will persuade him to offer you a fair price. You want to be dealing with people who actually want to sell their items, not with opportunistic punks who found some "vintage" gear with "famous" names in their grandmothers' garages and think they've hit the jackpot.
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). If there anything in the description such as: "guarantee to work", "satisfaction guarantee", "works great as new", "nothing is wrong with device" etc etc - I simply ignore all that "stuff" 
It wasn't a whole lot of money but I'm in hopes that it's in better condition than my Sony. (This was before seeing the sticky about packaging and shipping and seeing some horror stories 
we'll see when it shows up.