advice selling online

[michael_coleman]

I have been trying to sell one of my flutes and I have had some of the most odd people contact me...I have it up at woodenflute.com and keep getting someone in broken English saying they want the flute. Despite the fact that they ask no questions about the flute or even want a picture of it, the situation gets a little more questionable. This is the second time someone has had a similar situation which will be described below: The person contacts me via email and says they want the flute. They are overseas (the first time it was in Holland, now it is in the UK) and they said that someone owes them money in the States...so the person who owes them money will send me somewhere in the excess of 5000 dollars of which I will subtract my amount and wire the rest of the money to this phantom figure. He said once this happens he will have a liason come and pick it up, which is also a bit strange...I decided to go ahead with this about 3 months ago and I gave him my address so he could send the money. A day or so later when I tried to contact him via email, his email was shut down and I have never seen a check.

Fastforward to about a week ago...this time a different name and different address, but the same situation and the person is not a native english speaker....I don't like giving out my information...but I also want to sell the flute...My instinct tells me don't do it...what do you think?

[waitingame]

Don't give in to your desire to sell the flute. For such unusual circumstances to occur twice in a short period of time just screams scam.

But you already know this really!!

Put it up on ebay either with a reserve or starting at the minimum price you are prepared to accept.

[dubhlinn]

Gotta be a scam.
Try the local papers or put an add in the local music shop.
Good Luck with it anyway...

Slan,
D.

[Martin Milner]

I suggest you send a private message to Avanutria who has sold hundreds of items successfully on eBay and can warn you of the pros and cons, or ask JessieK who also has lots of experience of selling flutes and whistles.

[jim stone]

Also you can sell it here on the fluteboard.
Lots of good people and straightforward
transactions. Insist on that and, if you don't
know the party, get a money order before
you send the instrument.

Complicated transactions are almost
invariantly a scam.

[Wombat]

IMO no honest person would ever approach a complete stranger with a proposal like the one you described. I wouldn't give out my details to anyonw like this.

[Random notes]

AIIEEEE!!!! SCAM!!! RUN AWAY! RUN AWAY!

Do not EVER go along with anything that sounds even the least bit hinky. At best, you were about to be conned into a money laundering scheme - at worst, somewhere along the line you would have lost the flute and a good bit of money besides. Either the check would not have cleared until after you have made the change or you would have had to provide your bank account number to facilitate the transfer. Either way, you are ROYALLY SCREWED!! I am on an ancient coin collecting list and every variety of scam has been discussed there. The problem is that it is so obvious from the outside, but somehow plausible when the con man is explaining it to you. Many of these scams are from eastern Europe now, not just Nigeria and central Africa.

Besides, you have a community of musicians here which comprise many of the people who would be interested in your instrument, and there is always E-bay which, if you are reasonably cautious, is an excellent venue.

And if you get really stuck, I can give you fifty bucks - what you got?

Roger

[OutOfBreath]

SCAM! This is one of the most popular current internet scams.

Be glad somebody shut the guy down before he got a chance to follow up or you'd be out a flute and any cash you wired him.

[fearfaoin]

If you are listing an item for sale, you should probably include a blurb in your payment section
which says that you will ONLY accept payment for the exact amount of the sale.
That way you can ignore any scammer emails, like the one you got. This scam seems to target
high-dollar items because sellers are more willing to part with a thousand dollars in the short
term to make a thousand dollars on a sale.

[IDAwHOa]

I bought a Copeland recently from someone that had only the posts here to sell it. What I did was utilize a well known and regarded C&Fer as a "broker." I sent this person the money and she sent me the whistle once he had the money. After I had received the whistle and approved, he forwarded the money to her.

Worked like a champ.

[beowulf573]

I've actually been meaning to ask a potentially stupid question about this...

How long should you wait to make sure a check or money order is valid? What are other good ways to handle payment? I wasn't too paranoid until I read "Catch Me If You Can" a few months ago.

Also, when shipping, do you insure the instrument for the cost you are selling it for or replacement cost?

Eddie

[IDAwHOa]

I've actually been meaning to ask a potentially stupid question about this...

How long should you wait to make sure a check or money order is valid? What are other good ways to handle payment? I wasn't too paranoid until I read "Catch Me If You Can" a few months ago.

Also, when shipping, do you insure the instrument for the cost you are selling it for or replacement cost?

Eddie

For a check, you should be able to call the bank it is written against and verify the funds. The only problem with that is as soon as you hang up the account may get hit with a transaction that clears it out!!!!!

A better way to deal with it is to request a money order, cashiers check or wire transfer. All three of those require the sender to put the money up front and are immediately available.

When I insure a shipment I insure for what it will cost me to replace the item being shipped including the cost of shipping the new item.

[Wanderer]

I've actually been meaning to ask a potentially stupid question about this...

How long should you wait to make sure a check or money order is valid? What are other good ways to handle payment? I wasn't too paranoid until I read "Catch Me If You Can" a few months ago.

Also, when shipping, do you insure the instrument for the cost you are selling it for or replacement cost?

Eddie

When I accept checks via paypal, I wait 11-14 business days before I ship the item. I learned once the hard way that just because a bank clears the funds to you doesn't mean the check is "clear", and they will happily remove that money again if another bank bounces the check back.

I insure it for the cost it sold for. The post office will only insure something for it's value..and an auction win amount is considered strong evidence of something's value. After all, if it was worth more, people would have bid more.

I also make people take the item to the post office themselves to handle a claim if it's damaged. I sold a couple of ceramic flutes on ebay, and one guy came back and said it arrived broken. I told him to take the broken flute to the post office, with the shipping box (that says insured on it) and printout of the auction page, and make a claim. For whatever reason, he decided not to file a claim. I'd hate to think that he was trying to get me to send him some money even though it arrived intact, but you never know. And since the post office handles insurance claims with the person who gets the mail, you never have to worry about it.

[Wombat]

I insure it for the cost it sold for. The post office will only insure something for it's value..and an auction win amount is considered strong evidence of something's value. After all, if it was worth more, people would have bid more.

An auction win amount isn't really strong evidence but it is better than nothing which is usually the alternative.

The rest doesn't follow. You only bid as much as you have to to win the auction. Another method of estimating value on the free market is to use the walk away price of the successful bidder or whichever is the higher of the walk away price and the seller's reserve. On eBay, your walk away price is recorded but not made public if it is higher than you need to win the auction.

Ask yourself what you want if something you buy goes missing. Surely the answer is that you want a replacement just like the thing you just bought and, failing that, you at least want your money back. If so, you should insure for replacement value. That might well be the price of a new unit of the item in question, even though you were lucky enough to pay less for it.

[Wanderer]

An auction win amount isn't really strong evidence but it is better than nothing which is usually the alternative.

The rest doesn't follow. You only bid as much as you have to to win the auction. Another method of estimating value on the free market is to use the walk away price of the successful bidder or whichever is the higher of the walk away price and the seller's reserve. On eBay, your walk away price is recorded but not made public if it is higher than you need to win the auction.

Ask yourself what you want if something you buy goes missing. Surely the answer is that you want a replacement just like the thing you just bought and, failing that, you at least want your money back. If so, you should insure for replacement value. That might well be the price of a new unit of the item in question, even though you were lucky enough to pay less for it.

As far as the post office is concerned, auction items are often unique items or used. The value of a used item is not the same as the value of a new item. Please see: http://www.usps.com/insuranceclaims/welcome.htm

Evidence of Value
Submit evidence - such as a sales receipt or invoice - showing the value of the article when it was mailed. For a detailed list of acceptable evidence check the General Filing Instructions in the Domestic Mail Manual.

For Internet transactions conducted through a Web-based payment network, provide a computer printout of the online transaction identifying the purchaser and seller, price paid, date of transaction, description of item purchased, and assurance that the transaction status is completed. The printout must clearly identify the Web-based payment network provider through which the Internet transaction was conducted.

Emphasis mine. They'll only return to you the price paid, your arguments notwithstanding, so there's really no point in insuring for more than that. They also won't (to the best of my knowledge) return the shipping costs. So, it's best to just insure for exactly the amount the auction went for, so you don't end up paying too much for insurance.

Granted, it'd be nice if the post office insured used items for full retail, and if they gave you your shipping back too. But that also opens up the potential for abuse. After all, consider this scenario: I buy a used Copeland for $250. It comes to me, and it has some dings in it, or something I don't like. So I stamp all over it and the package until it's good and bent. Now I can get the post office to spring for the full price of a new Copeland, and I can get a shiny new one for the $250!

Now, lets address the "rest doesn't follow" argument. You argument supposes that the highest bidder's undisclosed "top price" should set the fair market value, because by definition, he would have bid more. This does not stand to reason...there are many reasons why the absolute top bid would not represent the "Fair market value': ignorance of items value, the item represented sentimental value, etc. if i were to bid one million dollars on a Meg, but it sold for $3.00 because no one ran the price up, does that make the Meg worth $1,000,000? I would think not. In fact (except in cases of foreclosures and other sales of duress), auctions are usually considered strong evidence in determining fair market value of an item.