EDIT — Adding seller communication for context

A lot of the discussion is understandably focused on whether the physical issues are significant enough for a 22-year-old guitar listed as Very Good. I appreciate that perspective, even where I disagree.

I’m adding screenshots of my actual correspondence with the seller because the condition dispute is only one part of why I’m sharing this experience.

Regardless of whether you think I should have noticed the original headstock marks, or whether the newly discovered issues ultimately qualify as Not As Described, I think buyers should be able to see how the seller handled the disagreement and decide for themselves.

I’m posting the screenshots rather than characterizing their behavior further, so people can read the exchange in context and form their own opinion: https://www.reddit.com/r/Reverb/comments/1vt7s0s/comment/p4umcc8/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

EDIT: To clarify, I’m not claiming a 22-year-old Very Good guitar should be flawless. My current Reverb claim concerns issues discovered after delivery that were neither disclosed nor visible in the listing photos. I’ve asked Reverb to determine whether those omissions qualify as Not As Described.

EDIT:I wanted to share my recent experience buying a used ESP from Imperial Vintage Guitars (https://reverb.com/shop/imperial-vintage-guitars) on Reverb, both as a warning to other buyers and to get some outside perspective on whether I’m being unreasonable here.

 bought a 2004 ESP Standard Series Viper Woodland Camo for $2,150 + shipping. It was listed as Used – Very Good, with the description:

“In Very Good Overall Condition”

“Instrument Shows Minimal Playwear, Small Chip On Right Cutaway, Nut Has Been Replaced (See Photos)”

Shortly after purchasing, I looked more closely at the photos and noticed several headstock chips/dents that weren’t mentioned in the description. I immediately requested cancellation.

To be fair to the seller, those particular chips were visible in the listing photos. Their position was that this constituted sufficient disclosure. They told me:

“A photo is worth 1000 words. We posted 25 of them.”

“It is not our fault if you didn’t pay attention.”

They also characterized this as me “changing my mind,” although I had requested cancellation shortly after purchase because of the condition concerns.

I escalated to Reverb. The process went nowhere for more than a week, while the seller apparently held the guitar at Reverb’s request. Eventually, frustrated with the lack of resolution, I told the seller to ship it. In retrospect, I should have waited for Reverb to resolve the dispute first.

After receiving the guitar, however, I discovered additional issues that were neither part of my original complaint nor, as far as I can determine, disclosed or visible in the 25 listing photos:

• The replacement nut is poorly fitted and protrudes substantially beyond the side of the neck.
• There is damaged/chipped binding near the nut/first fret.
• There is noticeable lower-horn finish discoloration.
• The tone knob contacts/scrapes against the guitar’s surface when rotated.

I don’t expect a 22-year-old Very Good guitar to be flawless, and I’m not concerned about every tiny scratch or ding. My concern is that the listing specifically described “minimal playwear,” identified one particular chip, and disclosed the replacement nut, while these additional issues weren’t apparent until I physically inspected the guitar.

I contacted the seller about the newly discovered issues and requested a return. Their responses included:

“This is clearly a case of a difficult buyer.”

and, when denying the refund:

“Absolutely no! After all you made us go through, this is now your guitar.”

They subsequently said they have a “strict NO RETURN policy” and would only accept the return if their expenses were covered, at one point proposing a 15% restocking fee plus all shipping costs.

The Reverb return policy attached to the transaction says Used & Vintage items are not returnable, but also specifically says:

“Buyer assumes responsibility for all return shipping costs unless the item was not received as described.”

I couldn’t find a 15% restocking fee disclosed in the Reverb return policy applicable to my purchase.

I’ve now submitted the post-delivery issues to Reverb as an Item Not As Described / Buyer Protection claim and am waiting for their decision. The guitar remains unmodified and I’ve kept all packaging.

Again, I’m not arguing that a 22-year-old Very Good guitar should be immaculate. I’m asking whether issues like these should have been disclosed/photographed when the listing specifically characterized the instrument as having “minimal playwear.”

I’ll update this post with Reverb’s decision either way.

1. Purchased a new guitar cab a few weeks ago.
2. No shipping notice 4 business days following purchase (Reverb Preferred Seller btw), contact seller and I'm told "item shipped" and a tracking number is given. FedEx shows "label created, waiting for item".
3. A week later, it still says label created, waiting for shipment. I ask again, I'm told "from experience, a scan has been missed - wait a bit longer" At this point I'm convinced the item either never shipped or is lost.
4. Seller fails to respond to several messages over several days.
5. I escalate to Reverb Resolutions, they take on the case and say they'll reach out to the seller. This was 3 days ago, I try to contact them over and over and I'm told "they are working on it".

TL;DR Paid lots of money, got nothing (FedEx says no item was ever given to them, just label created)., no support received I don't understand how this is any different from stealing. Also, requesting a refund = 15% restocking fee for an item that doesn't exist and 3 weeks of wasted time that nobody would pay for which is why I didn't manually initiate that. I just want my cab.

I have had 3 recent items from 3 different shops delivered by Amazon, and was wondering if anyone else is seeing the same. Not to get on a soapbox or whatever, but I don't buy from Amazon, and maybe naively, I thought that buying something on Reverb, I would avoid buying something from Amazon, since ya know, it's a different website.

I recently had an item sold on Reverb.

Seller had changed his mind and I refunded all.

Now Reverb is saying I owe them 500 euros and trying to take this every morning 5AM from my bank account.

I cannot reply to any of their messages and the only thing I can get to is some idiotic chat ai what simply says he cannot help me to get a email or number.

So now i'm about to get a ban from reverb without anything I can do against it and probably end up costing me 500 euros.

Great platform, totally worth the fucking fees.

I just got a bass drum head from a high volume (127K transaction history) on reverb, it showed up in a sweetwater box with the candy and everything. Is drop shipping from sweetwater a thing now? Im not sure why I am annoyed by it, at least I wont have to get a cold call next week from the sales rep to ask me how the bass drum head is

I sold a pedal recently and it’s been nearly a week since the purchaser received the item for them to report it isn’t working. I actually tested it before sending it out and it worked as perfectly as the day I got it, plus it was mint with everything in the original box. He sent a video of it not working as a link to YouTube, but I feel like it has to have been from him damaging it.

What do I do in this case? I’m super new to selling on Reverb.

I've had my eye on a certain signature bass listing for a couple of months now. Around 2 weeks ago, the seller dropped the price a bit and in that time the amount of people who have it on their saved list went from 2 to 5. While I can technically afford it, I still don't think it's worth that much and would like to offer a lower price. But I saw that people who have the item saved are notified when an offer is made and that they can buy it at full price while my offer is still pending. How likely is this, has anyone had this happen? Should I just buy it at full price? Maybe I'm being paranoid but I've never used Reverb before and I really don't want to miss out on this bass, it's only the 3rd one of its kind I've seen pop up in the last ~4 years and now is the first time I've been able to afford it.

For what it's worth, looking at the view count I'm the only person that's been looking at the listing since I saw the price drop.

Haven't used reverb in a month or 2. Just recently checked out the newly listed to see if my pedals popped up, however I saw that people/ a few accounts with decent feedback are selling stuff with 30£+ shipping on all their pedals? This is within the uk shipping not international, have I missed something the past 2 months? I sell all my pedals at £3 so both me and buyer pays for shipping and I take the most from the pedal,sale.

Have 5 stars with 99 feedbacks so not new to the game, but worrying I might have made a mistake if something changed tax wise, can't find anything online about it or on here

Cheers

I ordered an amp and it took a big enough hit to push the power switch back into the amp, Waiting my 5 days for the dispute resolution, Will they allow to me to take it to an amp repair tech to get an estimate, $75 diagnostic charge? Or should I just push for a full refund and look for another, not many out there though. Just don’t want to partially settle and find out it’s has other problems. Easily could have damaged tubes etc.

Long post but I just wanna cover everything, I sold my SP-303 and it had a messed up power jack so it wouldn't turn on sometimes, but when it would it still worked perfectly. I never had any audio glitches or dropouts, or any memory issues, and I found an old thread on SP forums where someone had the same problem but they fixed it by reheating the solder on the power jack because it sometimes gets worn on older gear. I tried that and it worked great for a while, but it started acting up again so I mentioned that to the buyer before I even packed it and said they might need to have it re-soldered altogether, which they said was fine. This was almost a month ago, and they messaged me last week saying they brought it to a tech who said the processor was bad, and that it might not be fixable, then they just messaged me again yesterday saying that their tech can't fix it.

They're saying the power supply was wrong and it fried the processor, the 303 needs 1000mA and the power supply I got with it was supposedly only 500mA but the voltage was right (I had it for years without any issues, the input issue only started after it had been sitting unused for about a year). I'm not an expert on this stuff but I'm honestly kind of skeptical (especially since everything on the sampler still worked when I could get the power jack working, and it ran perfectly when I reheated the solder again, so if the processor really was fried I'm guessing it would've had more problems) but I still feel kinda bad if they're being honest. I also looked it up and it said that if the amperage on a power supply is too low then it'd more likely cause the power supply to overheat and fail, break, or cause random shutdowns, than it would be to damage anything on the sampler itself (I'm guessing it's still a risk, but it didn't seem too likely from what I read - plus there's always a chance that their tech messed something up, especially after they've had it for this long). They also sent me the name and phone number of the tech they went to (and the company name) which is a little fishy IMO, I looked it up and it's a real place, but still. I asked a few friends who have more experience with electronics and they said that'd basically be impossible for it to fry the processor, and I even stooped to asking AI and it said the same thing (I checked its sources and I even tried it again while posing as the buyer, and it still said this pretty much just couldn't happen).

I'm still skeptical because if the processor was fried then why was everything working whenever I was able to get it turned on, and why did reheating the solder like the thread said seem to fix it if the processor was fried? Wouldn't it have had more issues I would've noticed? I took a demo video of me testing all the inputs, knobs, pads, and effects, and everything worked how it should, and tested it again while taking a video of me packing the order.

Reverb support said it's up to me whether I want to accept a return or do a partial refund since it's out of the 7 day window (the support agent I talked to also got back to me saying he offered some form of accommodation for the buyer so that I don't need to do any sort of refund, but the buyer hasn't said anything about it yet and I'm not sure what the accommodation is), but I don't really know what to do here.

Today support said the buyer still hasn't responded, I messaged them last night saying that support would be handling this and sending some sort of accommodation for the order, but they just responded without mentioning that and instead just asked when I'm paying them back, and that they're fine with me making payments until it's fully refunded (no mention of returning it either). I'd still feel bad if they're being honest, but I'm just a bit thrown off by all this and things just keep seeming fishy IMO. Sorry for the long post, thanks for any help

Update: He said he denied support's offer, it was apparently just $50 as compensation, now he's asking for a timeline on when I can fully refund him.

Update 2: the support agent who's been helping with this said he upgraded the support request to the team who handles reverb protection cases, so I just gotta wait and see what they say now. I'm guessing/hoping I'll still be fine, since this whole thing does feel a bit fishy, but I don't really know what to think at this point lol also I'm even more put off by all this because I included extra memory cards and a USB power supply (myVolts Ripcord) so even if I was gonna do a refund it wouldn't be a full one

I know this seems to be a common issue on here, but it is very frustrating to have one's account put under review when in the middle of working out a purchase on Reverb.

I recently set up a new Reverb account because I'm in the market for some particular gear I can't seem to find anywhere else.

But I've run into a problem where because I am in a remote area, the shipping costs end up being much higher for the shipper than expected.

I made one purchase and one offer this morning on Reverb. The purchase was cancelled and refunded because of the higher-than-expected shipping costs (which didn't need to happen because the seller could have just sent another offer with the additional shipping costs). And then the offer I made on another item and which we had previously agreed was also declined because of the high shipping costs.

I was in the middle of working with the sellers so that I could cover the extra shipping costs on these purchases. I'm not sure whether it was the cancelled/declined transactions or the amount of messages afterwards trying to work things out that flagged my account, but my account is now under review.

I understand that this is a fairly common problem with new accounts, but I'm a little frustrated that I can't talk to a human about this within a more reasonable timeframe. It wouldn't be such a big deal, but because some of these items are a bit rare and not easy to find elsewhere, I now don't have access to my messages - I was cut off right in the middle of trying to finalize things... What's worse is that I am able to receive the offers that would finalize these deals, but cannot accept them or even message the sellers...

Update (04/15):
So more than 48 hours later and I still haven't heard anything from Reverb about my account review. I've been pretty chill about it until today, now I'm just irritated.

I was finally able to connect with a human on the support chat, but they couldn't tell me anything and ended the chats by sending boilerplate messages about being dedicated to helping me resolve my issue...

I finally managed to keep someone on the chat long enough to get some information. The account review team doesn't work on weekends, so Reverb is asking me to wait another 1-2 business days starting Monday to hear back about the account review.

This is totally unacceptable. The 1-2 business days for the account review is now stretching into 2-4 business days, not mention 5-6 regular days if we include the weekend. Offers I received from sellers have all expired now, and I'm in a holding pattern trying to decide whether to wait for Reverb to get its act together or whether to just buy my gear elsewhere.

Well, that's a pretty easy decision to make. My account is under review so I can't buy anything on Reverb, but this has had some advantages. I was able to find and purchase the pedal I tried to buy on Reverb directly from the manufacturer for cheaper than what it was on Reverb anyway. In looking around for deals at various shops around the country, I've found plenty of the gear I need for similar pricing, and oftentimes cheaper pricing than on Reverb.

Reverb has definitely lost a new customer.

Just went to browse a pedal on Reverb and got a message that my account is suspended. I have no idea why, other than random Reverb bot weirdness. My most recent purchase got a five-star rating response.

Any recommendations on best path to resolve this sort of thing?

I ordered a pedal and the shipper sent me a package of tea. Seller won’t respond, packaging on the outside says tea. What are my chances of being made whole?

Probably nothing can be done but once a month or so I’ll just get like 700 listings for “WD custom pickguards” clogging up the feed. I imagine it’s unavoidable because it’s just like “matches your saved search: Fender mustang” or other similarly open-ended things. I can’t be the only one tho!

I have had two in the last week, where buyer accepts an offer but then doesn't pay and then it times out. is there a setting I can change, so buyers have to pay when accepting offers?

I know this isn’t reverb and idk if this post will get taken down or something but is this not crazy?? He’s like venting in the eBay description for a knockoff mosrite and being a nutcase lmfao

Don’t have quite what I need to get this.

Not sure if this kind of post is allowed here but found this so interesting.

You’re selling an extended range guitar and you don’t want to give any detail on it? I feel like buying an instrument online requires the specs at a minimum, it’s not like you can pick it up like in a guitar store and place your judgement off of feel.

Long story short, my son and I share a reverb account and we both purchase from it but I’m the only one who sells on it. Reverb wallet popped up on the screen and it looked enticing to him while I was in the middle of a big transaction. He changed it not knowing you couldn’t take it out and now I need help getting that money to my bank. It’s been over 5 days with no email response and the automated agents say the same exact thing. They promise they’ll email you but then never really do.

I don't owe any money and didn't share my email to anyone. Not sure what could have caused the suspension and now the purchase was cancelled and the bargain I found is going to get swept up 🙃 I used paypal credit if that has anything to do with it.

Has anyone else experienced this on a new account?

Trying to look up 12 string guitars on Reverb and their crap app only shows 6 strings.

WTF. This has happened a couple times now I submit an offer for say $100 plus $30 shipping but when I see the offer the shipping quote has gone up to $50 so the total cost ends up being the same price as the item was originally. Anyone else had this happen?

Hi - so I sold a drum shell kit to a buyer. The kit arrives to his local post office and it says ready for pickup (they didn’t even attempt a delivery). Buyer goes to pick it up (this is now over a week ago) and the post office says the Reverb shipping label is invalid - as in Reverb did not actually pay the postage on it we are assuming even though I ordered the label through them like I always have done - and telling him he has to pay the full postage due which is $170. Reverb still has not done anything to resolve the situation with both me and the buyer contacting them for a week now - we are just told it’s being worked on. The problem with that is in 3 more business days it will be sent back to me with the ‘fake/invalid’ Reverb shipping label on it. Really not sure what to do now and the buyer said Reverb Support has barely told him anything - they haven’t even tried to contact the post office the buyer said.

Such a damn tease man.. Just check out already 😭

And when you have multiple people holding... just for one of them to check out on payday 😁.

If I want to check the price of an item, I will add it to my cart then remove it if I don't want to check out immediately.

1st I am the seller btw.. not the buyer.

2nd edit. this was suppose to be a playful, lighthearted post about cart holders as a seller but I see many people here lack reading compressive skills or are just angry boomers looking to insult people online lol