Buyer from south korea on reverb

brooom

I have a buyer from south korea on reverb, just purchase a guitar of mine, no offer at all. Just gave me full price.

Nothing looks out of the ordinary but I have never sold to Korea.

Is there any angle I'm missing here, where this might be a scam?

pt22

Is it a rare guitar? Did you limit your shipping region? Im of the opinion most unexpected, unsolicited international purchases have a high probability of being suspect. 

brooom

Shipping is not limited. It's not a rare, but a relatively high value guitar.

TTony

Can you prove, absolutely, a successful delivery to South Korea?

If not, you're open to the "item not received" claim ...

brooom said:

but a relatively high value

... which makes it more worthwhile for a scammer.

CHRISB50

If nervous about shipping a high value guitar abroad, I don’t think I’d make it available to buyers outside the UK. 

brooom

I usually ship with UPS with the option of only delivering to the final address and with signature. But yes this seems unnecessarily risky.

The user has no profile it's some kind of guest account or simpy no store.

But the weird part to me is no offer. I'm used to being low balled at this point (it's the new normal).

Will proceed with refund

LionAquaLooper

Refund it. Better safe than sorry. 

brooom

Have done so. Thanks everyone

Springywheel

Wise decision 

brooom

Interestingly the person has now contacted me. And still all looks very normal, but yes better to not risk it.

Lebarque

brooom said:

Interestingly the person has now contacted me. And still all looks very normal, but yes better to not risk it.

Tell them to collect in person if they want it!

octatonic

brooom said:

Interestingly the person has now contacted me. And still all looks very normal, but yes better to not risk it.

I am in South Korea at the moment.
I've been here a week, and Korea is a special interest of mine.

Korea is, on the whole, an exceedingly safe country and people here are incredibly trustworthy.
They don't litter, or curse, they are overwhelmingly polite and don't even jaywalk.

I can't say for sure that this isn't a scammer but if there was one country that I would trust in Asia (and most of the world) it would be Korea.
You could use a courier with end to end tracking and it would probably be fine.

TeleMaster

I'd cancel it. There are pitfalls everywhere in these scenarios. 

brooom

In all honesty I think this is a genuine buyer. That's the feeling I get from the interaction.

The only reason I decided to cancel/retract is because reverb itself has become increasingly dodgy as a website and they don't seem much to care about it.

Essentially it's the platform that doesn't really make me feel safe. And every little shadow of doubt suddenly becomes a red flag.

guitargeek62

Was this to be shipped to a drop-shipping place near London? I had an SK buyer on there recently who did that, and while he seemed very genuine I wasn’t comfortable so I cancelled it.

brooom

No no, it was a very straightforward reverb payment only, with direct shipping via UPS from my door to the buyer's door with delivery signature and tracking.

The buyer seemed genuine in all fairness, no red flags from the interaction. It's reverb itself that makes me uncomfortable, with such a long distance sale.

Petepassion

I bought a pedal from a seller in Malaysia through reverb a few months back. The footswitch was clearly faulty, I sent him videos to support this but the seller wasn’t interested and told me to claim through PayPal. I contacted Reverb and they were very helpful, after a bit of back and forth they asked if I’d be happy with half the money back to which I agreed.
  The only time I’ve had an issue through Reverb and they were great.