Hi all
I am currently having a rather worrying experience with trying to organise a return from a Reverb.com purchase. The return I'm trying to do is for a CS Fender Strat which was very poorly described and is a potential fake (as I discovered when I tried to sell it on in the classifieds). I'm using the Paypal dispute process to get my refund - but there are some "irregularities" which make it far from straight forward.
It seems when you pay on Reverb.com using Paypal, you don't actually pay the seller directly. Instead you pay Reverb and then they pay the seller on your behalf. Under normal circumstances this should be ok, except when you have a return/dispute. Paypal will only cover you for disputes between you and the seller on your Paypal transaction - but the seller on the Paypal transaction is Reverb themselves - not the actual seller of the item. On the face of it this may not seem a big deal. The problem comes when you need to return the item. You must return it to the registered address on the seller's Paypal account and be able to provide tracked delivery to that address to be covered by Paypal. If you return it to a different address (i.e. the private seller's actual address) you are simply no longer covered by Paypal at all! And it makes no difference whether the seller approves your return, or if Paypal resolves it for you, the item MUST go to the registered Paypal postal address to be covered by Paypal - otherwise you will lose your Paypal protection and may not get your money back.
Personally I find this shocking. I pay for things on Reverb using Paypal because I know I have an extra layer of security with Paypal. Nowhere on the Reverb site does it say that they are used as a third party go between. This is completely different from how it works on eBay, where you do pay the seller directly and so the contract is between you and them with no third party involvement.
This situation is ongoing for me. Paypal are now stepping in to resolve the dispute between me and the seller (Reverb - not the actual private seller). As it stands I will be sending the guitar back to Reverb in Amsterdam to get my money back as that is the registered seller's address, and so I can't send it anywhere else unless I get something in writing from Reverb. And I have to foot the bill for the return too. Cost of sending a guitar to Holland? Quite a lot more than sending it within the UK.
The whole thing is a complete mess. From this experience I would seriously warn against using Reverb for the purchase of any gear of significant value.
Comments
Isn’t there a reverb chap on here?
I hope you get this sorted @hyperben . Just keep at it and don’t stress. Thanks for keeping us in the loop.
• Youtube - https://www.youtube.com/@Goldeneraguitars
So many people having major issues with the way they go about business be it returns, refunds as a buyer or receiving your sellers money
I’ll leave you with two thoughts: caveat emptor and buyer’s remorse. More of the former, and less of the latter, please.
Bottom line - if you pay with PayPal on Reverb you do NOT have normal PayPal buyer protection directly with the seller.