Beware, scammers everywhere

@thecarpathian , it was a pair of ARC VTM120s. This was back in the late ’90s when people used to advertise used gear in the classified section in back of Stereophile. The deal went okay, but I guess the potential for fraud exists there as well. I wasn’t the one who was home when the boxes were delivered via usps, so the seller could have easily shipped something besides what I wanted. And thinking about it, seeing as how a money order was used as payment, I wouldn’t have had any recourse at all for a refund, unlike the possibility that exists with a credit card.

A dealer in my area makes high end custom tube amps, many employing very valuable vintage parts.  Recently, I saw a listing of Western Electric 171C output transformers, a part he frequently uses, at a very nice price.  The seller claims that he pulled the transformers from Western Electric 124 amps.  When my dealer asked whether he would allow a return if the part turned out not to be genuine, he was told that there was no assurance that the part was genuine (how could it be otherwise if it was pulled from a 124 amp?).  My dealer also asked, and got no response to the question of why would someone pull the transformers to sell them separately from an amp that would sell for ten times the price he was asking for the transformers.  This dealer has nerves of steel when it comes to buying parts.  He recently bought a pair of input transformers for a custom build that cost $10k for the pair; it came from Japan so he felt more confident about it being genuine than a similar pair offered from a Chinese source.

As a seller, he often gets scammed by buyers.  A common scam involves a sale of vintage tubes.  The buyer claims that the tubes that he sent are defective and insists on returning the tubes for a refund.  When the tubes come back, they are not the same tubes that were sent.

https://open.spotify.com/track/63WGXIdP0ipN9YHDII7BMU

...added for comic relief....and NO, no specific target... ;)

...but. sometimes......*grits gums so hard they squeak*

I have purchased 3 items at an online audio site and recently made my first sale.  Not having feedback makes one hesitate and it takes time to get established, particularly if one does not buy/sell alot of items.

Next I will be selling my larger integrated and asking over a grand.  It will be relatively low priced compared with others but still its a chunk that could attract scammers, low ballers, etc. 

I sell media on the A/zon platform and usually have had good experiences with an occasional blip: refunds/returns/undeliverables but there have been a few scams.  I learned my lesson and will not ship to certain individuals, just cancel the order.

Hasn't affected my feedback which indicates they intentionally scammed me.  A few times someone returns a different item than the one received, financially it wasn't worth the trouble but I do report them to A.  

The world we live in.