How popular is Wire Transfer.....

There might be a terminology problem here. A bank transfer is often referred to as a wire transfer so wire transfers are common and are safe when they are bank to bank.

Western Union transfers are frequently used by scammers because you can collect the funds by simply giving the code number to the Western Union office and picking up the money.

Avoid it at all cost. I can't agree with Elizabeth enough. And I like to ad if a seller is asking for either wire or bank transfer. Even if honest as the day long they should relize that it can and will raise a red flag. Use only a paypal type system or credit card. I will only send personal or money order when feedback is high. So don't feel bad thinking you missed out on some good deals. You might have saved yourself allot of headaches and money out of pocket.

I have not used Western Union or other wire transfer methods which don't use
a bank as intermediary. I, however, use the term 'wire transfer' to also refer to
a transfer between my bank account and yours.

It requires going to your bank and asking to 'send money' to an account.
When sending money internationally, there is a set of information required. It
is usually: Recipient's Name (also known as Beneficiary's Name), his/her Bank,
Bank Branch, Bank Account Number, and Country. It is helpful to have the
Physical Address of the Bank Branch and of the Beneficiary, but it is not
always necessary. You will likely need the SWIFT code (the international
version of the 'ABA Number' or the 'routing number' as used in the U.S.) of
the foreign bank as well. Many banks will require that to make an
international transfer. Anyone who is in the habit of receiving wire transfers
should be able to provide you with all of this information readily. All of that
information will go into a formatted electronic message to be sent from the
Sender's Bank to the Recipient's Bank called a SWIFT message (when it gets
transferred between two SWIFT members (basically all banks with any kind of
international transfer capability)).

There is sometimes a fee to send money taken by YOUR bank, depending on
the status of your account and its benefits. When you want to send money
from First National Savings Bank of Poughkeepsie to a local bank in Germany,
it is easy. However, your FNSBP will go through an intermediary bank (i.e.
FNSBP will outsource all of its foreign transfers to a major money-center bank
like Citi, JPM, BoNY, BoA) and in many cases, there will be an 'intermediary
bank charge' or 'correspondent bank charge' of $10-20. If your account is
with a major money center bank, in many cases there is no intermediary bank
charge. There is a section in most bank transfer forms where you as sender
can check a box and agree to have intermediary bank fees, if any, taken out of
your account. Checking it does NOT guarantee that additional intermediary
bank fees are not taken out of the amount being transferred because the
SWIFT message has a notation added by that check mark, but not all SWIFT
message-processing-banks' computers parse the notations perfectly.

Once the bank transfer is made, the money is out of your account and in your
counterpart's account. While it is not impossible to get money back if a
transaction goes bad and you cannot agree with the seller, you should expect
it will be impossible. You should only send bank transfers if you are
extremely confident that you are not dealing with a bad seller (who is trying to
defraud you, or who will not treat you right should the item not be as
described). However, please note that Sellers selling across borders have the
same fears of Buyers that Buyers may have of Sellers, which is why they may
insist on a bank transfer (because Paypal is structurally set up to allow Buyers
to defraud Sellers but not vice versa).

Elizabeth is right that postal money orders are an excellent low-cost way of
sending money internationally, and domestically in the U.S. If you send them
Priority Mail, you can track the envelope, and separately you put a hold on the
Money Orders by going back to the P.O. and asking them to do so (though
you have less time than with a personal check). And if well-documented and it
is a US recipient Seller, the USPS may make efforts to get your money back
should the Seller commit fraud. Note that not all countries' postal systems
are linked this way. Canada or Australia to many countries just does not work.

Schipo points out the basic problem. If one does not trust anyone, then one
should use credit card for everything. However, using a money order to pay
internationally is no safer than using a bank/wire transfer. Once it's gone, it's
gone. For international transactions, there is substantially less structural
protection against fraud for a buyer unless he uses a credit card. That is
simply the way it is. For the seller, there is zero protection other than having
the cash.

One of the earlier posters said that Paypal was structurally set up to allow Buyers to defraud Sellers but not vice versa. This has not been my experience. I once used Paypal to pay for a piece of electronics which the seller never shipped. The buyer stalled providing me with shipping information for several days and by the time I figured out what was going on and complained to Paypal the funds were gone from the sellers bank account.

Paypal provided me with a form email offering congratulations that I had won my dispute. It went on to state that unfortunately they were not able to obtain the funds, and it stated that I have no further recourse. It did state that Paypal would continue attempting to recover the funds, but they specifically stated that they will not disclose what actions they are taking. This was 4 years ago and there has been no further communications from Paypal. I have since learned that this is a very common Paypal experience. Also, to add insult to injury, Paypal will not give the buyer the confirmed address of the seller, so that you can take legal action against the fraudulent seller, even though the seller is provided with the buyers confirmed address.

I disagree about the safety of bank transfers, and I do not understand why a seller requesting this would be raising a red flag. As I recall to arrange a bank transfer, the buyer must be provided with both the seller's personal address and the address and phone number of the bank which will be receiving the funds. The buyer can then call the bank and ask questions before sending funds if there is any discomfort. The only way I can see that a seller can be dishonest in any of these buy sell arrangements, is by keeping the money and not shipping the equipment. This can happen regardless of what payment method is used.

A dishonest buyer on the other hand has numerous ways to defraud the seller. He can make a Paypal payment using a stolen credit card. When this is discovered, Paypal will withdraw the funds from the account in which the money was deposited. If that account is empty, your bank will take the money from other accounts you may have in that bank. The dishonest buyer can send a fraudulent money order or bank draft. You deposit this into your bank account and ship the equipment. When the bank eventually finds out that the MO or bank draft is fraudulent, they will take the money out of which ever of your accounts in their bank has sufficient funds. If there are no sufficient funds in any of your accounts they will contact the authorities just as they would if you were writing bad checks.

For this reason I greatly prefer bank transfers from buyers with good and lengthy feedback, and I am happy to purchase from sellers with solid lengthy feedback using bank transfers. I agree that postal money orders are great, but the buyer is still taking the risk that the seller will take the money and run.

I think the Audiogon feedback system is the only thing which can give any of us a degree of security in these high ticket transactions, and discussions like this serve to remind me what a valuable service Audiogon is providing.

All the best,
Dennis