Experiences buying used cartridges

I purchased a used cartridge from grgaudio who often sells a ton of cartridges, all with less than 300 hours. Apparently nobody in California runs Their cartridges over 300 hours. Anyhow I bought a Benz reference one from him in the ad it said new retail price was 3K. Well I learned after the fact that retail is $1200. But I should've done my due diligence my bad. So then I install it and it's obvious the cartridge is just worn right out. So I sent him three emails telling him about it and never receive a response. Then six months later I have it looked at and yes it's worn right out. So I respond to four of his ads asking him if he's going to ignore these folks as well when they discover their cartridges are worn out. So he sends me a message asking me what's up the last he heard from me was when he sold me a cartridge. So I tell him I'm upset because it was totally misrepresented and it's worn out and I want my money back. And believe it or not he says I can't refund your money now if you had of notified me right after I would've done so. He says my policy is always your satisfaction or money back. I guess that works good if you totally ignore people's attempts to tell you they're dissatisfied. Complete crook stay away from this guy. And the worst thing is it was past the time to leave feedback so I couldn't tell others of my experience on his feedback.

Wow I bought a used Sumiko cartridge from graudio and was very happy with purchase. He even offered to mount it on my table for gratis. I mean he was right about this cartridge it is one of a handful of HOMC cartidges that do everything right and I bought it without knowing it's sound. He has to be doing something right,his feedback is over 98%.

I had one very positive and one very negative experience buying used. The bad one was for a cart that (sounds like the stock description) had "low hours" and "functioned perfectly". It couldn't make a clean sound to save its life. I made the mistake of going back and forth with this guy until I was past the point of return (although I'm not sure if I would have ever really gotten my money back, given the way this guy was slipping his way through the email back-n-forth). The thing is he had a perfect rating up to that point.

I wound up sending the cart to SS. The stylus was shot and it also was in need of a serious cleaning. In the long run it cost me well beyond what I was planning to spend on that go around, but it now works beautifully. The other purchase could not have been more different - that cart was received in exactly the condition advertised, but based on my bad experience I'm not sure if I'd buy used again.

I have bought lightly used cartridges directly through the distributer
Fantastic ZYX service from Mehran at Sora Sounds

Qdrone the problem is that if a certain amount of time goes by you cannot leave feedback for a transaction. I believe this is why GRGaudio ignored my first three or four emails.  By the time I had it looked at and verified that it was toast I could not leave feedback. And I'm sure he's pulled this on quite a few others as well. I don't know the guy personally but I just want to warn others about him so they don't get burned. Right now he has a Linn archiv b up for sale. Supposedly has 250 hours on it. It is 25 to 30-year-old cartridge with only 250 hours on it??!!  Come on give me a break, that's only 10 hours a year. And this is not an isolated example. Pretty much all of his cartridges he has ever sold have been listed as 300 hours or less. And a lot of them have been 20 to 30 years old.