Is it safe to buy from Audiogon sellers?

Dear Audiophile,

Thank you very much for your kind reply.  Your generous sharing has helped me to understand so much about cross border buy & sell Hi-Fi Gears.  Your knowledge will be treasured highly one day when I take action to buy from the States. 

Sincerely gratitude.

Faust 

Always pay with creditcard. Not with PayPal. In Belgium i’ts not allowed to do it,because there were a lot of problems with it. ( People payed , and never saw there product(s) ).Make good agreements . Normally there are no problems with Audiogon. Except that the asking prices are very high in relation to the real value of the device at that time. If it’s more than 1 year old: half of the “new”-price, 5 years old and more 1/3th. In the Netherlands, some people make a mess of it , by only making profits and this has nothing to do with “love” for music.

I've bought over 350 items from ebay and a few from Audiogon. The ONLY thing I would add is from personal experience. Of all those items purchased, the only two that stick in my mind were ordered from overseas. One from England. The other from Poland. The one from England never arrived. It was nearly impossible to determine where it got lost in shipping. That was 17 years ago. The one from Poland was very recent. Last year. It did have a tracking number. It DID arrive in customs in New York. It never left customs. It has NEVER been found. I contacted them and they opened a case file. They finally replied that it was never found and they gave no explanation as to what happened to it. Bottom line. I am very hesitant to order from overseas. I do not trust our customs either. I strongly suspect someone in customs made a nice little score with my item, which ended up becoming a hassle to get PayPal or the seller to refund my money. I got lucky and the seller did credit my PayPal.

I had very good luck from a seller with great reviews.

Hi i too have been on Agon for many years and bought/ sold a lot.
only nice expirience so far.
when i put items up for sale, i only put up a few pictures. If potential buers ask for more pictures which i ofcourse is ok, ii demand a valid phonenumber to avoid my things are being used for fraud on other sites.
A chat on the phone easily tells me If it is an true audiophile i am dealing with.
Same when i want to buy something. Aditionel i also sometimes askes for a Skype mening as well ofring the same when selling expensive stuff, seeing the equipment and sometimes the complete system also makes you comftebel and often gives very good vibes as well, you get closer and have a even better expirience.

I have also contacted other members who left feedback on a seller to hear about their  expirience.

PayPal is very difficult for the seller and extremely expensive with expensive stuff. Even more If you live outside US as you then also get a very bad curency Exchange from PayPal.
Sending 1 dollar via PayPal lets you know the persons verified id for sure.
over the years i earned a High feedback score and got many audio 
netfriends.
This has worked well for me. 
Happy lisining.
Thastum