Who pays for busted stuff?

Hi Jeff, I was recently in an identical situation. I bought a Nak Dragon here on Audiogon, it arrived in perfect cosmetic shape, no obvious damage to the box (like yours, mine was shipped in the original box w/original packing material), but when I tried to open the tape door, nothing. Some latch was obviously not releasing, power was on but no action by the door. I fooled around with it (gently) for a while, jiggling and reaching in to try and find an engaged latch, but couldn't solve the problem. I emailed seller, who originally had said he offered a money back guarantee. The door was working when he packed the deck. Since I decided that I wanted to keep the deck, even if I had to pay for the repair, I did not ask to return it for a full refund. Instead, I took it into a shop that sells and services vintage as well as new gear, and a week later had it back operating perfectly. Diagnosis: the "pressure pad lifter" was missing. Cost: approx $130, which included a cleaning, checking, and head alignment. Don't know how much the pressure pad lifter plus labor alone cost. Don't know what happened to the original pressure pad lifter; fell off in transit? Lost somewhere inside the deck? I assume if the latter, the repair shop would have found it and removed it. Anyway, I asked seller to contribute to the repair cost, which I said I thought fair, and he agreed without argument and shortly thereafter sent me a check for $35. I feel that that was honest and fair and am perfectly satisfied with him, the tape deck, and the way the whole deal went down. My deck was also shipped UPS Ground. Lesson: always double box, even if you pay more to ship. At least you then have a chance of receiving what you paid for.
If I had wanted to return the deck for a full refund, I think that the seller was obligated to accept it, since he had offered that from the beginning. If it had been anything other than a purely (I felt) mechanical problem with the door latch, like a function not working (eg the autoreverse or the autocalibration), I think I would have asked to return the deck, fearing that the cost of repair would be too high. I just felt the latch problem wouldn't be too expensive. $130 was steep, but then it was a vintage piece, not currently manufactured.

In my opinion, if the unit does not come as advertised, the seller is obligated to make good.

Without question (to me, anyway), the seller needs to make good, but it always helps if the buyer is understanding and flexible. I have only received one piece of non-working gear, and the seller wasn't particularly helpful, though I didn't push it much with him. I thought I was told sometime during figuring out how to deal with it that if a claim against the shipper is to be made, it has to be made by the person shipping the unit, not the reciever. Don't know if that's true or not. In my case, it was a Krell CD player which, although it seemed to go through all the proper motions, wouldn't read / play the CD. I contacted Krell who told me the unit was under warranty, and I shipped them the unit. Two weeks later, it was returned, not only completely functional, but totally cleaned up - it was beautiful. So, in my case, for $50 extra everything worked out great. My understanding is that Krell no longer honors transferred warranties, so it would have probably been $150 (or more) if it happened today.

In any case, if you really want the piece, I'd investigate the cost to get it fixed and work with the seller on making that palatable to everyone and pursue the claim against UPS as a second resort. -Kirk

I sent a McIntosh CD player to a person in Florida and it arrived damaged, broken glass faceplate and broken knobs.
It was shipped in the original FACTORY double boxes.
UPS decided to turn the claim down since there was no damage to the box. Well, I obviously did not ship it this way, as it left HOUSE of MUSIC (McIntosh dealer) in the plastic wrap from a clean and align.

I had the player returned, I found ANOTHER CD player that was in fine cosmetic shape but functionally not, took BOTH into the dealer and had them fix the broken one.

I sold the CD player for $900 originally, (about $500 more than it should have) spent $200 on the broken one, $85 to mend the two, and sent the player back!

Bottom line, he got what he expected, granted, it took about 2 months....

Dan (AudioGon and EBAY member)

My wife sold my old KLH Model Twenty-One Radio on Ebay for a whopping sum of $265. The unit was in perfect shape except for a slight fading on the top of the cabinet. It was shipped exceedingly well packed with 6" of foam surrounding the unit which was double boxed. It arrived though with damage to the circuit board that received the volume and tone control pots. The unit was 35-40 years old and just could not handle the trip, I guess. To make a long story short, I reimbursed the buyer for the repair and also through in additional money to cover having the cabinet pro refinished, to make up for the inconvenience (think that it was $95 total). The radio still lives and the buyer was completely satisfied, though somewhat shocked that an Ebay seller would go to this length to make it right. I was willing to go as high as $265 (the amount of the sale) to have the unit repaired.