E-Bay Buyers Beware!

I am amazed at the few (thank heavens only a few) sellers (seem to be dealers or shops) that put a Guild guitar out on E-Bay and will not answer questions about the guitar such as:
1. which Guild factory was the guitar made at?
2. What is the serial number?
3. Are there any scratches or dents in the finish on the guitar?
4. Is the neck strait?

Just ran accross one for a DV-52 that the guy would not answer my questions. Came back with a song and a dance reply. Needless to say, I "danced" away from that ad.

The "Suckers" are out there in droves for those guys!!


I am glad too that there are few of them their. However, I would expect to see some bad press on the ratings for somebody like that.......I sure would have rated them!! :evil:

I just had a simple experience that reminded me the rest of the guitar playing world isn't quite up on Guild-lore & what makes a difference to us here. Be specific with your questions, I guess is the lesson I learned.

Emailed a seller about a particular acoustic. The auction gave only 1 line of description & no good close-up pictures. My main question was, could the seller look at the label & tell me where the guitar was manufactured. The simple response was "made in America."

I've seen several in the past who stated "Built in WAVERLY"!

West

Ebay seems to be a snake pit

when it comes to buying guitars. I picked up a Gretsch & a Guild (from a member here). The Gretsch auction was ruined the 1st time around by some kinda non-registered bidder nonsense. After the auction, I remained in contact with the seller who was relisting the Gretsch; I received 3 "2nd chance offers" from con artists. It made me concerned enough that I flew to pick up the guitar in exchange for cash, that way there was no chance the deal was bogus. I bought the Guild, and even though there was solid feedback both ways after the deal, someone tried to "second chance" offer it to the runner up bidder who emailed both the original seller and myself to ask about the guitar. I'm happy that the runner up bidder did, because we were able to let him know someone was trying to defraud him.

On the other hand, I've bought and sold around 20 guitars, all Guilds, via eBay in the last few years. I've been moderately burned just once, and that because a seller thought a crack had been cleated (it hadn't) and finally just quit on me after promising to send me the cost of the repair.

I always aks lots of questions, don't deal with sellers who won't come clean, offer money back with not questions askwd when I sell anything, etc.

It's different from other markets because one can't generally see/feel/play the instrument. But those on this board have a very good general idea of what Guilds are worth looking at, and often have a sense of expected pricing. I've made a little money, I've played lots of fine guitars, and I've kept the best of all.

Works for me.

Maybe Guilds made in Waverly have Westerly tuners.

Another thing I've noticed about ebay is that they will post pics of rosewood that looks lighter and redder than it really is. Sometimes you can see different pics of the same guitar at the sellers website, where more knowledgeable people will see it, and the pic shows darker and with no red.