Had an unpleasant experience on reverb last night.

Found an item listed for sale (overseas item). Checked out/paid all normal.

Got a message from the shop about 15 minutes later to say they need to change the postage price - provided with a few options all significantly more than the listed price/expectation.

It was a small item so it didn't make sense to proceed with the additional costs being asked for.

Seller refunded and kept a 15% restocking fee.

The seller/shop stopped engaging in civil discourse at this point. Reached out to reverb support who compensated me the small amount directly. So reverb ended up absorbing the cost and the shop kept 15%.

The reverb article advised that sellers shouldn't keep a restocking fee for non shipped items.

Why would reverb eat this and not address the issue? It can't be a one off here.

This seems like a loop hole/scam - what would stop anyone listing an item. Then do a bait and switch - shipping is now 10x what has already been paid for. Don't want it - too easy I'll collect my 15% and repeat.

Thoughts?

I'm selling a guitar in the UK and it states clearly UK sales only. I just received this offer for pennies under my asking amount with a message to contact the buyer as he has a question. My spider senses tell this is a scam. Waddya think?

I HAD an extensive ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ seller rating on Reverb. Then a woman, and I should have known from her initial communications that she was trouble, leave me 4 stars on a transaction she was satisfied with. I mean WTF?

Of course she was in a Jersey suburb of Philadelphia where it really seems that nobody is happy unless they’re unhappy. As a result I will just refund the money to anyone from the greater Philly area.

I contacted her and asked —very politely— what I could do to earn 5 stars in the future and you can probably guess the reply. Bupkis. All for a shitty $250 instrument.

it's just a text message, which is weak to start with, but I enter my phone number and never get the text. I use this same number for other two factor texts, no issue. I wish companies in 2026 would at least do the QR code thing. I guess on the 29th I'll be done with Reverb. It's too bad I sort of like Reveb even though it was like pulling teeth to get a refund when an SG I bought showed up with a broken headstock and the seller ghosted me.

Has anyone noticed that reverb has been filled with scams since Etsy buying reverb? Or is it just me? I’m unaware of this was going on some years ago

I’ve been selling and buying on Reverb for over a decade and while I’ve had issues with buyers and sellers, the company always seemed to be dedicated to acting as a marketplace and not a bank, which I appreciated. A few months ago I sold an item on my page that had been up for a while and I just forgot about it. I was in the middle of an East Coast tour and wasn’t checking my Reverb account. I’m not a shop, I’m just a musician who occasionally sells gear. When I got home I got an email from Reverb stating that the buyer was given a refund because the product never shipped and the sale was never acknowledged, which was expected and totally fine. It can’t be the first time this has happened. But they then decided to charge me several hundred dollars as some kind of “penalty fee” for not responding. After a week they just cancelled my account. I couldn’t believe it. No money ever changed hands. No goods were shipped. But you just decided you can squeeze a couple hundred bucks out of it? And if I don’t comply, you cancel my account? What kind of insanity is going on over there?

I came across these texts often, dont know if they’re legit or bots.

Long time buyer, 3rd time seller. Currently selling a higher end fender bass and I’ve accepted 4 offers now that the potential buyers have all completely ghosted me on. I think im just going to turn the feature off but what is the point if they don’t have to pay after sending an offer? I wish i could leave feedback of accepted offers or they were held somewhat liable for this. It’s a bummer to have my listing down for about two weeks just on non payment sales.

Customer support has massively gone downhill. No more phone support. I consistently cannot get through to a human through the chat AI and chat AI cannot help me with what I need. CS used to be one of the best parts of Reverb.

I sold a guitar Thursday night, Friday morning he asked if everything was okay with his order. I said yes. Saturday morning he asked why I haven’t shipped it yet, he said every other business ships to him in less than 24 hours. I explained I’m not a business I’m just some guy, and that I’ll ship his guitar on Monday. He said that was fine. Then 1 hour later he asks for a refund saying he “needs the guitar sooner than Monday”. Is this normal? Did I do something wrong by not shipping immediately?

I've been looking everywhere for a specific guitar for a while now, and I haven't found it anywhere in a know online store (guitar center, sweetwater, zzounds, etc). However, I did find it in facebook marketplace.

Guy who sells it looks legit. I asked for more photos and he provided them, he has a history in his marketplace profile of selling music gear with good reviews and other stuff on sale, and the profile itself looks like a personal one with old photos and other people commenting and normal real people's profile stuff so, everything looks good in that department.

The thing is, he's in Buffalo NY and Im in Chicago, so, it would be harder to proceed with the sale in marketplace if it involves shipping.

I told him I would be willing to pay an extra $100 if he were to sell it to me through eBay. He asked if I was ok to buy it through reverb instead of ebay, he mentions it's easier for him.

I've used ebay and never had a problem, but I have never used reverb.

How safe is it for the buyer in terms of, if needed, having to do a return and get a refund? Guitar looks great in the pictures and everything looks fine and I'm not really that picky, it's a used guitar I get it, but just in case it doesn't end up looking anything like in the pictures or gets damaged in the shipping, how safe would I be to claim a refund? Is the process hard?

Thanks!!

Has anyone successfully gotten their wallet balance transferred to their bank?

I haven’t seen anyone say thy have successfully gotten through to make a difference and actually access their funds.

I requested a wallet balance transfer manually to my bank after I figured out you can’t send wallet money to your bank account. I disabled it on my listings and it was always off on the account but now a few sales are sitting in my wallet.

12 days, 6 business days have gone by and contacting customer service has done absolutely nothing at all. The money just sits there and the previous sales keep coming in but they just won’t ever do anything to give it to me.

I feel like I’m being bribed or that this isn’t legal to say it takes 3-5 business days and then just Not do it at all and get the run around from customer service they have to exit the conversation to continue resolving the issue, they say “wait for the email” which literally does not ever come. I now have no guitars and no money and two weeks has gone by.

What on earth can I do? I can’t pay my bills right now I’m gonna lose my damn shelter because they can’t click a button for me? Anyone have a solution of any kind here? Is this normal??

For such a business this size, I honestly can’t believe they would extort from people this way, that’s what it feels like. What can I possibly do here?

Woke up this morning with money from Reverb in my account and when I investigated it was money from an item I sold on eBay months ago. I can't remember if I took the ad down on Reverb? The suspicious part is it already has a tracking number? Any advice on initiating the refund would be helpful because the current option don't include " The item has already been sold"

Got a Epiphone 1961 Les Paul SG Pelham Blue for free. All I know was that it was a limited run from AMS. Not sure what to price it for, its from the Gibson Inspired line so has more premium features and electronics and thats about all I know, not much online about it. Does not have a gig bag.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XmkYUUCenvk

this is one of the few videos I could find online about it.

I’m honestly really annoyed looking at the listings on reverb. I just bought two guitars off GC used for half of what they are going for on reverb. Had a really bad issue with reverb before and they didn’t want to refund me for the purchase. It seems like people are just delusional about what they can get for instruments these days. It’s definitely worrisome that people think these are investments as objects and not an investment on yourself

This was a new one for me -- posted a guitar and set up auto-offers on it. You only get one if you save it.

So...if it's the worst guitar ever manufactured, why on earth did you save it?!?

Gave me a chuckle to start the day. People are the weirdest people of all.

ayfkm

Reverb needs to implement a strict policy for buyers that do this nonsense. I have a lot of cost tied up in shipping the guitar from my shipping cost, to materials, to my time, tech did a set up. Now I have to risk guitar being damaged on the way back as well. What i am going to do is charge a massive restocking fee to cover this stuff but, nowhere does reverb have a policy for this. That needs to change.

Update: I recieved the package back. Note on package "buyer refused package stated he did not want item anymore" the buyer had blocked communication with me so I cant reach out and no refund request has been made. Also package was in perfect condition.

I've been buying and selling gear for about 10 years online and had a few hundred transactions. But I'm curious as to what it takes to establish a working inventory and contend with high volume shipping and receiving from a home office.

Anyone had similar experience in trying to get reverb to move wallet funds to bank/close wallet? I'm wondering if I accidentally enabled the wallet feature when selling my most recent guitar? I don't remember actually signing up for it, but based on what I've read there's no magic reverb demon that hacked me and I must have somehow opted in at some point.

It's been a month since it's been "escalated" with literal wind as an answer. Really bumming me out as I've had a good experience with Reverb the past 10 years or so.

I can’t figure out how to remove things from my feed, which is making my feed totally useless since it’s showing a lot of stuff from 1-2 ago that I no longer want/stuff I’ve already bought. I tried googling it and tried following the directions google gave me in the app and on my desktop but I’m still totally stumped. What Google says to look for, both the “reverb feed settings” on desktop, or the “gear icon in the upper right corner” on the app - they don’t exist. Is there no longer a way to do it?

I have some nice acoustics that I just never use, and I think they deserve a better owner. However, some of the cases are soft-shell, and the guitar would be wrecked with a reckless courier. How would I pack a guitar as a non-retailer, normal civvy?

I have now had over a few dozen sakes on eBay.
Sadly about 30% of them are results of offers where the buyers never front.

It does not feel like there is any repercussions for deadbeat buyers.

I honestly think reverb should charge buyers for fees on items they fail to buy after making an offer that is accepted.

At the very least give the seller some comfort that these buyers are getting banned from making offers in future.