cross country buying

edgarb · Post by **edgarb** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 3:55 pm

Buying a tuba from across the country. You send some dude many thousand dollars and hope he sends you the tuba. This is a very uncomfortable situation. I can see paying some large web based music store. You have some recourse because they don't want the bad reputation. is there any alternative?? any thoughts?

TexTuba · Post by **TexTuba** » Fri Feb 18, 2005 4:16 pm

JayW · Post by **JayW** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 1:05 am

I have sold two horns through this forum and bought one.....and all I can say is that I did not know any of the people going into it...and I now keep in regular contact with two out of three. The people here are "in my experience" great.

Tom B. · Post by **Tom B.** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 8:11 am

I bought my horn through this BBS and I was able to meet the seller half-way to exchange money and horn. I've been extremely happy with the purchase. If the distance had been greater, however, I'd have gone with an escrow service like https://www.escrow.com/index.asp. They protect both buyer and seller and are fairly reasonably priced.

With escrow, the money is held by a third party until the buyer receives the horn and has tried it out. Then one of three things happen:

1. The buyer OKs the transfer, or

2. A period of time elapses and the money is released to the seller, or

3. The buyer sends the horn back at his/her expense and gets the money back when the seller receives the horn.

In the latter case, the buyer is only out time, and the seller is out the cost of shipment.

Tom

Tubaryan12 · Post by **Tubaryan12** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 9:22 am

My advice to you is this: Only do what you are comfortable with. If you can't make the trip to one of the big tuba sellers/resellers and you can't find anything local then only deal with companies that you can trust because no words will console you if things go wrong and you'll be kicking yourself saying "I should have gone with my gut feeling". I am like you. There were better "deals" out there when I bought my horn but I had to touch and play the horn myself before I made the plunge so I drove from Cleveland to Baltimore Brass to buy. I have even tried out a horn locally and when I knew I couldnt buy it I wrote a review here about it's quality on TubeNet to let others know that the deal was legit. The Tubenet Nation will assist you if you need but trust your feelings first.

smurphius · Post by **smurphius** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 9:39 am

I too bought my tuba from this BBS. I would have to agree that anyone who lurks here is bound to be a very great person. Definately see if you can get anything worked out with a meeting point half way somewhere, or trying to find someone nearby to your buyer to try it for you. I'm sure there are plenty of good folks here who'd be willing to help a fellow (tuba)man out.

Best luck.

elimia · Post by **elimia** » Sat Feb 19, 2005 6:31 pm

Can't speak much for what you are getting, in actuality you are hoping the person is upstanding on the other end. paypal.com helps protect the buyer and the seller, FWIW. Always best, if you are close enough to do so, to try the horn out. I just sold one through this forum and thought it went pretty well. They received their horn yesterday.

Ryan