I work at a company that is the Internet to a certain extent, so I’ve seen my fair share of scams and rip-offs. I’ve gotten emails from Nigerian Princes and promises of fame and fortune for forwarding emails about Microsoft, and I’m generally a pretty cynical guy, so I went out on a limb to put a bit of trust in the Internet recently, and I’m waiting to see if that trust was misplaced.
There are two key aspects to this story … my history as a guitar owner and an early experience with eBay (which happened to also involve a guitar):
In college, I bought my first acoustic guitar on eBay, and when it came to the dorm, I found that I’d been duped into buying some random crappy guitar in a Fender case … I remember being pretty pissed about it, but it wasn’t too expensive, so I didn’t really pursue any kind of refund (if the system was even sophisticated enough to protect the buyer like that back at the time). I more or less just considered the purchase a learning experience to be much less trusting of people on the Web.
Ultimately , I traded that guitar in for an Epiphone acoustic/electric, then I bought a Highway 1 Stratocaster, then I traded the Epiphone and the Strat in for a Martin acoustic/electric (which I still have and I’m a huge fan of).
When I moved back to Texas, I decided I wanted to play guitar a little more, so I bought a John Mayer Signature Stratocaster, and I started playing a bit more. At one point, a friend from work introduced me to a pretty famous artist who’s worked with the likes of Van Halen and ZZ Top to paint their instruments, and he offered to work out a deal with me to paint a replica of Hendrix’s Monterrey Pop Stratocaster, so I bought a Fender Custom Shop ‘56 Reissue to use as a canvas. Ultimately, the painting didn’t happen ‘cause I think the guy ended up having to go on tour with some band as their drum tech.
At the end of the day, I had two solid Stratocasters - one of which still had the plastic on the pickguard and the guitar case - so I started looking around for a way to consolidate those into a single, nicer guitar.
I took both of the guitars up to a local music store called Fuller’s Vintage Guitar, and one of the folks there quoted me what he could offer me if I wanted to trade the guitars in, and the prices were borderline insulting … that’s not really his fault, as he was going by a guitar blue book, but it didn’t make sense to me that they’d low-ball me the price of my two guitars and then I’d turn around and pay closer to the retail price of one of theirs … I would be trading two guitars in and not getting enough credit back to buy one of them back. Needless to say, that wasn’t working for me, so I started looking around at selling them on eBay to make back what I spent on them, and I would then use that money to buy a new guitar.
One of my friends came by with a Canon 50D to snap some pics for the posting, and before I started the process of listing the guitars and hoping they’d pique some interest (in a struggling economy no less), I came across an eBay store with a limited edition Closet Classic Strat that was selling for about the same price as I was looking to sell both of my guitars for … The store has 100% positive feedback, and its brick-and-mortar location in Chicago is highly regarded as a great place to play killer instruments, so I sent a quick message to the eBay user to ask if they’d be interested in a deal.
Within about a day, I got a note back from a guy named Matt who said we could probably work something out assuming that my trade-in guitars were what I said they were and were in good shape … then it came down to the mechanics of the trade. Since he’s the one with the store and the guitar that was requested, he said he’d have to get my guitars in his hands before he would send the Closet Classic back to me, and that’s where it came down to a matter of trust. Did I believe that he would hold up his end of the bargain?
Well a few emails were exchanged back and forth talking about the situation, and I was convinced (or fooled) that the guy was who he said he was and that the guitar was mine if I got my two trade-ins to him. To be sure he had the guitar, I had him take a picture of the guitar with a “Sold” tag and my name on it, and once he did that, I was pretty confident that the deal was legit.
I went to FedEx and shipped both guitars to Chicago, then I called up the phone number on the store’s Web site to let Matt know that I’d shipped them and that he could expect tracking numbers from me. On a side note, this was also to make sure no one picked up the phone and said “Who the hell is Matt?”
I forwarded the tracking numbers to him and he told me that he’d personally set up the Closet Classic for me to my specifications as we waited for the delivery. The Strat that is supposed to be coming back to me was boxed up and ready to swap with the FedEx driver upon a quick initial inspection of the two I sent.
I got a message from him the day the guitars arrived to the store, and he told me he was impressed with the condition of both guitars, so he gave the FedEx driver a 25lb. box with my address on it that theoretically has the Closet Classic guitar inside.
I’m obsessively watching the tracking info, and I’m pretty sure I will continue to do so until I see “delivered” on June 23, but I’ve got a few butterflies in my basket as I wait to unbox what I hope to be the right guitar. If I were advising someone in my position, would tell them it is a silly idea to put trust in someone on the Internet, but I guess we’ll see … Regardless of the outcome, I’ll be updating Tumblr on the results.
Internet, this is your chance to restore a little of my faith in humanity. Don’t screw it up.
