Semi-unrelated; I’ve been using reverb to sell a bunch of my gear for the past few months or so and the experience has been pretty good. It’s essentially eBay but curated which is a great idea.
For the one actually “large/expensive” piece of equipment I sold Craigslist worked much better, though. I was unwilling to ship or insure it.
When Reverb was bought by Etsy, they dramatically raised their fees with no real justification, and reduced the quality of their customer support. It has rather damaged their previously sterling reputation among musicians.
I like reverb, and I think it’s a pretty great resource, but they raised their rates back in August and it’s left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth. I end up paying almost 10% to just sell something, and that’s before shipping.
Same here, I like the page and I like their customer service (had very good experiences so far, I needed it only once though), but since the 10% is priced in all gear, everything is a tad too expensive, maybe except if you're a collector. I could live with 5% but 10% is just too much, as a seller and buyer. I still try to sell from time to time, but only the collectible stuff, I stopped buying completely.
It's currently at 7.7% + $0.25. But it's a bit more complicated than that.
If you want something to sell, you usually have to use their "bump" feature to get it to show up at the beginning of any relevant search results. You give an additional percentage of the sale to get it higher in the listings. If you have a more common item, you usually have to give up a higher percentage to get it noticed.
Once you factor in shipping and everything else, I usually sell most of my items at a loss of 10-25% depending on the item. I've never really made a profit from anything I've sold on Reverb.
TBH, it does not sound bad to me at all ( ignoring the bump feature ).
I assume they take care of the transaction/payment? Normal creditcard transaction fees are at 2% + $0.25, and this is without providing a market(place).
AppStore takes 30%, Uber/Deliveroo etc take about 15%.
Prices on Reverb have become a meme. Often people list items asking absurd prices hoping someone desperate will buy. They don't respond to reasonable offers (E.g. for what the item recently actually sold for) and listings are hanging for months if not years.
Funny place.
A not-insignificant amount of those are people who didn't want to sell but have the conversation: "Sell that damn guitar that you haven't touched in 15 years." "See, honey, I tried, but its not selling."
Very true. But Reverb should give those people advice to seek therapy and marriage counselling. In my country - forcing someone to do that is straight domestic abuse and that would warrant involving police if partner was increasingly annoying about my guitar.
For the one actually “large/expensive” piece of equipment I sold Craigslist worked much better, though. I was unwilling to ship or insure it.