Swingin'.

1. Congratulations, Red Sox.

2. Happy Halloween.

More Adventures in Spam

"find the bouffant erectile organ Regina"

Good grief. Where does one even look?

Commerce

I’m selling some of my bass stuff, but this isn’t a gear post. This is about idiocy; the kind of idiocy I run into every time I try to sell something.

There is a multitude of ways to sell something, whether it’s eBay, Craigslist, the Want Advertiser, local papers, etc. Tightwad that I am, I usually opt for Craigslist because a) it’s free, and b) if I sold on eBay, I’d have to pay their rapacious fees and also deal with shipping.

My ads are very forthcoming and often flirt with grandiloquent. The reason for this is because I see so many ads that are written by complete meatheads (I touched on this many posts ago, but from a buyer’s perspective), and sometimes even if the price is good, I won’t even bother reading the rest of the ad. If they don’t have at least a decent grasp of grammar, I just don’t trust anything else they have to say about what they’re selling. When I post an ad, I don’t go to extremes, such as discussing the merits of the cabinet’s Baltic birch density or the argentiferous sheen of the Tolex. More often than not, a seller will resort to some canard about how “this is one of the good ones…made before the company was bought by so-and-so…” I just state the facts:

1. Condition
2. Specifications
3. History
4. Price

I will also include pictures. In this day and age, there is NO reason for not including pictures. Everyone either owns or knows someone who owns a digital camera or cell phone with a camera. What I’m seeing more and more is rather than put forth a little effort, people are downloading a stock photo from the internet, either from the manufacturer’s website, or a picture of someone else’s stuff (usually from eBay). It may be a picture of something, but it falsely represents what you’re selling, genius.

Right now I’m selling a bass amplifier head for $225, and that’s a great price because although it’s got some years on it, it’s in like-new condition. I typically check around to see what the used prices are for my particular piece of gear, like a comp house when evaluating real estate worth. I then come up with a price that’s maybe a couple bucks less than the average. In my ad, I state in capital letters that the price is FIRM. I won’t negotiate on something that I say is firm, period.

Without fail, every time I place an ad, within minutes I get one of these hare-brained scam emails:


“Hello,
I am a musician and interested in the musical instrument you are selling. Can you please tell me if it is still available and the price and conditions? And my client confirm there is no problem about the price, my client do pays with a {USA} cashier check, he has agreed to mail out as bank cashiers check of $3500. to you on my behalf to cover the shippment fees.About the shippment,
that we be taken care by my me & my personal assistant,my personal assistant will be using his shipper to do the quick processing of the shipping of…”

And once again, the needle on the Bullshit Meter gets buried in the red.

But that’s just the scammers. There are also those who don’t read, can’t read, or just don’t believe what they read. More on that in a second.

I welcome inquiries of any depth when I have an interested buyer. If I think that what I have wouldn’t be right for them, I’ll tell them outright. For example, a woman contacted me, asking if this amp would be good for her son who is just starting out on bass. She plainly admitted that she knows absolutely nothing about the world of musical instruments. I told her no, it wouldn’t be practical for him, and I then went into great detail about what she should buy for him, and it would even cost less than what I was selling. It cost me a sale, but too many times I’ve bought the wrong thing because of my ignorance or blind faith in what the seller is telling me, so I sympathize with these people. Plus, taking advantage of people just so you can make a couple bucks is just a fiendish thing to do.

I got an email from a guy yesterday, and all he wrote was “pls cal me 781-xxx-xxxx”. I was torn between calling and not calling, because although I do want to sell this thing, I ordinarily don’t respond to cryptic foolishness like that. It’s entirely possible that I place too much emphasis on communication skills, but I can usually tell a lot about a person by their email. Against my better judgment, I called Captain Cryptic.

This conversation was doomed from the start because I was in a stairwell, on a cell phone, and he had a very strong Australian accent and was also on a cell phone. He first asked if the price was negotiable, and I said no. He then told me that he needed something to power a subwoofer for his karaoke setup, and did I think this would do the job. I told him no, that this is an amp for bass guitar and he needs an actual power amplifier. So, we said our goodbyes, and that was that.

I got an email from him this morning. All it read was “150”.

So, not only did this mental giant ignore the fact that I don’t have what he needs, he makes an insultingly lowball offer on something that I have no less than twice said was priced FIRM. No matter what I sell, some variation of this scenario unfolds. For every ad I place, I am guaranteed at least two emails that make me ask, “are you *@^@%$# kidding me?”

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Yes, I realize I haven't posted anything in a long time. It's because I'm avoiding the usual uninspiring topics of yet another in a long list of new bands, impulse buys, motorcycle/automotive/psyche repair, end of summer, blah blah blah. I was holding out so I could post something a little chewier, and, well, you can see the result.