Did I get scammed on Reverb?

IBitePrettyHard

Senior Member
I found this drum mic set on Reverb for $200. (The normal price is $350.) It seemed too good to be true, so I hesitated for several days. Then the 6 available sets came close to selling out, so I decided what the heck I'll take the gamble.

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The package shipped from Alabama immediately, awesome! But as the days went by I started to get suspicious. It shipped straight to Virginia where I live...but then started bouncing up and down the East coast.

Then last week, it went from being strange to being outright laughable. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN??? :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL: :LOL:

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I've already talked to Reverb. The account that I bought the fake package from had already been suspended by the time I suspected it was a scam. And yet, they "can't do anything" until the package has stopped receiving updates for 14 days.

At this point, it looks like the package will never stop. So I'm gonna complain to them again, and if they give me that 14-day policy crap I'm gonna tell them...C'mon, seriously? Does it need to be shipped to The Moon or Narnia before it starts to look suspicious? :LOL:

I went into this knowing it could turn out like this, so I'm not as disappointed as I would be normally.
 
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Did you do a search for 'mary's gear outlet, Boaz, AL' before ordering?

I just did - nothing there.
 
Did you do a search for 'mary's gear outlet, Boaz, AL' before ordering?

I just did - nothing there.
I did look at the seller's profile beforehand. They had made a few sales at the time, but everything looked normal. You won't find anything now because the account page looks like this...

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I just talked to Reverb again, and they said the account is under investigation, and they'll get back to me about a refund tomorrow.
 
Even if it is a scam, how do they get the package to bounce around like that? I mean, it's a real USPS shipping number, yes?
Postal stuff goes back & forth all the time, not unusual. I've had packages pass through states in the opposite direction before making their way back to CA.
 
Can you withhold credit card payment upon resolution of the problem?
 
Even if it is a scam, how do they get the package to bounce around like that? I mean, it's a real USPS shipping number, yes?
That's what I wanna know! Obviously, the intent was to string along the recipient as long as possible before the scam gets discovered.

But the Middle East?! :LOL:
 
Let us know if there's any change? Because I'm wondering if it's really not just a strange confluence of events. Or maybe they did send something to Kuwait and then gave you the tracking number?
 
Is the tracking info from USPS? Or from a Reverb feed?
 
The first two tracks themselves are suspicious:

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After shipping label created, there should be Alabama USPS arrival and departure times. It needs to go through that facility before arriving in Virginia.

I track everything I order because stuff gets lost on the mountain, so I watch for the delivery folks, even the mailman. Never once has tracking info looked like above, without arrival and departure info from ALL facilities.
 
Speaking of scams, I came across this website. Among it's variety, you can find a Craviotto solitaire snare for $64.88 along with vintage cymbals all with in ~$60. I see some pictures with DrumCaveDave emblems as well. I tracked the 'contact us' address and leads to a towing yard in VA. Nothing really makes sense here and most pictures look like private sells that are already done.


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It'll be interesting to see if they ever release the 'package', or if it is in actuality a figment of our collective imagination and somehow they replicated a tracking system to buy more time to conduct their scams.
 

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Looks like a legit tracking number, and that is indeed the real USPS website. I've shipped tens of thousands of packages with USPS, and just because they missed some departure and acceptance scans, doesn't mean that it's fake. Sometimes the automatic scanning machine doesn't catch the bar code, and sometimes it's just good ol' human error.

However, that is most definitely not a domestic tracking number - within the United States, USPS tracking numbers start with 94 and have 20-22 digits.

This is an international tracking number; the last two digits (US) are the origin code, and the first two digits (CM) are the destination, which in this case, appears to be Cameroon.


Looks like they took your payment, sent a package to Cameroon, knowing that once USPS marked the package as "In Transit" that they would receive the money, and just expected nothing else to happen? This is why it's a good thing to use merchants and services that give you some sort of legal recourse.
 
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