Did I Sell Someone a Broken Pedal and Why Reverb Deserves 5% of Your Sales

Video Transcript

Note: a machine made this, so it’s not perfect, but if you’re hearing impaired and have any questions about what we said, please feel free to ask us in the comments or send us an email with the form below. 

Hey, I’m Emily from get offset. And I’m here today with an old friend. So I have sold my FwonkBeta on reverb just because I didn’t use it very much. and the, the buyer got back to me and he said it didn’t work. I’m like, okay. so he, we kind of had this back and forth. He didn’t really want to like…

[00:00:25] Show it not working. He didn’t really want to troubleshoot. So I got it back and I’m going to open it and see if we can figure out what’s going on here

[00:00:38] to grab a, you just reuse the old priority envelope.

[00:01:12] They’re free. Why don’t you just get a new one?

[00:01:21] Oh, there she is. My old friend. I was kind of regretting selling you. So let’s

[00:01:35] turn up.

[00:01:40] Oh, I apologize. I’m going to mute all of this while I’m setting this up.

[00:01:51] So I know it powers on.

[00:01:58] Put you over here? Not my favorite placement

[00:02:10] that works

[00:02:15] out of the box works.

[00:02:23] Wow.

[00:02:30] All right. This could be the shortest video ever, but, obviously the pedal works. So I want to talk to you a little bit about envelope filters and why they might not work. So when I first got the fwonkbeta, I didn’t read the manual. I just kind of plugged it and turn everything all the way down so I could go.

[00:02:59] I’m like, I don’t like that sound.

[00:03:04] And then I read the manual and actually learned that one of these controls, the low and one controls the high. So.

[00:03:20] Wow.

[00:03:29] Wow.

[00:03:40] Sorry, this is feels super fun. I need to, I need to stay on topic. and alright, I’m gonna talk about the, what I think was happening with the person that was not getting felt like this wasn’t working. when an envelope filter it’s, it’s relying on the input. Coming into the pedal, which is the output from your guitar or whatever’s in front of it in the chain.

[00:04:05] And so even if you have the sensitivity all the way up, if you turn down the volume on your guitar,

[00:04:25] It’s not gonna work because without, the hotter input, you, you’re not going to get any sound because it’s essentially filtering out the quieter signal. And then soon it’s funky thing with the other knobs. But so this knob, like, even if you haven’t all the way up where.

[00:04:53] Which is sometimes why you’ll talk, you’ll see people talking about, pedals, not seeming to work, and that’s why these have that sensitivity knob so that if it can compensate, it’s a signal that you’re sitting in. If you have low output pickups or something like that, you can get that to the right spot.

[00:05:13] And that’s what this has such a wide sweep. Cause like you could have extremely hot pickups with extremely high output. Or you could have really super duper passive pickups that have very little output for whatever reason. very uncompressed signal. So, I asked the, the gentleman who bought this puddle a couple of questions and, one when he said, he said a video and how I knew that this pedal probably still worked when he sent this video was he had everything cranked and we tried my volume all the way down.

[00:05:50] And I heard that little, yeah.

[00:05:56] Coming out of the amp. So I sent him a message and I said, Hey, really quickly is the volume on your guitar all the way up? Do you know what the output of your pickups is? And, have you tried it with any other instruments? Of course. I also asked. Did you try with isolated power? He said, yes. He sent a video of a turning on an isolated power.

[00:06:18] It was pretty sure that wasn’t it. And, he sent me the, of that little gentle womp womp, but he, I asked when I asked him those questions, he said he didn’t want to troubleshoot it anymore. And then of course the volume on his instrument wasn’t up all the way, because he was afraid that it was going to blow up his amplifier.

[00:06:39] So I, I think it was on 60 cycle hum this past week where they talked about, someone talked about how it kind of, they’re talking to someone who had just recently discovered that maybe you should turn up the volume on your instrument.

[00:07:00] And, my life is a replacement, a bullet filter. You have to turn up your volume all the way. That is, turn it out on the amp. If you’re afraid of it being too loud, start with it low and kind of like work your way up. But in my opinion, the only reason you should turn down the volume on your guitar, like it’s cool fuzz pedals to do that.

[00:07:23] Cause they’ll give you more of an overdriven sound. If you’re doing pinky swells. Super cool. If you’re dealing with something, where you can’t really control the level. On the pedal and it’s going straight into direct. For example, the dark loss alpha Omega always ran hot. So when I was demoing that in the base, I had to turn my volume down.

[00:07:43] But for the most part, start with your pedals, with your volume on your guitar up all the way, and probably your tone up all the way. that’s the first thing I would do in troubleshooting. So question and was your volume up all the way on your pickups? No. Okay, well, that’s the problem, but if the answer had been, yes, I would have wanted him to look up what the output on his, on his pickups was, because if there was a low output, that would also explain it.

[00:08:14]perhaps if he has an issue with such a low output, maybe he should get a booster or maybe it’s just not the pedal for him. In which case, you know, it doesn’t mean the pedal doesn’t work. If you bought a pedal as is, can I have a, not really my problem, but fine. I’m happy to have back my pedal that works and three trying it with a different instrument.

[00:08:34] So if you don’t know what the pickup output is, or you think it’s probably fine, if you plug it an instrument that, you know, has hotter pickups or different output, see if, see if that fixes the problem. Right. Cool. So, that’s not really the only thing that this, this gentleman talked about with, with this pedal.

[00:08:54] He also, so I’m going to take off this guitar. I’m going to try. I’m going to unplug. We’re not going to w we don’t need us anymore. And I am going to try to show you one other thing that he was saying was going on. Okay. And let me just get my volume all the way down. I don’t know if he’ll be able to hear this.

[00:09:25] He said there’s a rattle. And this pedal. So I’m going to go run and grab a screwdriver and see if I can unscrew this. And then I will be right back. So when this gentleman was trying to show me that my pedal was, I sold him, was broken. he mentioned the, the rattle. and I said, it kind of sounds like it could be a battery clip.

[00:09:50] How about you open it up and see the slinging rattling around there? Cause if there was like a chip or a dire that obviously been clipped or missing in this. Yeah. Obviously it’s not going to work return it, but he refused to do that. I’m not sure why he won’t do it.

[00:10:20] I love this drill. I don’t think it’s going to the DeWalt drill. It’s got a little light at the end. pow,

[00:10:32] okay.

[00:10:35] There’s a battery clip. I’m going to put this over here. So there’s a battery clip in this pedal. That would explain why it was rattling around. nothing else is floating around in there. It’s surface, it gets mounted. So I can’t really look around in there nor would I want to, I think I’ve probably void the warranty.

[00:10:55] I don’t think it’s still under warranty, but like mr. Black, these pedals are tanks. I’ve not had one fail on me yet. So I was very surprised when he was saying that. if you had opened it up to realize that the rattle. Was truly just the, this, this guy here and nothing else was floating around. Oh my gosh.

[00:11:19] Yeah. How about it? yeah, so I’m really excited to have back this pedal to know us in working order. but okay. I’m going to go on a small rant here. so a lot of people on reverb, they sell pedals as is especially used stuff, because they don’t want cause like if you’re just a seller selling and you’re not a business, you don’t want people to be using your time and energy as a try to like, you don’t want people to show room your staff, try it before you take her home.

[00:11:51] And that kind of thing. That’s why I think that these demo channels. Like mine are so important and why I’ve really been digging into it and doing more of it lately is because you can’t go to stores right now and try stuff. And some builders like smaller builders, they’re they don’t, they’re not in every store.

[00:12:11] So it’s, you’re not always going to be here well to buy their stuff, or try it out before you buy it. So you watched videos, you read up on it, you read them,  you check it out, you see what’s going on and then you, you buy it. So I told this as is, I don’t really do a return policy, unless thing is broken pretty normal.

[00:12:31] I’ve actually changed my policy now. So that there’s a restocking fee because this was not a fun thing to deal with. it’s you buy something online and it doesn’t work. It it’s sad. It sucks. It’s really a bummer. And if you reach out to the seller and ask for help, and that person’s willing to help you troubleshoot with you, trying to figure out what’s going on.

[00:12:54] Use an event like sin, who never said it was a work, send a video. So explain what you’ve already done. The troubleshoot say I’ve tried different patch cables. Cool. So we know it’s not a patch cable. I’ve tried to power supplies. Cool. So in all of the power supply, and then see what questions the seller asks to like help you understand what’s going on with the pedal.

[00:13:14]my biggest issue with this person was that he didn’t want us to improve that the pedal wasn’t working, which is suspicious enough to me. and. I was trying to help and he didn’t want any help. I think, honestly, that, one of two things, and he didn’t realize like maybe he has really low output pickups and generals, like a little Washburn Bay.

[00:13:33] Maybe he doesn’t ever turn up the volume all the way you made this thing wrong with his base. it like it was passing a dry signal, so I don’t think it was completely wrong with it, but, If someone trying to help you, let them help you. And if someone doesn’t want to help you, if someone is, if you buy something, it doesn’t work and they’re not trying at all.

[00:13:54] Like if it’s broken, it’s broken, you bring in reverb.com support to help, T like understandable. Yes, they’re great. Reverbs. That support is great. They helped me out. They had my back. They’re making sure that I’m getting my restocking fee. And they paid for the shipping back, which I appreciated. So like Reverb’s team was great, but like sometimes friends, it’s not the pedal.

[00:14:21] Sometimes it’s some user error. Sometimes it’s something else in your equipment. Be kind and give a little bit of the benefit of the doubt that the seller is not trying to fleece you. I was trying to work with aspire and I think that he thought I was trying to screw him and I really just wanted him. To be able to get this puddle working.

[00:14:41] I’m not going to make assumptions about like, and like whether or not he intentionally knew it worked. I’m not going to assume that, but, it was fresh. It was a frustrating thing to deal with. But I will say this kind of goes into one other thing. This video shouldn’t be 20 minutes long. So I’m going to try to keep this short, reverb.com recently raising their selling fees by one and a half points.

[00:15:04] So from three and a half to 5%. Reaver lost money on this transaction because they not only are they giving back my restocking fee, they’re going to help me boost this. If I, if I decide to sell it again, they’re going to do a free boost on it, for my time. But the amount of time that, the people, I think it was Nicholas and Nicole helped me figure out this problem, work out a solution.

[00:15:34] Talking to the buyer on my behalf when he was not interested in, or not in to saying that you have to send proof that the pill’s not working, if you’re going to return a pedal that you bought as is, like if that was like 30 minutes of their time and they make 15 bucks an hour, which they should like.

[00:15:54] Yeah, river lost money, reverb, lost money on this transaction. And the reason that they have these fees is so that when like one in 100 transactions goes wrong, it doesn’t wipe out the money that they made on the other ones. And for the loan, the support that they provide to buyers and sellers over email, they, which doesn’t really seem to protect cells at all, or like a PayPal, like a bro deal on PayPal.

[00:16:21] Tapout typically size with the buyer. E-bay typically signs with the buyer and if this person had gone through those channels and essentially gotten their money back and I didn’t get the pedal back, that would have been a major problem. And it’s for reasons like that, that I don’t want to sell through Facebook marketplace if I have to ship it.

[00:16:40] And if I don’t get to meet the person locally and handed off and give them cash money or get cash money, I don’t ever want to do that because of what happened with this pedal, there is nothing wrong with this pelvis. Pedal clearly works. I on-camera to get out of the box and show it to you. I would have been screwed out of, I would have been out 150 the bucks or whatever I sold this pedal for.

[00:17:04] I don’t really remember. I was sucked that really would have sucked, but I’m more than willing to pay reverb. 5% of the things that I sell, to get that kind of support when I need it. And I hope I never need it. It’s insurance. That’s what you’re paying for. You’re paying for insurance, you’re paying for this platform.

[00:17:21] They spend a lot of money and time and energy to build. They pay people to staff it, they, people pay people to, boost the SEO of the entire website so that when someone is searching mr. Black flunk better for sale, they find your listing on reverb instead of eBay or somewhere else. So. Keep that in mind, it’s such a small price to pay for that security, if you’ve ever bought insurance ever, you know what I’m talking about?

[00:17:53] So I’m just going to end this video. This is not like my normal kind of videos. So I apologize for that. thank you for watching. Thanks for understanding. I have no ill will towards this buyer. I’m glad I got my pedal back and working condition. I figured it wasn’t really broken. I don’t know if I’m going to sell it again.

[00:18:13]I was kind of sad to see it go. I kind of missed it. And when I filmed the video of it, I was like, this is a fun pedal. And when I watched the demo again during the premiere, like, I made a mistake, made a huge mistake. So, yeah. Thanks for watching. Thanks for understanding, please like comment subscribe once again.

[00:18:32] My name is Emily. goodbye.