I have used a mixture of ebay and dealers for buying and selling.
Alot of the stuff I have bought has been through a dealer on ebay on auction. This has worked well as a buyer as I know the dealer and have used them many times. Absolutely no problems at all.
I have sold alot of my hifi on ebay and this can be difficult. There are some out there who bid and then don’t pay. This takes time to resolve as you can’t cancel the transaction immediately unless the buyer asks to. You also have quite expensive seller costs and I usually use insured postage.
Many who have bought have collected in person. Have met some lovely fellow Naim fans this way.
I am talking about selling items up to £2500, which is my experience. I haven’t sold anything for more than that. I have sold alot of kit, as some may know my journey with Naim.
I have managed to purchase alot of high quality items on ebay with no problems. Some have been private too.
Nothing has gone seriously wrong. But you do need to be very careful. Don’t let them know your address or telephone number until you have the money in your account. Get them to pay via ebay rather than a personal transaction.
As soon as they start messing you about with payment, then it’s time to get out.
As in all aspects of life you’ll fine every kind of person on ebay buying and selling. Most are genuine. Then you have chancers and complete fraudsters.
Me too Dan, I have met some really nice people on eBay. For example, the really nice guy I bought my 300DR from at the weekend and who let me listen to his 500 system.
I think you can always tell an honest sale from communicating with the seller. HiFi people are mostly like us lot on here and if you ask them a simple question, they will give you a really long answer! Or just be really helpful and happy to give some advice.
The golden rule is to always buy through eBay so you get their buyers protection insurance. Never send money via bank transfer. Cash on collection is also ok, but make sure you use the QR code scanning feature as proof of collection. That way if anything is faulty with the unit you are still covered
By the way, I highly recommend Acoustica on eBay. They seem to have a lot of customer trade-ins, particularly Naim boxes as people upgrade to new classics. The trade-ins tend to be items they originally sold to the customer and I have bought many of my boxes this way. The other nice thing is that they run their auctions every Sunday from 8pm to 8pm the following Sunday so it makes it nice and consistent and fair.
I genuinely avoid using credit cards online unless I fully trust the merchant. I use PayPal instead, and since I have adopted this approach I have not touch wood experienced any fraudulent use on my cards - nor PayPal for that matter.
However there are limited disposable credit/debit cards you can use now - that you top up and you can lock down - these are helpful when you are out and about. I use Monzo for that.
PayPal does give escrow options but I have not used it.
I’ve followed a lot of their auctions and they do seem very good but I rarely have the will to deal with eBay auctions so much happens so quickly in the last minute . You have to have a definite budget beforehand otherwise it would be easy to get carried away.
eBay is perfectly fine if you are sensible. I’ve sold £ thousands of hifi stuff on eBay without problems. When I sold my NDX2, XPSDR and SN3 a while ago, everything sold within 24 hours. The three buyers paid via the very good eBay payments system, came to my house to pick up, inspect and box up, and it all worked perfectly. Everyone was happy. Everything was sold as buy it now, priced at a level I’d be happy to pay myself, not too high and not too low, with good pictures and a requirement to collect.
If something is priced stupidly low and / or looks like it’s been dug up out of a field, what do people expect?
I see a rather more trustworthy seller has a 552 for £7650, which raises another question.
NAC 552PS – SERIAL NUMBER 236654 (2006 YEAR)
NAC 552 – SERIAL NUMBER 236808 (2006 YEAR)
These will presumably be non-DR. Does anyone have a view on DR versus non-DR 552s? It looks as sellers are treating newer DR or DR-converted 552s as worth at least £2K more. Is the difference really that big?
I had a look at that one too and it does look like a very well looked after model. The only downside is that you would not be able to upgrade it to DR, which may always end up being a lingering doubt. There is another one listed that has a non-Naim upgrade. I have bought many things from this dealer, which I know others have on here, so I know it will be fine; but again there would always be a lingering doubt about whether the DR version is better…
Yes all the the old classic NACs hugely benefit from DRs in my opinion. The old National Semiconductor LM317 and LM337 regulators Naim used typically before their DRs were good for their time, after all they were invented back in 1976, but they were not particularly fast or low noise by current standards…
The only component I felt sounded better with the old regulators was the nDAC.
I personally tend to stick with dealers on Ebay, I just feel a little more confident if things were to go wrong. As you have said, method of payment also allows some piece of mind, these payment upon collection adverts are ones I would personally look to avoid. I once purchased a pre-amp via Ebay, it was damaged and not described as such, the seller disputed this but I was protected and eventually got my money back.
If it’s not DR I would leave it. Another dealer has one for £9k, older but DR. Better to spend £10k or £11k for one around 2016. Or later one for a bit more.
Take your time Nick. Tbh the 52 is very very good. Maybe stay there until you find the right deal.
I was looking at non DR for similar money. Hit the jackpot with 500DR for £6k. New head unit 2017. So deals will come up.
If you get a 552 non DR you may be wondering what the DR is like. Also you have 300DR, so 552DR would be perfect pairing.
Buying on ebay using a debit or credit card, the card issuer iiuc affords protection.
Credit card issuer again iiuc, offers no protection, if / when a third party such as paypal, is used for the transaction. Paypal is an intermediary, rather than the retailer / seller / merchandiser.
Perhaps peps have a better understanding, such they can illustrate clearly why paypal offers better protection than a card issuer. Background in finance here, so very interested in the source of understanding / information that peps rely on.
Two different card issuers have raised similar observations iirc. I accept that using an intermediary, means that credit or debit card details are one stage removed. However can anyone offer certainty that one method offers more robust protection than another?
From my perspective with security PayPal requires the use of a synchronised TOTP for 2FA which offers a high degree of authentication security. Credit cards don’t, or none of mine do. At best my credit cards require SMS OTP for 2FA based on velocity or amount checks. NIST has deprecated SMS for OTPs from a security vulnerability perspective. I know credit card security is governed by PCI-DSS, rather than NIST, but I suspect are held back by structural limitations in the use of credit cards.
That is why given the choice I will use PayPal before credit/debit cards.
Paypal is specifically a digital payment service provider.
Nice thread…
Here at our local platform there was some time back when every day fake offers appeared. Often 1/3 of the normal market price. Sometimes I made a fun of it and asked for a hdmi input on an Unitiqute or 72. the answer was always yes. Same as if there is a Powerline part of the package - especially with the smaller ones.
Once a guy faked a foto where he photoshopped a piece of paper with my name on it … crazy. One guy I had on the phone who suddenly stopped the call, when I had asked for the rack on the fotograph (which was a quadraspire)
Long story short. I informed the platform on all the fakes (sometimes every day) and they removed it instantly.
Please be very careful!!!
I bought all my boxes from official dealers and checked serials.
One exception - 500dr was from private seller … but safe as he was/is a very nice guy
I never ever use eBay, got burned once, luckily it was a cheap item.
Not sure if the Audiogon website is available outside the US, but it appears to be reliable.
Or just be really helpful and happy to give some advice.
