I just bought a mint looking chrome bumper 62 off eBay from a guy in Liverpool with hundreds of transactions and 100% perfect feedback. It was serviced at the factory in 2021 and was described as being in “excellent” condition. It sounds great with a chrome bumper hicap and 250.
However, it reeks of cigarette smoke. It truly smells like an ashtray. This was not mentioned in the listing. I have wiped down the interior and exterior with windex wipes, and blew it out with compressed air, with no real improvement.
The seller claims he is not a smoker and denies he ever noticed a smell.
Is it considered fair play in the U.K. for gear to have a cigarette smell if it’s not mentioned or asked about in the listing?
It’s a bit unusual for Hifi gear to pick up the smell of cigarette smoke. Soft furnishings such as curtains and furniture yes but not hard metal surfaces- are you sure it’s cigarettes you can smell? Even if it is cigarettes then in a smoke free house the smell should quickly disappear. As it it such a good buy then worth waiting a week to see what happens?
Zero doubt it’s cigarette smoke. The smell is infused in everything. The sleeve, the knobs, the feet, the internal chassis…. Definitely not a case where someone smoked one cigarette near it. I am airing it out. We’ll see if that improves things.
This is something I always ask now before making a purchase. In the past I forgot to ask once & yes, as soon as I opened the box, I was greeted with a potent dirty ashtray smell. I contacted the seller about it to confirm it wasn’t a smoke free home (just incase it was from a fireplace, etc) & he confirmed it wasn’t smoke free. He apologized saying it likely smells terrible for a non smoker & offered a refund (I didn’t accept a refund as I felt it was my fault for not asking).
Long story short, I tried everything I could think of/find online & all were short term solutions at best, the smell always came back a day or two later. The best things I found was leaving it outside on a covered patio for about a week. This greatly reduced the smell, but was still there if you put your nose right up to it. So I let it sit inside for probably 6 months or so (kind of forgot about it) & it eventually lost all tracers. This was a PS Audio power cord with a braided fabric jacket.
So the smell will likely eventually go away, but it’ll probably take months, not days.
Agree. I have the same problem buying 2nd hand records. Sometimes I have to leave them in the garage for months, if not years, before being able to bring them into the house.
Glass cleaner every few days shifted it after a few weeks. I mentioned it to Darran when I took it for a service, IIRC he can clean the board which may help.
Yep, you can also try activated charcoal products…I have left records in big plastic boxes with those in the garage and they work quite well. After a week or two!
I agree, the vendor should have mentioned it was from a smoking environment. Smoking becoming increasingly rare so as is now the exception rather than the rule it should be mentioned. On a grand scale I used to sell static caravans which sometimes reeked of smoke but, in general, after a month or so the smell was barely noticeable if the carpets were given a clean with a carpet cleaner containing a smoke smell inhibitor. Try putting a Neutrodol air freshener near it for a while (neutralises smells rather than masking them).
I don’t know if this will help you but when I purchased one of the Jethro Tull box sets of EBay it also
reaked of cigarettes, what I did was to wrap the box set up in newspaper which seemed to draw the smell out over a fairly small time period. Maybe worth a go.
You must keep bicarbonate of soda from touching the case. It corrodes and leaves pits on aluminium.
I’ve bought a few things that reeked. Second hand CDs and DVDs mostly.
It fades over time and a once over with Windex/Astonish will help. But mainly it will need time. Some things it will not come out of like rubber. The case will be less of an issue but smoke residue will often build up inside. Often if you open the unit, you will find that inside is where a lot of the smell is located. It seems to bind well to plastics like the PVC on wires.
Whilst I hate the smell of cigarette smoke, and certainly appreciate the disappointment, there is no obligation on a seller to volunteer anything about it - and if tge person is a smoker they could well be blissfully unaware, while if trading and selling something sourced elsewhere they might not notice the smell as not everyone is sensitive to it. Whilst some people advertise thongs as “from a smoke-free home”, that is as a positive selling point. Whether the wording “in excellent condition” need take into account possible odour is questionable, and smell of smoke is unlikely to cross a smoker’s mind., indeed I suspect most people consider only cosmetic and functional aspects when describing condition of goods for sale.. I think the onus is still on the buyer to clarify all details of possoble concern before purchase.
However, if before sale the seller is asked (by whatever wording) if it has been in location where smoking takes place, they must answer truthfully and it would be breach of contract otherwise - though “not known” wouldn’t help.
On a related question, what about smell of vaping scents? Or, certainly unpleasant to sone people, pets? Or perfume or “air freshener” fragrances? They are not all considered pleasant by all.
Everyone else’s house smells alien. Humans, whilst not bears, are extremely sensitive to smell and pick up on “otherness” instantly.
But while all those points raised are valid, tobacco smoke in particular clings to things in a way few other scents do. Mostly by way of actual residue. I mean, most of the things you mentioned don’t turns the white walls brown after 30 years.
