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Hello folks.
I have been listing and selling fiddles on this excellent fiddle site for a long time now, and very much appreciate it.
But, after years of selling about a fiddle a month or two here, I got No responses on 4 different ads in the last year till just this week- when I got Two of what I believe are Scammer responses!
Has anyone else had this happen?
I got 1300 views on a French fiddle with no inquiry's, then Two scam inquiry's in the last couple days.
I appreciate any input,
Thank you for your consideration,
Glenn
Singing Tree Violin and Tonewood
Maine
Someone just posted about this experience: fiddlehangout.com/topic/59638/
Don't know about lack of interest, but people have said that the market seems slow these days.
I’ve had a number of scammers respond over the last few years. They tend to use language that doesn’t reflect an understanding of violins and the responses are so generic that they could apply to any item.
Sometimes they start by asking if the violin is still available, but they’ll usually include a statement like “I’m really interested in this item. Please let me know your best price.” They could just as easily be responses to an ad for a couch on Craigslist and the grammar is often very suspicious. Also, the email address of the sender will often be odd or may be a name that is substantially different from the one used in the introduction.
I usually have the same listing running on Fiddle Hangout simultaneously on Reverb, too. If the person responding to a listing is a regular contributing FH member then I have had no problems selling through FH and paying the 2% commission. If I have any suspicions that it is a scammer, I refer them to the Reverb listing to purchase because it protects the buyer and seller and the buyer has to pay through Reverb.
I have never ever had any problems with selling to FH members through the site, and nobody that I have thought was a scammer has ever followed through on purchasing through Reverb. :-)
But be careful out there!
Edited by - GeorgeH on 01/13/2025 05:52:01
On a related note .... I recently had an on-line request to write a song for someone's birthday, for the sum of $300.00. I actually suspected it might be legit, but I was sick and miserable, so passed it along to a friend, with a word of caution. He pursued it far enough, and with enough questions, that the other party stopped responding. Meanwhile, he talked to another musician who had fallen for the same thing last year; they didn't get scammed out of money, but they got stiffed. Apparently, it was the same old cheque scam, in the end.
What struck me about the approach I encountered was that the English and discourse generally seemed very natural and personable; there was only one bit of wording that was a little off the mark (I believe it was: "$300, if that's not stiff", presumably meaning "cheap"), which I initially took as par for the course. Maybe AI is getting better .....
If you select "member homepages" from the menu on this site, a list of newest members will appear at the right. Some seem fine, but some are suspicious, just from the physical location. Examples:
London, WI, (United Kingdom)
Munich, CT (Germany)
Amsterdam, NY (Netherlands)
Scott City, KS (American Samoa)
Berlin, AK (Austria)
You have to be careful - there really is an Amsterdam, NY, just not in the Netherlands, and there are American towns and cities named for European counterparts. Some people seem to cling to a former place, while now living somewhere else. Nevertheless, I think if there was just a bit more screening a lot of these problems could be avoided.
I had one recently who asked about a violin I’d listed and said he wanted to buy it, then asked specifically about bows as well. When asked for a price range, he gave a realistic one and responded with a selection from the list of options I sent him. He asked questions about condition and requested more pictures. It was only after all this that he sent a message telling me that a check for everything had already been sent out and that I could ship when it cleared. It’s funny to me that the scammer claimed to have sent a check without knowing my address yet (he asked for my full contact info in the same message). I had been suspicious all along that this was a scammer, but it was worth being sure. Genuine buyers don’t always seem genuine either.
I had a less sophisticated scammer a few years ago who simply said he was going to buy a violin after asking if it was still available and claimed a check had been mailed. I responded that I would not accept a check if it arrived, but it never even showed up and the scammer disappeared.