Author: Dutchy
Date: 2007-03-01 15:15
She bought reeds off eBay. O lord.
Gather round, children, and listen to the tales of a long-time eBay oboe reed shopper.
Elkwoman, there are several people currently selling reeds on eBay, and sad to say, not all of them are of the stature of Brian Charles, who is a quite reputable seller. These are the danger areas that I see.
Item: I bought 3 reeds from this guy in September 2005, and of the 3, only 1 has turned out to be decently playable, after over a year of breaking in and tweaking. Also, they were made with cheap cork that was crumbling around the staple, and arrived packaged in largish test tubes that were closed with saran wrap on the ends--not the correctly sized test tubes with stoppers that are designed for oboe reeds. I could forgive the el cheapo approach if the reeds were any good, but they aren't.
Item: If you bought them from this guy, I notice right away that he has only a 97% feedback approval rating, and if you go and read some of the negative feedbacks, they say things like, "My oboe reeds arrived smashed in a paper envelope, seller will not respond to e-mails". A 97% rating is a very bad rating; I personally would never do business with an eBay seller whose rating was that low, especially if the comments indicated the seller would not respond to emails.
Item: If you bought them from this guy, while he has a 99.6% approval rating, still his "private label made for a music store" description give you absolutely NO idea of who made the reeds, or how good they might be. They may be 100% machine-made reeds with no hand-scraping or adjusting at all. And yeah, $21.99 for 5 reeds is cheap--suspiciously cheap. That's $4 a reed, more or less, and honey, you just aren't gonna get a hand-scraped, hand-adjusted reed for $4. It's all about labor costs, and the labor required to hand-adjust an oboe reed is what puts the vast majority of reputable machine-made reeds into at least the $6 category. Even mass-produced reeds like La Voz get a certain amount of quality control, in which an actual human being actually tests the reed, if only for a minute. But for $4 a pop, you're getting the absolute bare minimum, generic oboe reed cranked out of an assembly line of gougers, shapers, and scrapers. It looks like an oboe reed, it may crow like an oboe reed, but does it play like an oboe reed? For $4, I doubt it.
Now I supppose that it's possible that this guy is the great unsung genius of Ebay oboe reeds, and I'm the only one who didn't get the memo, and everybody else is savoring the delights of having discovered a reliable source for cheap, excellent reeds. But...I doubt it.
Item: If you bought this same guy's "Emerald" oboe reeds, you have no way of knowing whether those are the same "Emerald" brand oboe reeds that are featured by other reed suppliers. It's an actual brand name. But his description, "These are "American Cut" oboe reeds with the distinctive Emerald Green thread", sounds like waffling to me, sounds like advertising double-speak flimflam. And I notice that he has a disclaimer offering a refund (buyer to pay shipping costs) if this item is "misrepresented". That sounds like an "out" to me, so if you call him on it, "Hey, these aren't really Emerald reeds, I can tell because they suck", he can point to his disclaimer, "Well, if you think I misrepresented them, send them back within 5 days and I'll give you a refund." Are they really "Emerald" reeds? At $6 a reed, it's possible, but I doubt it, and why take the chance?
Item: I notice that this same guy's Rico reeds say right up front, "A quality oboe reed made by America's foremost maker". If his Emerald reeds are really Emerald reeds, why not say that?
Item: If you bought them from this guy, my only input would be to say that although he has 100% approval rating, several comments mention slow shipping.
On the plus side, if you ordered Evans reeds, they may be a little hard for you at first, but they are good reeds and will arrive eventually. You can put them in the bottom of the junk box until your embouchure is ready for them.
And if you bought any of the other brand name reeds that are currently being offered--Jones, Meason, Selmer, etc.--you'll be fine, barring seller screwups. When the reeds do arrive, they'll be fine.
Can I ask, how much experience have you had ordering things from eBay? Are you aware that the feedback comments aren't intended to tell you whether the merchandise itself is any good--they're only for the purpose of indicating whether the merchandise arrived in a timely manner, and whether it was "as represented". So just because a seller has a high approval rating doesn't mean the reeds he's selling are necessarily any good. It just means that he's good at shipping them out on time, and well-packaged so they don't get broken in transit.
And I will add, from bitter experience, that if 10 to 14 business days (that includes Saturdays) goes by and you haven't heard a peep from your seller, then it's time to start raising heck with him--start by sending a daily e-mail for 3 days, and if he hasn't responded, then go into the EBay Dispute Console and start raising heck there. Because the seller can withdraw the item from the listing, and once its "Item Number" is gone because he withdrew it, eBay's software can't find it in order for you to file any kind of complaint against it. So you need to get cracking, and not wait patiently for weeks and weeks for your reeds to turn up before you start trying to contact the seller. You need to get right on it. Also, if you used Paypal to pay, they have a 45-day limit after which they will not grant you a refund.
So I'm saying, don't wait around with the patience of a saint for your reeds to turn up, because the way the system is set up, if you wait too long, you may get shafted.
Post Edited (2007-03-01 15:25)
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