LeftyBassist.com

http://www.leftybass.com/secondhand_offer.htm

Very rare, and great instruments.

And only looking to trade too. Surely you have something in your warehouse you can trade up, Carmine.

OH YES INDEED I am on this, awaiting his response... you and Jeroen know Aria SB900 is my mission (until such time as Jeroen decides to take pity on me and swap me a Musician )... So... who do I know that lives in France??

FYI, I got my Ibanez Musician a couple of years ago off a seller in the Netherlands who listed on Arni's site. We used the 3rd party escrow service https://www.escrow.com/index.asp to complete the transaction. Their fee wasn't terrible and everything worked out fine overall. If you really want the bass and can't find an easier way to get it out of France, I'd recommend them, though you'll have to get the seller to agree to use them too.

Just remembered this:
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1125&p=6534&hilit=aria+sb#p6534

The owner of that SB900 is on this board
Not quite a frequent visitor though.

PJ, does this 3rd party escrow service work for trades as well as purchases?

Yes it should. It can be either an exchange of goods or money,and there's usually an agreed upon inspection period too. The way it works is escrow collects the goods from each party and ships them to each and tracks shipments as well. I believe I had a 48 hr. window to reject the bass if I wasn't happy, so the funds were held in account until I approved the bass and then they were released.

Just called the Escrow.com guys and they don't offer a service for an exchange of goods. Was there maybe someone else you were thinking of?

Carmine,

I live in the US but let me know if I can assist you with translation -

This is an escrow company in France. You can get the page translated by Google.

http://www.geenee.com/fre/pourquoi-choi ... arbitrage/

Or better, try www.Transpact.com !

This is a UK Government registered escrow service that operates in Euro's, £,s and $'s, and at a fixed low rate (as opposed to an expensive percentage of the transaction).

Beware, many, many online escrow services are fakes and frauds, so always, always check the government registration of an escrow service to see if they are fake or not. In the UK and several other countries, Government registration is shown online, so this is a quick but very necessary step.

Hmm. My bad. I assumed they would do exchanges. But there's a simple work-around this. Both of you can agree to sell each other your basses for some low price ($100-120, which should cover shipping?) and conduct it as two transactions.

OK PJ- so the money would be held in escrow until the merchandise is received and the receiving party instructs escrow company to release payment to the other party, right?... but help me understand-- if the goal is to protect yourself from loss to the other party, wouldn't that only work if the value of the money is equal to the value of the merchandise? (Example: trader in France puts $100 in escrow... I ship bass... trader accepts bass and releases $100... and then says "bye bye"....) the only thing I'm guaranteed of getting back for my bass is the $100- I still have to trust that the other party will do the same on their end, right? Am I missing something?

I did this two years ago, so my memory is a bit foggy about how it worked. Besides, I did a straight up purchase transaction, which is simpler than what you're trying to do. They had two different levels of membership and I opted for the higher level (I think because it was the only level they offered that accepted a purchase via credit card?).

Anyway, when you sign up with Escrow.com, they are taking personal info from both parties to help assure a safe transaction without fraud. This includes a name, address, phone number, and credit card info. What you claim you're paying for the item and what you declare as it's value in shipping are two different things. I know a lot of people deliberately take a risk and declare a low value on goods they purchase overseas because they don't want to get hit up with hefty import fees. So, just because you "paid" $100 doesn't mean it's worth $100. I'm assuming you can claim any value you want when you ship it and would be protected through the shipping company (for the declared value) in addition to escrow.com (who would only cover $100 as you mentioned). You have the right to reject the package if the guy ships you a bunch of rocks, and if you claimed a shipping value of $1000 on your bass when you shipped it I'd expect you to recoup that from the shipping company.

If you don't want to go through this, the other option I'm thinking is you just pay each other a higher holding value ($1000?). That will drive your escrow fee up, however, but not substantially
(just checked their online calculator).

Is this spam? I can't tell with all this escrow talk. Feels like spam.

Hard to tell but I'm wary since we've never heard from this poster before....