Had a narrow escape from what looked like a bargain Epiphone Les Paul purchase on Ebay today.

Epiphone les paul
I had actually paid £220 for ‘this’ brand new Epiphone Les Paul Custom in a rather fetching vintage sunburst with flamed maple top. This is around a £300 saving on the retail price from the usual significant UK dealers.

After winning the auction, I asked the seller if I could collect the guitar only to be told:

“hi mate:
sorry for the late reply,to be honest with you , this is a
dropship bussiness, all the items are shiped from supplier to my customer
dircetly, so i am sorry to that we can not arrange the pick up in
person”

Hmm, ok so some businesses are not set up for collection so I thought not too much more about it.
However, just before the guitar was about to ship I spotted a whole bunch more Epiphone Les Pauls on Ebay all selling for roughly the same price from other providers – a bit strange not the bargain I first thought. Stranger that many of them are also quoted as being ‘drop shipped’ direct from the supplier.

I did a little bit of research and found that Fake Gibson and Epiphone guitars are rife on Ebay – got me worried enough to ask the seller:

Hi – before you ship the guitar I have bought, can you please
confirm
that it is a genuine Epiphone guitar please ?

If it is not genuine, can
you please NOT send it and refund my
payment.

Well, within no time at all I got this message back:

Hi Ian:
I am really not sure about this, to be honest with you, i am just
a student and this is a dropship bussiness, i do not play guitar mytself
and i have never see this guitar before.To avoid any kind of problems , i
have sent the refund to your account just now.

Well, I guess that answered my question.

Thanks to the forum over at mylespaul.com

Got to be really careful on Ebay its far less obvious than these guys who appear to be selling a $3000 guitar for around $300 !

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