Sorry to hear that, and it concerns me as I’ve done a small number of deals off eBay where I’ve encouraged or been encouraged to close the auction and sell privately to avoid fees. It’s always worked out. But to lose my eBay account after nearly 20 years would suck majorly.
Personally I wouldn’t be too bothered to lose my Reverb account as I find everything is more expensive on there anyway, but maybe in the US it’s a bit easier to find good deals than in the UK.
Think of it more as pulling someone aside in a shop and asking if they want to a deal out back in an alleyway, and a sales assistant overhearing you and being like “Dude can you leave please”
Definitely agree about the false sense of security thing though - although it seems people are dissapointed that they might not be able to break the rules so I don’t know how passionate I can be about that tbh lol
Or taking booze into a nightclub so you dont have to pay the exorbitant prices charged in the club. 
Off topic: The only ‘Easy Cinema’ (same company as EasyJet etc.) opened in my hometown and one of their gimmicks was that there was no concession, you bring your own food/drink. Just turnstyles at the entrance for you to put your ticket in.
It was absolute chaos.
except, the dude pulling the guy “back in an allea” owns the staff “shop” is “selling”.And the shop is actually an alley 
Yea, like a Gallery. Say you’ve got your art being sold on comission - and you’re wandering around inside trying to do deals yourself. They won’t like that.
yes, but it’s a free market, isn’t it
p.s
Reverb needs to take the fee in advance the moment you put something on there, call it marketing fee
Well Reverb isn’t no they charge a fee 
Ive sold a lot on Reverb and it works better than ebay i think. But now if i buy something i say for life. No more of that buy/sell bullcrap.
I only do eBay and here, it’s what I know and I’m lazy. That said, I wouldn’t trust an off site purchase when dealing with online site like eBay/Reverb. I’ve had many messages asking to go offline but politely declined. This stuff is to expensive to risk.
So, hang on…
You’re complaining Reverb overcharges their commission, but also appreciating that they paid you $500 for a cymbal they never owned.
If the system is run by a company you don’t run, and they don’t advertise full e2e encryption, assume they read your messages. No exceptions.
If you use the internet, even with advertised e2e encryption, assume a highly motivated agent with state level budget could read your messages and probably already stored them somewhere for later data mining.
If you decide to take the gear off the site, and then sell it to someone who found your sale on the site you’re both “stealing” the service and Reverb are justified in “feeling aggrieved”.
By all means take down the ad and sell to someone else off the site. No drama.
the only reason they’re seriously upping their efforts in this area are because their revenues are precipitously dropping. Reverb has been going downhill, and now with more competition (Sweetwater Gear Exchange, etc) popping up they’ll continue to feel the pressure to extract as much $ from the platform as possible, while reducing their expenditures in all of the other things that make it a quality site and experience.
that’s just my opinion, and unfortunately I don’t think it’s gonna get better for them any time soon.
p.s. I’m the guy who sold a Nord Modular G2 on Reverb (after 200+ 5 star review sales), it was marked as delivered (WITH signature delivery) and the buyer stated that they never received it.
Buyer reached out to someone they knew at UPS to start a claim (never the usual process) and all of the sudden there was a claim for a missing package. Reverb sided with the Buyer and forced me to refund the $2,200 + shipping costs, and I was told to go pursue the $ from UPS.
Surely enough, UPS revoked the claim (post-refund) and said it wasn’t their problem since it was signed for at delivery. I took this back to Reverb and they… suspended my account.
Still waiting on an answer why I was suspended after doing everything right, nothing was my fault, and simply taking that info back to Reverb and asking them to pursue it with the buyer and compensate me for the money they forced me to refund. Go ask them why I’m banned.
That is shit. Sorry you had that experience.
I was threatened on account closure for same thing.
Their AI must pickup on certain things. I think the best route is to message someone your email or phone number right away and then there’s no message trail of buying off site.
Whats their overhead anyways? bunch of servers, engineers, marketing people… they charge a huge fee for what it is. Should be a sliding scale anyways for the infrequent small time sellers vs music stores.
Wow. This is awful. I’m really sorry to read this…infuriating.
too much reverb is never a good thing
thanks 
It was a while back so I’m not too hung up on it anymore.
Good for yall to know though, straight up refuse to cooperate in scenarios like that until you KNOW you will be covered. Otherwise, you’ll absolutely be left holding the bag haha.
You learn something new every day. Thanks for the lowdown.