One should always be somewhat suspicious of purchasing a piece of equipment from a private and unknown entity via on-line connection. While 99% of transactions turn out to just fine, there is that small number that turn out to be scams. For those of you that do many of these transactions, you may know some of the warning signs, but many don’t.

Gearsecure would like to give you as much knowledge and some tools in handling these situations to make dealing on-line as safe as possible.

First, let’s look at some of the basics. If a deal looks too good to be true, it probably is. That $2,500 guitar that you’d looking to purchase for less than $1,000 is likely not the real deal. In a retail setting, this is one of the first clues that an item may be stolen or counterfeit.

In dealing with the seller, it is worth asking a few questions. It is perfectly valid to ask what the serial number of an item is. We have some resources here, and more in the gearwiki to help you verify the serial number format. There are other resources across the web and your local retailer can help if you can’t get any information from these sources. The serial number the seller sends may have a couple digits x’d out. That is a fair practice for privacy.

In asking for these, you may ask a few more questions, where the seller purchased it, how long ago, any modifications made, whether it comes with the original documentation or case. The absence of case or documentation, or suspicious replies could be a warning the item is stolen.

Once you are comfortable with these answers, you should next consider the terms of the connection and the sale. Is the seller private, or a retailer? How will you pay? Does your means of connection have any protection for you?

The most important thing you can do in a transaction is protect your money. eBay has some amount of insurance for sales occurring on their site, but you have to follow the rules. If you stray from their procedures, you’re out of luck on their protection. One of the biggest points is to complete the auction through eBay. If the seller offers to complete the transaction outside the framework of eBay to avoid paying the commission, it is almost certainly a scam. Do not take that deal. Another warning sign is if the seller asks you to take communications off eBay’s messaging system to regular email addresses. Any emails outside fo eBay are inadmissible in eBay’s fraud claim process. Paypal also offers some protection in fraud prevention in ways similar to eBay, well, they are they same company, so I guess that’s not a surprise.

Other services, like Craigslist offer no protection. This isn’t to say their ads are any less honest, or their services are of any less quality, but they work like a traditional classifieds page, they put out the info, any dealings are from the people who respond. When dealing with craigslist or any classified sites, your loss prevention instincts are your only defense.

If the seller asks you to pay via wire transfer, it is almost certainly a scam. Wire transfers exist only for money transfers of large amounts or over long distances, like, between continents. In the retail environment, we encourage wire transfers only for amounts over $10,000, and we’re the ones accepting the cash. Wire transfers are irreversible and not protected by your bank. If you can pay by credit card, you can also recover the money, depending on your card and the terms of the contract.

If the deal is from somebody from a foreign country, say the is to be shipped from Nigeria by the former prince who has money that is inaccessible in a bank account unless he gets money from selling this item to you, well, that’s a scam. There are several ways of perpetrating this scam on eBay that skirt the eBay rules a bit. In one way, because the item is in a different country, you may buy it for a small amount, but they then add a couple hundred dollars for shipping and handling. This is something to ask before the sale completes or even before placing a bid.

At gearsecure, we’re working up a service for the deals that exist outside of the protected transactions, where we could be an impartial third party to safeguard the transaction. We’re working out the rules right now, but we’re willing to hold the money in an account for a certain period of time until the item arrives and its authenticity is verified. For this service we would ask either a flat rate fee or a small percentage. Again, we’re working up the rules, but if you would like to use us for a transaction until we are ready to add the service officially, you can send an email to bryan@gearsecure.net

We have received a few questions about listing thefts retroactively.

Yes. Absolutely.

Give us the information – Description of the gear stolen, serial numbers, police report number, and the police department where the report was filed – and we will contact the police in that area to see if the case has been resolved.

If the case has not been resolved, the equipment in question is STILL CONSIDERED STOLEN. We will be more than happy to add these cases to our listings.

Our goal at Gearsecure.net has always been to have a web site that serves both community and business, and gives greater functionality and exposure to our core purpose of loss prevention and recovery. The site as it exists now has been successful at developing community and awareness, but it is now time to take the next step and build our planned web application. We need your help in funding this, and our exposure in the industry. We’re asking for a small donation of only $5 towards our goal of $5,000. Click the “Donate” button to give via paypal.

Bryan and Michael are both writers and media creators who run a number of sites and podcasts. We like to promote the bands of the people that follow us. One of the ways we do this is to put music into our other projects and promote our followers. If you’re interested, please send an email to bryan (at) gearsecure.net.

Several reasons. We have between us 15 years experience in this industry with many ties to stores, manufacturers, musicians, and local law enforcement. MI Retail is one of the few industries in which stolen equipment is both valuable and desireable, and retailers buy and sell used equipment. All of these create a market for used equipment that means occasionally a piece of stolen gear will walk into the door, or out the door. Either way, it benefits the business to do everything in its power to keep the loss due to theft to a minimum. We also recognize that instruments are like companions, and many depend on them to make a living.

We are focused on music equipment at the moment, but that can include home stereos, computers, video equipment, and much more. The most important part of listing is the serial number, so if it has a serial we can list it. We’d probably stop at something as large as a car, as there are much better things out there for cars, like law enforcement.

Loss affects the bottom line of any business. There are many ways that this database can reduce the loss of a retail business. It may help to recover a piece of equipment stolen from the store, or prevent a store from taking a loss by buying a piece of stolen equipment. There is also a significant customer service component to recovering a piece of equipment for an individual. We are working to enhance the benefits for retailers by giving extra features designed to help their businesses in more ways than just preventing loss. We even have planned a way for retailers to profit from participation.

While there are a few sites that list stolen equipment, these are usually a goodwill gesture, and a passive page. We actively develop a network of retailers, manufacturers, law enforcement, and individuals. Our reports also go out to these users in the hopes of increasing the exposure of a stolen item. We are using social networking techniques to expand the network of people that may see a piece of stolen equipment. Reports from gearsecure.net my go out over this blog, twitter, myspace, facebook, and our own email network, as well as other sites we may partner with in the future.We will also be covering issues that might affect anybody, such as counterfeit instruments, pricing guides, and more. We have many plans for the future of this site, but it will take time to develop all of the material and applications necessary to accomplish this.

We are also working on this as a full-time job rather than an after hours pasttime, meaning that we can dedicate more resources and time to the project as well as respond more quickly to the needs of our users.

We will be charging a $1 fee for listing. This token payment is significant as an indication that you want the items back, but for us is a verifiable piece of information as to who is making the listing should there be any doubt as to the listing’s veracity. This is very important in establishing idenities should challenges to a listing arise.

Those dollars do more than just this, however. To properly run this site, we need to pay for hosting, programmers, advertising, employees and other aspects of expanding our network. These dollars tell us that you support our effort to help individuals recover their own property.

In order to list an item, we need Name, email, phone number, items, serial numbers, descriptions, location of theft (we would like to have a real address, though it need not be made public), Police Report number, Police Officer’s Name, Police contact information.

We will not release any of your personal information. name, email and location as well as any other private information will be withheld from public viewing.

We do not release, sell, or in any way distribute personal information. If an item is located, it will be handled strictly through law enforcement channels based on the police report.

The police report is an official document of your complaint. What we do on gearsecure.net should be viewed as advertising for your police report, and not an offical public record. With our service, we will not intervene into anything that happens as a result of this report or listing. The only people that can legally remove a piece of property from one person and give it to another is an officer of the law. The only contact information publicly available on this database will be that officer’s contact information and case number.