NEED ADVISE ON AN AMPLIFIER TRANSACTION

Sean34,

so you know; PayPal gives the buyer 180 days to file a claim and would probably freeze the amount of purchase in your account.
they require the buyer to send the item back to you in the same shape it was sent to them, upon receipt ot the item and your approval of the condition you're required to issue a refund unless you file a claim that it was not in the same shape or a different item (different serial number etc.) was returned where they take it to another level and would review the case themselves and make a final judgement.

so I'd recommend that for future transaction you take pictures including the serial number and keep it for your protection.
hopefully this case won't go that route.

So the buyer has not made any sort of claim with PayPal, so far. I do have pictures of the unit and serial, and it is a very rare amplifier, so I do not believe he'd be able to come up with another serial number, or amplifier for that matter. 

Sean,

at this point and if it was me I wouldn’t worry about this, the worst that can happen is he sends it back to you undamaged and you issue a refund.
in all probabilities like you said he figured how to turn it on.

to those who say don’t sell overseas, I humbly disagree. I sold many expensive photo equipments on ebay and the buyers were from all over the world: Hong Kong, Germany, France, Switzerland, Australia etc.
never had a problem but one from Taiwan who said he didn’t receive a $450 filter I sent via USPS with proof of shipping and insured, but they didn’t provide online tracking, as he didn’t want to pay for fedex because "it was expensive"... Postal service said they checked with their counterparts in Taiwan and they informed that it was delivered but couldn’t provide proof... That was good enough for the post office to deny my insurance claim but not for paypal & ebay to rule against me.
So I learned my lesson to cover myself all the way, only send it with the likes of fedex, UPS, DHL etc. where they provide online tracking & fully insured with informing the buyer in the ad that customs delays or expenses are their responsibility... If they don’t wanna pay for those services then they can buy their stuff elsewhere. Never had a problem again.
like I said I wouldn’t worry about this until The buyer responds.
Good luck and Happy Holidays

Oh hell no, I wouldn't issue a refund till the unit is shipped back to you and you can verify the item doesn't work or if it was tampered with. Thanks for your time.

" So the buyer has not made any sort of claim with PayPal, so far."

I forgot to mention this before. I would strongly recommend that you don't let money sit in your PayPal account. Just leave a few dollars in so you have a balance. In the event of an incident, they pretty much do anything they want. PayPal has nothing invested in you, so they have no problem refunding or seizing your funds without much investigating to determine the validity of a claim.  Its not like a bank issuing a credit card, where they lend you money every time you use it. If you have an issue with a transaction where you paid by CC, the bank is far more likely to be aggressive, because its they're money. If something happens on a transaction made with a debit card, they don't care. (I'm not saying they won't do anything to help you, they just do a lot less because the bank is not losing any money over it.). PayPal has the same attitude.

Here's a couple of examples. I went to an audio store and bought a $1600 component with funds in my paypal account. When the transaction was processed, there was no approval at the stores terminal. I checked my PayPal account and it showed the $1600 removed from my account for the purchase I just made. To make a long story short, they removed $1600 from my account 5 times, yet the vendor didn't receive any of it. They only thing PayPal could tell me, is that they had no idea where the money went, but it wasn't they're fault. After spending a week on the phone with them, they somehow figured out what happened and put the money back in my account. To be honest, it wasn't the mistake that pissed me off, it was their attitude.  It was like they enjoyed watching me get upset.

Then there was the time I got up one morning and saw $5000 missing from my PayPal account. Same exact story as above. No idea what happened to my money, but they knew for a fact it wasn't their fault. Another week on the phone.