Is it safe to buy from Audiogon sellers?

I'm one for one buying here, positive.As noted already, buy smart, check feedback, have a little correspondence first, and if seems way to good to be true look elsewhere.

Dear Audiophile,

Thank you very much for your kind reply.  Your generous sharing has helped me to understand so much about cross border buy & sell Hi-Fi Gears.  Your knowledge will be treasured highly one day when I take action to buy from the States. 

Sincerely gratitude.

Faust 

Always pay with creditcard. Not with PayPal. In Belgium i’ts not allowed to do it,because there were a lot of problems with it. ( People payed , and never saw there product(s) ).Make good agreements . Normally there are no problems with Audiogon. Except that the asking prices are very high in relation to the real value of the device at that time. If it’s more than 1 year old: half of the “new”-price, 5 years old and more 1/3th. In the Netherlands, some people make a mess of it , by only making profits and this has nothing to do with “love” for music.

I've bought over 350 items from ebay and a few from Audiogon. The ONLY thing I would add is from personal experience. Of all those items purchased, the only two that stick in my mind were ordered from overseas. One from England. The other from Poland. The one from England never arrived. It was nearly impossible to determine where it got lost in shipping. That was 17 years ago. The one from Poland was very recent. Last year. It did have a tracking number. It DID arrive in customs in New York. It never left customs. It has NEVER been found. I contacted them and they opened a case file. They finally replied that it was never found and they gave no explanation as to what happened to it. Bottom line. I am very hesitant to order from overseas. I do not trust our customs either. I strongly suspect someone in customs made a nice little score with my item, which ended up becoming a hassle to get PayPal or the seller to refund my money. I got lucky and the seller did credit my PayPal.

I had very good luck from a seller with great reviews.