bent truss rod?

hello, i purchaced a lovely 05 58r on e-bay, i played it for about a week,the neck looked like it needed to be tighted a bit so i take the truss rod cover off and scream in horror.........1)some one was already in there,there was about 5 steel flat washers behind the accorn nut, 2 i could hardly get the adjusting tool on the nut because the truss rod is bent over towards the left, to me it seems that someone tightened the crap out off the neck .why??????? anybody ever seen this before, any advice on what to do? should i ship it to gibson & have them fix it ,thanks

Ouch, if you contact Gibson they might whine and say that there was not an authorized tech/dealer that worked on it. Plus you are not the original owner, I would lie and say that you are the original owner and that it happened when you took it to the "tech"/salesperson at your local Guitar Center and they are the ones who bent it. You see they are an authorized dealer and supposed to be able to touch the guitars. Even though the truss rod should be a user adjustment, but some people just don't know that it only takes like a 1/4" turn in most cases and not 4-5 turns to adjust it.

Good Luck

that is the reason i'm done w/ ebay on larger ticket items.

good luck brother, i feel for ya!

also, how did u pay for it?...maybe PP or Ebay...or your bank can rectify it.
Maybe even the post office if it was shipped that way. That's mail fraud, and that's a felony, and the PO digs getting involved in that. good luck.

only fraud if they stated it was not bent, or if they said it had no issues, but knew otherwise. be hard to go after

Frank,
I don't know what direct experience you've had dealing with the Post Office or D.A. offices on such matters; but it's been my experience that fraud via mail order or online is insanely hard to prove and nothing really gets done.

Like Lena said, you have to prove that the problem exists, prove that it existed prior to shipping, prove that the seller knew about it, prove that the seller lied about it (omission is not fraud. it's unfortunate and despicable, but NOT fraud), prove your damages, gather all the third party proof, get those experts to court to testify (documentation is not good enough- the defense gets to question your experts)

and on and on and on...

Have you contacted the seller?
Regarding what to do next, if you like the guitar, have it fixed. A skilled luthier should be able to bring it back to you better than new.

Often the time and money needed to punish scammers is quite a bit more than anything you'd recover. It all depends on how willing you are to spend more of your cash to hire thugs, er... lawyers to exact revenge for you.

yup, i got the old neck was straight when we shipped it, so on that note,i found a few good luithers on long island so i'll suck it up &get it fixed, it's a great guitar, i got it for under 2k so to spend some money to get it fixed it's worth it.........thanks for all the input

a happy ending-------i got my money back,after a call to gibson repair said that i needed a new truss rod- 1,000.00 to install(this is the part when i remember waking up on the floor) after i told the guy i bought it from he gave me many options,i chose the refund route, now i bought a brand new r8 in washed cherry.. a happy ending:wail

I expect that guitar will be soon relisted on ebay. Can you tell us the name of the seller so we can avoid buying it.

ICED TEA- 58R #8 5386