I recently purchased a Rosewood Low D Irish flute from ebay (Justin<–dodges stones)> Alan quit. Ehem, anywho It arrived in perfect condition… it looks nice, except for the fact that it doesn’t play worth a crap. Well After getting 3 request to leave feedback I decided to oblige(sp?) them. I left negative feedback and the comment was “Doesn’t play, not in tune.” as many of you know you don’t get much room. Since then I have begun to Fix the playability problems with the flute. The place that I ordered the flute from requested (more like ordered) that I remove my negative feedback, or they will give me negative feedback. I told them something along the lines of…
“You bugged me to leave you feedback. I told the truth, and you don’t like it, and now you want me to withdrawl my feedback or you’re going to leave me negetive feedback? Now I know why there has only been 2 negative comments in the last few years. Because as soon as someone leaves a comment you don’t like, you hound them until they retract their comments. Real slick. Well tough I’m not going to retract mine. In the future if you continue to sell instruments made by this manufacturer, I suggest that you MAKE SURE THEY PLAY before you ship them.” 
Was it one of those “made in Pakistan flutes”?
Yes it was (Justin<–Dodges Brick) Ok who threw that???
Hmm… I have one of those too. It’s a lovely piece of wood.
I made mine sound a bit better by replacing the cotton lapping on the tenons with dental floss. Then bunging up the holes in the barrel and filling it with extra virgin olive oil (and letting the oil soak in for a coupla hours before dumping it out). Then just letting it stand overnight for the oil remaining in the bore to soak in.
I made the mistake of twiddling the crown… the cork in the head-joint is on a screw attached to the crown, and if you twiddle the crown, the cork moves 
I’d suggest you measure its position wrt the embouchure hole before fiddling/adjusting it.
On mine, the internal bore is quite rough, and could likely do with a good polish. It took me a while to get it to ‘play’, but it does now. Just rather quietly. Can’t seem to get much volume out of it (but then I’m a real beginner on flute). The M&E for example is at least 3 times as loud as the eBay flute.
Every now and again I get it out and have a noodle on it…it sounds better each time. I can’t remember who it is over on the flute forum who plays one completely unmodified and loves it. I think the makers just do a cr*ppy job of drilling the tone-holes and ‘finishing’ the interior…the rest of it is, imho, a nice looking piece of wood. I don’t consider I wasted my money, so I wouldn’t beat yerself up about it 
Hope this helps!
Well I know the tone holed are all out of whack… mine was in the key a crap major… or was it crap minor. Anyway, I already reamed the snot out of the inside with pregressively less course paper. It’s actually shiny in there and no lonnger looks like it was drilled out with a dull masonry bit . My Embochoure was ALL wrong. And I mean ALL wrong. I am currently in the prosses of making a metal one… It kinda looks like a boehm embochoure though…
While I don’t know the particulars of your deal I have found on ebay especially if it looks to good to be true.. it probably is. By the way if you still have the emails they sent you demanding you remove the feedback Send them to ebay. There should be a contact email somewhere on that site. Send them to the admins. Ebay has normally at least in the past been pretty good about dealing with this sort of stuff. I would send them the information and see if they do anything. You have nothing to loose but a little time but the people you are dealing with could very well loose the right to deal on ebay. Ebay lives on its reputation and as I said at least in the past has taken a pretty dim view of folks like this who tarnish it.
I agree…forward the stuff to eBay and tell them what you’ve told us. The sellers will get a spanking.
I am curious why you did not just return the flute to them? If they are a reseller ( and I think I know which one you are talking about, emphasis on think ) they should have allowed you to do that.
For future reference, my wife LOVES her Casey Burns Folk flute that can be had for just a few more shillings than those Paki Rosewoods!
Besides, once you leave feedback you can’t retract it, can you?
Because I hate waiting, and I wanted the thing damn it. It does look nice… maybe I’ll mount it on my wall or something… Now it has a nice shiny polished copper embochoure… Still not in tune though…
I would hate a copper embouchure!! Copper smells terrible! At least it’s not playable…I mean copper is probably fine for a wall hanging.
The Casey Burns Folk flute is available immediately, usually. FAR superior to the these Pakistani flutes. I think most importer/dealers are awful to work with. I had serious trouble with an importer who sold me jewelry on eBay. They tried to get me to remove negative feedback, too. I didn’t.
You mean crap minor isn’t a real key? Then what HAVE I been playing in?
crap # minor perhaps? 
Or maybe even the rarer crap major minor 
Feedback blackmail is specifically banned by the Ebay terms and conditions.
For Laughs, I had to bring this back.
I posted this some time back. That IS the same make of flute I bought a couple of years ago.
Quote:I have one.
The most expensive piece of fire wood I ever purchased. Even a Generation whistle of the worst quality control would be 100x better than that piece of … from Pakistan. They are not in tune with themselves. I even had Glenn Schultz work on it. He did his best. The first octive is in tune. The second octive us useless. I do not believe that anyone could blow it in tune.
Do yourself a favor. If you really want a musical instrument of that quality, make one yourself with this method. Drink a case of black label beer. Rip down a curtain rod. Use a hammer and a nail to place six holes in it (it doesn’t matter where). Then use a fire ax to cut an embouchrue. If you were careless enough, it will sound as bad.
After thinking about it a while, I feel I was too nice about describing the quality of the instrument. I have not sold it because I have a conscience. I hope to one day recycle the tuning slide and the bone embouchrue that Glenn got for me.
I posted this some time ago about the cocus wood model I got roped into on the first go around. I still have it out of conscience. I since that time bought a flute from a fellow who got it at a shop in Ireland. I’m sure now that my second flute (the one from Ireland) was re-manufacured by someone who knows flute making. It looks identical to the blackwood ones from Pakistan. It is in tune and of reasonable volume. I currently have it for sale, but it isn’t going to E-bay until I can get some MP3s up to show its playablility. I going to ask $200US for it since I would be happy with the flute for that price. I got a Copely 10 months ago and love it to death.
Anyways, I had to bring that up. Sorry about the flute, man.
With one particularly important requirement… Did you contact the seller and let them know that you were not happy with your purchase and ask them to remedy that?
If you did, and they offered no recourse, your feedback is valid.
If you did not do so, they have every reason to think you were wrong to leave negative feedback.
Chances are very good that the people actually picking out the one flute from the racks to send to you, know little or nothing at all about the instruments, and probably don’t play them, so wouldn’t know a good one from a reasonably pretty door stop. They may have thought they were sending you a beauty. (It is my experience that these kinds of sellers are marketing to make money for themselves and the makers, not to establish the reputation of fine instrument makers, or to provide high quality products to the buyer looking for cheap instruments.)
If you did not take the time to let them know that you were disatisfied, you should hardly be surprized that they are upset about the negative feedback. Your frustration with the instrument is warrented, but not with the company unless you gave them a chance to make it right, and they failed.
I do totally agree with shadoe that “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Especially on eBay.
I bought a piccolo once made in India, it was advertised as Eb but it didn’t play in tune. I bought because to the nice attractive keys and to study the work. Well, started working on it and discovered that it was a ‘D’ tonebody with an Eb head and the two together don’t play anything right.
I built a whistle head for it and made it in the key of D tuning and then all the notes came in but one. The one that was out had a piece of the post protruding into the tonehole, a little visited to the dremal to cut the post out of the hole and now I have a little chromatic piccolo whistle that plays in tune.
I think that the instruments are tuned in Pakistan and Indias hot climate and are built out of tune for that reason. There are other quality issues there as well.
The place I bought this flute from is Apparently a real musical instrument shop that sells over ebay too. The thing is they never sent me any emails Directly. They used an Intermediary companythattries to resulve the issue. That company contacted me, and in that email they showed what The Ebay retailer said about my negative coments. A few emails later I was starting to get pissed off. I stated that I in no way intended to remove my negative comment and they will just have to deal with the consequences of sending somebody and instrument that doesn’t play. Two days later I got and email from the Intermediary comapny that said “Since both parties are in agreement, A request to have the negative feedback removed has been sent to ebay.” I emailed them back and said “what the hell? I made no such agreement.” They never answered me. If anyone wants to know the name of the seller i purchased this flute from PM me and I will tell you. I don’t want to name it in a public forum.
-Cy