Anyone on here get the Black Widow from The Station on EBAY

Black Matrix

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Anyone on here get the Black Widow from The Station on EBAY

Just curious, as I had been watching it forever. Never made an offer as I heard he was very difficult to deal with. Can't believe he sold it for what Ebay said it went for.
 
Just curious, as I had been watching it forever. Never made an offer as I heard he was very difficult to deal with. Can't believe he sold it for what Ebay said it went for.

I bought from them once and would never consider doing business with them again. IMO you were wise to watch and not buy.
 
I bought from them once and would never consider doing business with them again. IMO you were wise to watch and not buy.

Hi;
I am considering making a purchase from Thestationonline, what had happened that you would not deal with them again?
Should I just not deal with them?
Thanks
Jeff
 
I always thought their prices on ebay were ridiculous for the most part, combine that with the fact that they are apparently a pain in the arse to deal with.........Yeah I'll pass
 
Yes, I agree there prices are generally way above retail. I have never seen any pinball they have had priced under $2000. I am real shocked they sold it for that price.. I have never bought anything from them so I cant comet on their service. Dale from Chattanoga Pinball probably bought it and will put it back on E-Bay for $8,000.. :)
 
I've never dealt with them either because I've never felt like spending 5x market value for anything. That said, I do like supporting local businesses and arcades, but I'll pay an extra $100 for a machine I want, not an extra $1000.

When I see their listings I find myself wishing ebay had price police and a michael jackson eating popcorn .gif.
 
Hi;
I am considering making a purchase from Thestationonline, what had happened that you would not deal with them again?
Should I just not deal with them?
Thanks
Jeff


I got my Gloc from them. I made an offer for over 1/2 off the listed price on the bay and they accepted. Took them over 3 weeks to get the game ready and other 2 weeks to ship. Said they wanted to check it out and fix any issues.
well that was a load of crap. Game had issues that could have been easily fixed.
They did pack it well. There is another post here somewhere about them, also they screwed over the museum boys
I will not buy from them, now alot of there auction says " game picture is not the game you will get"

Read there feedback, I think the one about the spy hunter is demogo's
 
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When I see their listings I find myself wishing ebay had price police and a michael jackson eating popcorn .gif.

I do searches of video and pinball within 200 miles of my zipcode. I wish there was a "everyone BUT this seller".

Is there such an option?
 
When there is a "Best Offer" option available, it's there for a reason. I'm not sure why everyone thinks when someone asks $1000 for a $300 game with a Best Offer option they think the guy is asking $1000 still.

It's just like shipping to me. If someone is asking $5 with $5 shipping or someone asks $10 with FREE SHIPPING, people complain about the guy charging $5 for shipping.

I think it's a block people have because EVERYONE I know has issues with those two things.
 
When there is a "Best Offer" option available, it's there for a reason. I'm not sure why everyone thinks when someone asks $1000 for a $300 game with a Best Offer option they think the guy is asking $1000 still.

It's just like shipping to me. If someone is asking $5 with $5 shipping or someone asks $10 with FREE SHIPPING, people complain about the guy charging $5 for shipping.

I think it's a block people have because EVERYONE I know has issues with those two things.

Guilty. I hate paying "shipping"... but for some reason, I'll pay more for "free shipping"... ... I'm even fully aware that I'm doing it. I'm just dumb like that.

Either way, can't wait to crack that baby open and start working on her.
 
The station online

I'm new to game owning (don't actually own anything yet, but use this site to shop around, and learn a little before I commit to something), and I've always been leery of their stuff on E-bay. Most items don't seem to have a picture, and their approval rating is down around 90%. Both are red-flags for me.
 
Hi;
I am considering making a purchase from Thestationonline, what had happened that you would not deal with them again?
Should I just not deal with them?
Thanks
Jeff

I would avoid dealing with them, personally.

What happened?

I was purchasing my first arcade game, before I found KLOV.

They had a Spy Hunter; I wanted it and I knew nothing about video games back then other than I'd played them BITD and wanted one. It never occurred to me that collector groups like KLOV existed or these could be found in multiple places.

Anyway, called and talked to them at length; they had the game; they'd been an op and these were their games they'd had on route; they knew everything there was to know about the games, they were willing to guarantee that the game would be operating *100% correctly* when it arrived here and they'd back it up with technical support after the sale. I put the "working 100% correctly" clause in the additional terms of the sale that we both agreed to in the Ebay transaction.

So it took them 30 days for them to ship the game (which was ridiculous). Then it showed up and there was no Peter Gunn theme. And there was a loud hummmmmmm that came from the speakers when it played. And the shifter didn't work right some of the time. And it wouldn't save high scores or the configuration settings. Half the weapons lights wouldn't come on. And there were a host of other smaller problems as well.

Their excuse for the ridiculously long ship time was that they were going over it carefully to make sure everything was 100% perfect before it shipped. But it showed up with extremely obvious electronic problems.

Then the fun really began. They had me open the game up and look for the connections to the cheap squeak card and sure enough, one of the connectors had been carefully removed and tucked away. They told me to connect it but when I did the game would no longer boot. It had been obviously disconnected because the game was unplayable otherwise. They agreed to send me another CSD card if I returned this one to them. I mailed the old one back (my expense); they sent theirs COD and in a large priority box that stuck me with about $22-$25 in shipping to receive it. (Mine cost about $7 to ship to them). They blamed customers on their route for disconnecting the cable ("sometimes they get in there and do stuff like that if the music is too loud"). I asked them if they gave their customers keys to the cabinets but they didn't want to pursue that discussion.

New CSD card didn't work either.

They didn't know what to do remotely to fix this; they offered to fix it for free if I paid to ship the game back to them. (Yeah, right). I asked them if they were willing to pay to have the game shipped back to them since it clearly wasn't 100% working as agreed to in our ebay purchase agreement. They weren't interested in that.

Finally I found someone locally to come look at the game and they agreed to pay for half his rates. (They should have paid for 100% of his rates). He came out and found that the CSD card was bad, the lamp driver board was bad, they'd hacked the wiring harness to within an inch of its life (they found the wrong voltages on the wrong lines), the microswitch was bad in the shifter, they'd hacked in a switcher in place of the linear power board, etc.

Basically the game was a mess and their claims of exhaustive testing and 100% working were ludicrous.

So it came time to pay for all of the bad components; local repair guy offered me surprisingly good prices for tested working components and I bit. (These were KLOV prices; installed in the game and demonstrated working).

I negotiated back and forth with the Station to cover the repair costs; they had me box all of the bad parts back and ship them back to them for "inspection" (another $20-$25 in shipping) before they'd consider paying for them.

Then they basically jerked me around with one ridiculous message after another (although they did admit that their technician who certified the game as 100% working had never worked on the older MCR games before) and they offered me something like $25 to go away. Of course they never sent any money at all and for $25 I basically told them I would give them negative feedback on Ebay. And I did.

Reading some of the other comments shortly afterward shows that I wasn't the only one that was having issues with them.

The transaction was a nightmare from start to finish. It's obviously your call if you deal with them but I'd *never* consider buying anything from them again.
 
When there is a "Best Offer" option available, it's there for a reason. I'm not sure why everyone thinks when someone asks $1000 for a $300 game with a Best Offer option they think the guy is asking $1000 still.

So true. I won a Gyruss on eBay, quite unexpectedly, when the "Make Offer" option accepted my off of $200. The BIN was $300.

That's a hefty difference.
 
I do searches of video and pinball within 200 miles of my zipcode. I wish there was a "everyone BUT this seller".

Is there such an option?

Yep. I exclude Dale and The Station from my searches, as I know I can never afford what they're selling.

From the search bar, click on Advanced Search
4th Area down is called Sellers
2nd Radio Button has a drop down
Select Exclude from drop down
Type in sellers name
 
When there is a "Best Offer" option available, it's there for a reason. I'm not sure why everyone thinks when someone asks $1000 for a $300 game with a Best Offer option they think the guy is asking $1000 still.

It's just like shipping to me. If someone is asking $5 with $5 shipping or someone asks $10 with FREE SHIPPING, people complain about the guy charging $5 for shipping.

I think it's a block people have because EVERYONE I know has issues with those two things.
Then the other end of the spectrum, Ive had industrial equipment on ebay (for my work) priced at $8k, and had somebody submit an offer of $100.

The whole thing is, its an opening point to negotiate on. You list high, knowing that whatever your asking, somebody is going to try and talk you down close to half that. Even if you dont have the make offer button, they send you messages asking "Would you take xxx"

The service side to this seller though, is another thing altogether.... Ouch is all I can say.
 
So true. I won a Gyruss on eBay, quite unexpectedly, when the "Make Offer" option accepted my off of $200. The BIN was $300.

That's a hefty difference.

I did not pay the full price that the station was asking either; I used the "make an offer" feature.

In 20-20 hindsight I would have been better off if they'd refused my offer because I could have picked up a game in "as advertised" condition elsewhere w/o the drama and BS and incredible hassle and runaround that deal entailed.

I've read that you can tell a lot about a company or individual simply by how they act when things go wrong and I learned far more than I ever wanted to about the Station from this deal.
 
It helps us out that they're local to us. Only about 150 miles away or so... and most days, some of us have NOTHING better to do than take a little road trip.

This one was sold as "un-tested"... as to how you can not test and entire cabinet?... I have no idea. So, I know it's not working, that's given. They big thing was we asked if it was complete... if it's complete, then it's fixable in my book.

But, if we get there and it's missing anything from a switch to a power supply... We're probably just walking away. We've emailed them, called them, etc etc... the assured us it's complete... that's my main concern. I usually don't dig through machines too much before I pick them up... but this is one of the rare instances that I'm going to almost literally tear the thing down at the location and go through it piece by piece.

$250 is still a great deal... hell, the monitor is worth that... not that I'd ever want to part it out... but I'm not so attached to this game that I'd take a pile of shit in a fancy "Black Widow" package.

I'm already in this for U-Haul rental, gas, etc etc... so if it's not %100 complete, I'm fine with cutting any losses and walking away. Hopefully they're fully aware that we're local enough to be picky about this. If they're not, they will be when I show up with a complete tool kit ready to do some looking. Also goes without saying that if they not willing to let me dig then, hopefully, we'll be walking.

I can't speak for Rob or DreamTR, but I was kinda pushing them to get this... and hopefully if I push to NOT get it, they'll understand that and I'll probably be working for free for quite a few days to pay off the gas and truck and all that crap. We're showing up cash in hand, no pay-pal crap, no nothing... so the most they can do is, well... we're the buyer on eBay, so... they can't really do anything about it.

So, I guess summing it up... yeah, we're a little leary, but I guess willing to take a shot at it. We'll be leaving balls-early tomorrow to head over there, and I'll report back about the machine when we get back... either we'll have it, and it'll work (not likely), we'll have it and it won't work (more likely), or we'll just tell them to shove it and come back pissed off (hoepfully not).
 
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