CL People Sorta Suck!

YellowDog

In Memoriam

Donor 2011, 2013
Joined
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Location
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I know, I know. There are a thousand of these threads, so what is one more. To the story......

Monday there was a CL ad for an "Atari Driving game" on CL. I have wanted a driving game to round out my collection, so I email back for pictures. I got two cell phone sideways pictures (I'll upload one of them later, they are on my work computer). It turned out to be a converted Pole Position running Mille Miglia 2 (Great 1000 Mile Rally 2). Now I am interested. The send back that the monitor sometimes works. I write back that I will take it, I can fix monitors. I made arrangements with a friend to borrow his pickup truck Tuesday night and we go to get it (he came along as backup). On the way I give her a courtesy call and say that we are on our way and will be there in half an hour. She tells me that somebody is there looking at it now. I said I thought we had a deal, what is up with this? She says she will call her husband. We get there and 2 guys are just shutting the doors on a panel van. Sure enough, the game is inside.

To set the stage, this is a Taqueria in a seriously Hispanic part of Houston. A quick glance through the window & I can't tell if they are remodeling, gutting the place or a hand grenade just went off in there.

So I go in, just because I am pissed. Found the guy who was selling the game (or at least the one that spoke the most English). The story went that his wife never called.

As I am walking out, he asks if I want to look at the "other game". I said sure and he drags me over to a really sorry looking Robocop conversion in a Defender cabinet. The monitor looked fubar and the characters all had bars or boxes around them. Some of the background graphics were hosed. It was a mess. We haggled on the price for a while. Had to tell him what a POS it was and how much work it was going to be to make it work right, so we finally settled on a price. He helped wheel it out and load it up.

Got it home and sprayed it down with bug killer (it was from a taqueria after all). Undid the obligatory 7 drywall screws holding the back door and got my first surprise. The back door was original and had the Defender back door sheets still intact. There was some other game sheet tacked up over one of the sheets, but I think I can get that off without destroying the underlying sheet. The second surprise was that the monitor just needed some adjustments and the Robocop board just needed the ROMs pushed down. I put two new locks on it and I will need to trace some wiring so I can put a switch back into it, but it is a working Robocop game.

But I really wanted that Mille Miglia 2....:(

Oh well, looking at the two guys that drove off with it, it will probably be back on CL in a week or so, once they figure out they can't fix it.

ken
 

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I had someone do that to me with a pinball machine once. It was all I could do to not drive my truck into their house.

At least you got something out of it.
 
Glad some good came out of that mishap. Unless you had put a deposit or really nailed down the "it's mine" claim, I kind of understand why she sold it to the first person who showed up with cash.

In a way, it's good to see this. CL should run more like a garage sale and less like an auction house. You know, where the first person there with cash gets to haggle and get what they want. The other way she had to do this was to call you and say, "hey this guy is here and willing to give me X dollars for it."
To which your reply would be, "I'll offer this much more", then quite possibly the guy who came before you would get hosed.
So did you for sure have this thing "locked up"?
 
If you think about how many people say they'll show up and never do, it's pretty easy to understand how the fist to show with cash in hand gets it. Glad you got another game that was an easy fix. I saw the "Atari driver" ad but I have no space and didn't need any parts so I had to pass on it.

I feel you on wanting to have a driving game. I love the ones I have. :p
 
Looks more like a BOBO-Cop with that homemade marquee.

I was going to say Hobo-Cop ;)

Those were actually purchased translights, believe it or not. This is the second or third Robocop I've gotten with that same translight. I have a Snow Brothers one two with the same "psychedelic" background.

If I was going to keep it like that I probably would try to get a "real" Robocop marquee. Since it is a Defender, I am probably going to make up a JAMMA style 2 player control setup (with clicky microswitch buttons and joysticks :)) so I can swap some of my 2 player JAMMA boards into it.

I really need to stop buying $0.99 JAMMA boards.....:(

ken
 
Glad some good came out of that mishap. Unless you had put a deposit or really nailed down the "it's mine" claim, I kind of understand why she sold it to the first person who showed up with cash.

So did you for sure have this thing "locked up"?

I did not have any money down, but I had said that I would take it at the asking price. She said that it was mine.

The kicker was that I don't think she and her husband had been talking. Thinking about it now, when I went in, he asked who I was. When I identified myself, he said "Oh, you're Ken". After we were talking for a minute he asked how much I was going to pay. When I told him $65, he called his wife and what little of the Spanish my buddy & I could follow sounded like some guy just walked in off the street and talked him down to $30. He didn't even know how much his wife had listed it for. LOL.

You gotta love CL. You couldn't make this stuff up.

ken
 
Sometimes buying from a husband-wife team is a real pain. One time I saw three games on CL, called, made a deal for two of them (speaking with the wife) and drove over to pick them up. When I get there, things are going fine (again dealing with the wife) and then the husband shows up and says he only wants to sell the three as a package. They fight about it for about 5-10 minutes while I am standing there with cash in hand. Eventually the husband gave up.. lucky for me. That was a weird deal for sure. Some couples are not very good at communicating/delegating.

Come to think of it, I have several funny husband/wife CL stories.
 
Come to think of it, I have several funny husband/wife CL stories.

So cough 'em up!

The only other one I have (so far), involves a Ms Pacman. I answered the CL ad, get a "c'mon out and take a look" email back from the wife. About 20 minutes later I get a totally different email from the husband who says it is not for sale. At that point, I emailed back that obviously there is difference of opinion about the MsP. and I don't want to be a witness in a divorce proceeding. About an hour later, I get an email to come out the next day and take a look at it. They would like a second opinion on what it is worth. I told them I couldn't make it until Friday (kiss of death on CL deals) and they said OK.

I called Friday morning and everything is still on (surprise, surprise). When I get there I find out that they are a really nice couple and there was some miscommunication about the MsP. It was his father's and had sentimental value. She wanted the garage space back.

So I looked it over and gave them the current prices for non-working faded MsPs with peeling bezel and some other work required. The husband then told me to back the truck up to the driveway and he would help load it. For free! I offered cash and he said that he liked the way I was honest about it and that was good enough for him. He was happy, his wife was happy, I was happy so it was all good.

So sometimes things do work out....

ken
 
I have two husband and wife stories that are very similar. In both cases I saw games listed on cl for next to nothing with a disclaimer that the seller didn't know anything about them and that they had to go before the end of the month. Both times the games were $50 a piece. One set of games was in Bremerton and the other was in Everett, these are both areas with a high concentration of US Navy sailors who are deployed for extended periods of time.

In both instances when I went to look at the games the wife explained to me that she was leaving her husband and selling off all of his stuff before he got back from deployment. I picked up both sets of machines and contacted the guy's commands when they got back from deployment. The Bremerton guy got all of his machines back for what I paid for them and the Everett guy only wanted one, a Hang-on machine, back...
 
I had a call to pick up an old EM pinball. Get there and the lady is nice, the pinball is in the living room, and it's cheap (under $100). I start taking the head down and the husband shows up and is like, "What's going on? We're not selling that!".

The wife starts arguing with him and he's like, "Fine, but it's worth at least $600!" (It's was currently non-working for 5+ years and needed an overhaul.) I tell them that we're not paying $600 for a non-working pinball that has been sitting broken for 5+ years.

The wife starts arguing with the guy about how he's been saying he's going to fix it himself for the past 5 years and hasn't touched the damn thing, and how she wants it out of her house! Eventually we pay the original agreed-upon price and haul it out.


MORAL OF THE STORY: Fix your games, or your wife will sell them...
 
I have two husband and wife stories that are very similar. In both cases I saw games listed on cl for next to nothing with a disclaimer that the seller didn't know anything about them and that they had to go before the end of the month. Both times the games were $50 a piece. One set of games was in Bremerton and the other was in Everett, these are both areas with a high concentration of US Navy sailors who are deployed for extended periods of time.

In both instances when I went to look at the games the wife explained to me that she was leaving her husband and selling off all of his stuff before he got back from deployment. I picked up both sets of machines and contacted the guy's commands when they got back from deployment. The Bremerton guy got all of his machines back for what I paid for them and the Everett guy only wanted one, a Hang-on machine, back...


That's awesome that you figured out how to get a hold of the guys and get them their games back! Hopefully some good mojo came your way for that.

As for me the only real CL problem I had was I was emailing a guy back and forth about a $400 Strikes and Spares pinball and probably sent about a dozen emails back and forth. I said I would email him the next morning as soon as I could coordinate with my buddy what time we could make it out there, and pretty much told him I wanted it. I email him the next morning at 8am, and don't get a response until 4 pm that afternoon, he only told me a one word reply, sold. I was bummed for sure.

Fast forward about 3 days later the guy emails me and tells me that the buyer backed out and if I wanted it, it was still available. The kicker is that he told me the guy didn't pick up his deposit but the price was still $400. He sat on it a couple weeks and eventually lowered his price to $300, I offered $275 for the hell of it, but never got a reply. Not that I would have wanted to business with him now anyway.
 
I can only think of a few instances where I've actually bought something off CL. Most of the time I don't see them in time, but the few times I have made contact with the seller and been first in line, it's worked out.
 
Eh, It's not CL that sucks. It's the people. :)

Any ways what is a POS? :D
 
Yeah,CL is a real grab bag.I've tried to get several games from there,but have only managed to get one,and if I hadn't put a deposit down on it,I wouldn't have gotten it as there were several people interested in it. As they say,money talks....
 
I got some of the best deals from CL. One guy I dealt with gave me some if not the best deals I've ever gotten. I ended up buying 6 games from the guy, this includes all my newer sitdown drivers. Just about all of the games I bought from him were keepers for me. :)
 
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