Deals that go south.

Zud

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I hate when you have a deal and the buyer flakes out. I was all set to get a Comet, deal done, money in hand, pick-up time set. Then he e-mails me and said he sold it. Wife will be happy, but i am pissed. :mad:
 
Been there...man ive been there..


also i hate it when people dont show.

this local op has been bugging me for about a year now to look at some games.. also been hitting me up for free advise here and there. I played the game figuring someday i might get a deal on some games..

i finally set aside some time today to look at some broken games he has he wants fixed, called, confirmed before i left my work for the evening.

I get there, No op, no car, nobody. call him and no answer, goes to voicemail..


i told them they can go fuck themselves... wasted enough of my time...
 
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Yep it sucks alright.
I had posted in the WTB section a while back on some side art I had been looking for for years to complete a game I was working on. The seller publicly posts in my thread (does not PM) that he has it and will sell it for $25. After an exchange of 3 cordial emails, and he even takes the time to show me pics, he then just drops off the face of the planet with me, but still posts in the forums. I even followed up about 4 times over the course of 3 weeks making sure he was ok, and I even told him I'd pay him $60 for the side art just to respond back to me. No response. How odd.
My conclusion was he either is a hoarder and changed his mind, or he snaked behind my back and sold it to someone else who saw his asking price in my post. At least he could've been straight with me and answered 1 of my 4 PMs. I even asked him if things were ok since I heard nothing, and nothing prior to that ended on a sour note.
 
Something better will come along. I was really pissed when I bought a Galaxian monitor glass off of ebay. Seems like I can't find a decent one, but I finally had one. Paid for it and then get an email that he sold it locally. Refunded the money, but I was still pissed.

Tonight, I got a mint condition glass at an old ops warehouse, thing is pretty much perfect. Never thought I would get one for my resto, and now I have a perfect one.
 
The reputation is the same in Australia, there seems to be something about running arcade machines that seems to attract the dodgy, shady, unreliable types.

Never deal with an Op!

Hobbyists are fine but Ops always seem to be dodgy buggers.
 
Right now I've had like 3-5 interested buyers in this empty cabinet I have a CL ad for and all of them either want some pictures, don't respond, set up a pickup date, don't call, or setup another pick up date..........and still nothing.

Pricks waste my time and patience.

Although this Friday I'll be killing two birds with one stone this Friday.....so to speak

Got an interested buyer today who seems to actually going to be doing something.
He's headed over here to Houston on Friday to pick up a few cabinets, he'd also like my empty cabinet, and he can meet me up at the Tron Legacy Pinball release night at Joystick Amusements.
 
If it's a screaming deal on a game you want, GO NOW!

Every one of these stories about missing out on a deal involves some element of scheduling.

If you leave a window of opportunity for the seller to find another buyer and the deal is a good one, it's going to be gone.

That Star Wars Cockpit for $500 on Craigslist? It's going to be gone within the hour, no amount of conversation with the seller is going to prevent that. If you can't arrange a truck until Saturday or you're waiting for a paycheck to come in a couple of days, you going to miss out.

It's frustrating, but it's the truth.

On the flip-side, some sellers will insist on a pick up time and then let other buyers force their way in ahead of that scheduled time. In those situations it's important to a) push for an immediate pick up and 2) remind the seller you will abide by their schedule, but don't want to miss out on the game to another buyer.

At least that way you have somewhat of a social contract with the seller which might not be worth much, but then again it might get you the game.
 
I've had this happen to me as well, even after I sent a down payment to the assclown...here's the gory details:

http://forums.arcade-museum.com/showthread.php?t=154532

In looking for this thread I realized I never posted a followup to it, and there is a follow up...

On the second page someone posted that another RFM had been posted in the Seattle CL and was a good price. I had a look at it and it turned out to be the RFM I was screwed out of the week before. To make a long story short, the guy who got the game was a pretty good guy and I was able to work a deal for the same game I got screwed out of by him. I know, buyer beware, but I wanted this game dammit! It all did work out though.

So, I ended up getting the game I started out to buy, for a few bucks less too. I guess my story is kind of different than the norm though. I still have that RFM and love it.

Tom
 
Yep, had that happen on a non-working Blaster Duramold. The guy was 3 hours away, I called him and said I am grabbing cash and am heading right out the door, ask him not to sell it from under me as I am on the way and its a bit of a drive. 1.5 hours into my drive on the way to pick it up, he calls me, says he has been "researching" the price of these things, and will not be selling it at this time.

I don't know why he didn't "research" it before posting on Craigslist, and was content on the few hundos I was going to give him at the time. Dodgy, dodgy people there.
 
Yep, had that happen on a non-working Blaster Duramold. The guy was 3 hours away, I called him and said I am grabbing cash and am heading right out the door, ask him not to sell it from under me as I am on the way and its a bit of a drive. 1.5 hours into my drive on the way to pick it up, he calls me, says he has been "researching" the price of these things, and will not be selling it at this time.

I don't know why he didn't "research" it before posting on Craigslist, and was content on the few hundos I was going to give him at the time. Dodgy, dodgy people there.

You know that's the downside of the "fast move" that we have to make. When someone gets a call seconds after he posts something, then even more calls immediately after, they have to think they're on to something. It sucks and I hate it, but if I were the seller I'd stop and wonder if I was making too cheap of a deal. I would be kicking myself if I sold something I knew little about for $200 and find out I could have easily got $500. That's why smart people research on the Internet before selling ANYTHING. I know I do.

Until money and the item change hands, it's still the seller's item no matter what the agreement is. That really sucks for us for sure because we miss out more often than not because of the whole show of demand.
 
Then there are buyers that will *inform* sellers (usually when they find out another buyer is ahead of them) that their item is worth WAY more than they're asking in an attempt to scuttle the deal.

That's especially prevalent with Craigslist ads that include the seller's phone number.
 
I hate when you have a deal and the buyer flakes out. I was all set to get a Comet, deal done, money in hand, pick-up time set. Then he e-mails me and said he sold it. Wife will be happy, but i am pissed. :mad:

Sounds like the seller flaking out in that case. Were you the buyer? Or was it that the buyer took too long?
 
i've never had a deal go south, but i've had plenty of interested parties never show up. it's pretty obvious i don't buy enough games, though.
 
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