Flaky Sellers and the Deals That Got Away

[NickAwesome]

I'm sure a lot of people on here use Craigslist or Offer Up to score good deals for videogames and for the most part I've always had great success at reaching out to sellers, organizing a time to meet and actually meeting up with them and getting the games.  But today, I finally had a bad experience and I am curious to hear from others about deals that never materialized from flaky sellers and what awesome deals people missed out on. 

Today I messaged a seller about a bunch of in box genesis games, (shadowrun, streets of rage 1 and 3, blades of vengeance, shinobi III, sonic spinball, good titles) no price listed but the ad says he knows what they are worth but is not expecting anywhere near that so send any reasonable offer. I shoot him an offer of $100 and i get a text from him saying that if I can meet him immediately, the games are mine.  I ask for an address and he says head to a spot and then when I get there, he'll send me his home address.  He says this is because he is tired of giving his address out to flakes who never show up.  We commiserate about flakes and I tell him I'll be there by 5.  He says great. 

I look up the address and see it's far away.  I look for other potential deals to help make the drive worth it and I see a guy selling a bunch of rpg ps2 games for cheap, I send a message out to him and he responds immediately as well saying I could meet today.  I decide the drive is worth it (about 45 minutes) and I get in my car.  I send the genesis guy a text telling him I'm 30 minutes out.  He says great.  Then I get close to the spot and I text and I don't hear back.  I wait for 5 minutes, call, no response.  I never hear back from the guy.  After all that talk about how much he flakes and he ends up ghosting me, I had to appreciate the irony.  I'm sure he got a better offer, I just found it funny that he flaked after telling me all that.

 Luckily the other guy did not flake and I end up getting Romancing Saga, Drakengard 2 and Shining Force Neo for $40 total!.  The guy ends up telling me that his 80 year old father was the owner of the games and they looked like they had never been used.  They are the cleanest "used" games I have ever seen in my whole life.  What an interesting day. 

[hexen]

It's a little different, but one time I won an eBay auction that included several several boxed SNES games I wanted (Lost Vikings 2 chief among them) and an N64 game. I don't know what had happened, but for some reason no one else bid on the auction, and I got maybe $80 worth of stuff for $10. Well, I waited about a week and a half without the item shipping so I finally contacted the guy. His response was to tell me that his wife had accidentally sold them at a garage sale, only telling me then and sending a refund. I am sooooooooooo sure that's what really happened.

[sworddude]

It's a little different, but one time I won an eBay auction that included several several boxed SNES games I wanted (Lost Vikings 2 chief among them) and an N64 game. I don't know what had happened, but for some reason no one else bid on the auction, and I got maybe $80 worth of stuff for $10. Well, I waited about a week and a half without the item shipping so I finally contacted the guy. His response was to tell me that his wife had accidentally sold them at a garage sale, only telling me then and sending a refund. I am sooooooooooo sure that's what really happened.

What would you do in that situation?

In most cases the seller will remove the auction before it ends I have seen it happen allot.

I cannot blame them since you will have to put in allot of effort while you almost got paid nothing. Below or way lower than market value is one thing but putting in effort to ship something while your gain is like zero.

Not to mention the ebay and paypal fees. and if that 10 dollar's included shipping 

if it would have been at least 25 - 30 I think you should have been fine auctions are a risk after all. Sellers don't like putting in effort while gaining almost nothing.

There are very few people who would make the effort to sell cheap stuff. There is no reason why one should do that It's a waste of time (unless being done in massive amounts). It's not a fleamarket after all, for such prices people usually donate there stuff to charity shops or the trash can.

I can't however blame you for being dissapointed for missing such a deal.

[98dgreen]

Happens to me about 60% of the time on craigslist.

[ignition365]

I've stopped doing CL and stuff because of flakes and resellers.  Most listings are resellers posing as "owners".

I recall one time I contacted a guy about tons of Genesis stuff, I don't remember the offer or what it was, I just remember it was a ton of stuff and it wasn't a steal.  Guy was supposed to meet me at a Starbucks on a Sunday morning.  I wound up just drinking coffee at that starbucks for about 15 minutes and then calling his number from a VoIP phone number and him acting clueless.

A few years back I saw a guy post a big box full of SNES games on Facebook local group for like $90 and I was first to message, was in constant contact and told him that I was working like 2 blocks away from where he claimed to live so I could literally pick it up on a moments notice, but he insisted that it should wait until later in the day.  Later in the day comes, he tells me that his little sister sold it earlier that day for half the price.  I was livid.  That was probably the final straw in why I don't really deal with locals anymore.

[guilty0fbeing]

Where I live, I never find anything on CL, OU, another offer-like apps, or garage sales (though I don't go that often). What I have stumbled upon has typically been sports games and kid games that parents obviously bought for their kids. 99.9% of the time it's garbage.

Then only thing I found that I was legitimately after was a dude selling Amiibo; he had the Sheik I needed. This was right after BotW dropped. Well, he was a scalper and told me I'd never find one in the wild. He wanted an astronomical price. The next day, my second video game shop (mostly DVDs) had Sheik for $10. It was like karma was in my favor.

I typically use Instagram, eBay, and my local Games 2 Go for non-Amazon purchases. I seldom use GameStop.

[kashell]

Luckily, I've never had to deal with flaky sellers. Flaky buyers...that's another story for another thread.

[ignition365]

Luckily, I've never had to deal with flaky sellers. Flaky buyers...that's another story for another thread.

I can't recall many instances where I've had flaky buyers.

Only ebay where the buyer will message saying they didn't mean to buy it or their kid bought it or they meant to offer $1 not $10 type of thing.

[bikingjahuty]

I've stopped doing CL and stuff because of flakes and resellers. 

This. Not that anything decent at a good price gets posted anymore on CL around my area, but when it did still I got really tired of driving up to half an hour away to meet a seller only to have them not show up or text me at the absolute last minute and say, "oh, well someone offered me double just now so unless you pay at least that much I'm selling it to them!" even though we had already sealed the deal. CL is a fucking joke and at least in terms of the people selling video games, they are mostly a group of inconsiderate douche bags.

[Warmsignal]

Flaky buyers are more rampant. I hear all the time from people who are "gonna buy a ton of stuff"... Sometimes they give excuses like "just give me x amount of days or a week", "can you custom make me this or that" then you never hear from them again. Serious buyers don't tell you about what they intend to buy, they just buy. I once had someone on eBay tell me that they were going to buy on April 1st because that's when they'll get their rewards points on eBay? Yeah whatever that means, never heard from him again. Guess it was an April fools joke. Some other guy said he wanted some junk I had on craigslist, like $15 worth of stuff but he couldn't pay me cash, it would have to be PayPal. Gamers are infamous for wanting loads of stuff, while pinching their pennies so tightly you'd think they were flattened by a train.

[ignition365]

Oh yeah.  My wife tried to get into that crafty etsy crap and made perler bead stuff and had some guy have us make a Nintendo Logo, we told him the price before we made it and he said yes.  Sent him a pic after we made it and he just ignored us.

Too many people want cool custom stuff like that, but they want it for free.

[kashell]

Luckily, I've never had to deal with flaky sellers. Flaky buyers...that's another story for another thread.

I can't recall many instances where I've had flaky buyers.

Only ebay where the buyer will message saying they didn't mean to buy it or their kid bought it or they meant to offer $1 not $10 type of thing.

I've had that happen to me once. Luckily, the product ended up finding a good home from someone on here in the end.

[rayne315]

Oh yeah.  My wife tried to get into that crafty etsy crap and made perler bead stuff and had some guy have us make a Nintendo Logo, we told him the price before we made it and he said yes.  Sent him a pic after we made it and he just ignored us.

Too many people want cool custom stuff like that, but they want it for free.

anything that requires custom work to be done should require an upfront 50%. that way if they flake out you get to keep the partial payment as a buffer for any cost you accrue as a result of their request. that is why artist are usually on contract for any specially asked for items.

[hexen]

It's a little different, but one time I won an eBay auction that included several several boxed SNES games I wanted (Lost Vikings 2 chief among them) and an N64 game. I don't know what had happened, but for some reason no one else bid on the auction, and I got maybe $80 worth of stuff for $10. Well, I waited about a week and a half without the item shipping so I finally contacted the guy. His response was to tell me that his wife had accidentally sold them at a garage sale, only telling me then and sending a refund. I am sooooooooooo sure that's what really happened.

What would you do in that situation?

In most cases the seller will remove the auction before it ends I have seen it happen allot.

I cannot blame them since you will have to put in allot of effort while you almost got paid nothing. Below or way lower than market value is one thing but putting in effort to ship something while your gain is like zero.

Not to mention the ebay and paypal fees. and if that 10 dollar's included shipping 

if it would have been at least 25 - 30 I think you should have been fine auctions are a risk after all. Sellers don't like putting in effort while gaining almost nothing.

There are very few people who would make the effort to sell cheap stuff. There is no reason why one should do that It's a waste of time (unless being done in massive amounts). It's not a fleamarket after all, for such prices people usually donate there stuff to charity shops or the trash can.

I can't however blame you for being dissapointed for missing such a deal.

I would face the music and just take the loss. All the stuff you said is irrelevant to what more or less amounts to breach of a contract. He started the bid at $10, not at $50, not at $80. Regardless of whether or not it was not what was expected, it was a completely dishonest move that I have zero sympathy for.

[burningdoom]

I've got a story about that:

I once made a Craigslist deal to buy Record of Lodoss War for Dreamcast. I was supposed to meet the guy outside of the manager's office of a hotel where he worked.

So I showed up, he wasn't there. I decided to wait around for a few minutes just in case he was busy or a little late. After about 20 minutes of nothing, I decided to leave. On the way out, I saw a lady standing in front of the hotel. So I slowed down and asked her, "Are you waiting for someone?" To see if she was who I was supposed to meet.

Well, she turns to me and says, "That depends, are you looking for a date." I was like, "Uh, no." And then a minute later the light in my head went off: She's a freaking hooker! I just propositioned a hooker without realizing it when all I want is a video game, lol.

My wife loved that story when I got back home.