What would you do about a sleazy buyer??


Here's a case that I ran across last week on Audiogon and which I'm still fuming about... I'm selling my Bryston 7b-st monoblock amps. Had an Email from an interested buyer which actually made an offer. Had a second person write to me that he lives only 15 minutes from my house and wants to buy them. It was a "Lawyer" that I'll call "HM" to keep his anonymity here in xxxxxx <- (moderator cut). He wanted to buy them, but wanted to Demo them first on his system. IF he liked them, he was going to buy them for the agreed price of $2900.

Being MUCH easier to sell locally, I told the firm offer that I have a local sale, and that the buyer was going to purchase them on Saturday. If for any reason that the deal fell apart, I would contact him immediately. 2 days later,
I boxed up my 2 amps at 40 lbs each, and drove over to his house.

I listened to his PSB Golds w/ Boulder 100w/channel amp which actually sounded HORRIBLE! We hooked up my amp to his speakers and it was like night and day. NO COMPARISON!!! Totally blew away the Boulder amp. Even my girlfriend could tell right away and she hates this stuff. After 1.5 hours of demo'ing my amps, I asked him if he loved them. He agreed. He said that he would absolutely LOVE to own a pair of these!

This is when he went into his sob story... Well, he said, my economic condition is terrible right now. Let me put it this way. My financial situation is that I'm a car, heading off of a cliff with a 747 crashing right into it. In other words, he would love to have them, but has NO money to be able to buy them if he wanted to!!! He is in financial peril.

So I packed up my amps and left. Came home and wrote the other buyer. Unfortunately, the other buyer had already bought another pair of 7b-st's from someone else.

so, this completely inconsiderate S.O.B. wanted to use me to demo my gear with NO ability to buy them if he could. He was just CURIOUS how they sound. He used me to haul my goods under the pretense of buying if liking, then admits to
loving, but has NO money!

Now I'm mad. I'm fuming. Is this common for people on Audiogon to be such inconsiderate self-serving louts? I wasted 2 hours of my Saturday on this P.O.S. who never had any intention of buying, BEGGED me to leave them with him
for 3 days, and made me lose another viable sale option!!

I say that we expose people like HM from Audiogon for being the sleazy underhanded scum that he is!!! It's lawyers like him who gave many lawyers their bad reputation... How can anyone be such a self-centered lowlife is frankly beyond me.
hager_charles
hello a person delivered a pair of amplifiers to me for demonstration and possible sale I didn't like the sound and paid him $50 for his efforts, I felt he deserve something.
You paid $50 for their trouble! Wow, I want to do business with you. You're a man/woman among men/women! It really does beg the need for a discussion on offering our time to a sale and how MUCH time.

If the buyer would have just told me, "Hey, I don't like the sound. I'm not interested", I would have been happy and left. That's part of the sales process. It's saying "Wow, I really love these and would LOVE to own these, but I don't have any money. Thanks for your time and here's a copied Soundtrack to My Cousin Vinny for you", is what got me twisted off. This is compeletely true!

I'll have to give the buyer credit for being too honest, when he felt it was the right time....
If you have his email about purchasing the amps as proof of his offer I wonder if you could take him to small claims court. Talk to a lawyer about an oral contract based on performance. It would serve him right. Wally
Man with forked tongue should never kiss balloon or in other words a bird in the hand is worth putting the thing in the mail. Any time there is this - well I would like to try them out thing going on ------ run and say that is what dealers are for. Audiogon used division is pretty much for people who already know what they want like the other buyer knew.
Hi Charles; This may be "nit picky", but emails come attached with TIME as well as date of arrival. The person with the earliest email should have been given dibs-- assuming he met your asking price, IMO. And if that meant shipping it somewhere you should have done it. I've gotten up in the morning after posting an ad, gotten 2-3 emails, and responded to them in the order received. The 1st bona fide offer getting priority.

Still, I sympathize with your situation. The local buyer treated you poorly, and certainly not like a professional of any kind should should have. As others have said above, don't let this one bad experience "sour" you on the Audiogon sale process. I think anyone who has done much buying and selling has probably been jerked around once or twice-- I have. Good Luck with future deals. Craig