Yesterday I had the most bizarre encounter with someone who I was buying a guitar from.
I won a guitar on ebay and contacted the seller to arrange collection. Turns out he owns a shop about 2 hours drive away from me. I was considering going to collect it and check the shop out but he agreed that he would meet me half way for the cost of fuel. Then he changed his mind and offered to deliver it to my door for £20 as he was driving past on his way somewhere else, so we agreed that he would drop it off at midday yesterday.
It gets past midday yesterday and theres no sign of him so I ring him up to see where he is and he says something like "oh change of plan, i'm in Grimsby at the moment and have to deliver something to a studio in Leeds so i'll be a few hours, i'll call you later". This was pretty annoying as I had plans to go out with family for the afternoon, but rather than say all this to him and make things awkward I just asked exactly where he was heading and arranged to meet him there as it happened to be not far from where I was planning to go with my family.
So I get to the meeting place and the guy is not there. He eventually arrives, I check out the guitar and hand him the £300 and he says "hang on, we agreed £320", and I replied with something along the lines of "we agreed £20 for you to deliver it to me at 12 today but i've just driven an hour to meet you to get it so why should I have to pay your fuel costs" when he was already driving to the meeting point anyway for a separate reason.
At this point he slammed the cash back in my hands, snatched the bass away and threw it into his boot and told me to f*ck off. Then proceeded to get back in his car whilst ranting and raving at me for wasting his time, meanwhile I'm trying to have a reasonable discussion about it and I can't get a word in edgeways. I'm kind of in shock at this point because I didn't expect such an extreme reaction. He starts turning his car round, and i'm knocking on his window trying to get him to stop and talk it over for a second, and then he seems to remember that he's here to deliver something to the studio so he can't just drive off and leave me stood there. He gets back out of the car and carries on effing and blinding at me, and i'm trying to explain that it's totally unreasonable of him to expect me to pay £20 for his fuel when i've just driven a hours drive to meet him because I was expecting him at my house at midday and he didn't show up.
At this point I realised that there was no reasoning with the guy so I just gave him £20 extra so as not to lose the guitar after all that effort. I didn't mind paying £20 extra as my original bid on ebay was more than £20 that I ended up winning it for, it's just the principal that bothered me.
I don't think I was out of order for not wanting to pay his fuel costs, and I at least expected for him to understand where I was coming from and perhaps request half the fuel money or something, rather than just flip out. I will certainly be avoiding his shop in the future!!
Anyone else had any crazy encounters when buying/selling?
Comments
To be fair I’ve been guilty of last minute sellers remorse a few times (usually with 24 hours to go) but I always apologise profusely when it’s happened!
Weirdest one I had was an amp that I’d sold on ebay and I’d agreed to meet the buyer to do the exchange in a service station that eve. Unfortunately I’d had a few shandies on the way home from work and the only person available to drive me was my mother who kindly agreed. We get to the rendezvous, the buyer is delayed...it gets dark...buyer is still delayed, we wait. Cue the most awkward hour of my life sat in the car with my mum; the service station was a hot spot for dogging and cottaging. Very awkward silence reigned in that car and I’ve never done a trade and got out of there so quickly when the buyer did finally arrive!
@hassleham definitely name and shame this lunatic seller, he needs to be avoided like the plague.
I nearly did but I reeeeally wanted the bass and knew I would’ve regretted it more if I had let it go.
The shop name rhymes with ‘Cold Bat Sitars’.
Ebay mark7777_1
Just sounds like a maniac. If his reaction was to argue that he should get the 20 quid then he'd still be unreasonable but the way he reacted makes him sound unstable.
If you can just think that you're happy to get that bass for 320 quid and try to ignore that you had to appease a nutter. If you told him to shove it you might have been cutting off your nose to spite your face.
My preference for eBay is postage, or collection if they won’t post. Anything else has too much potential for hassle, unless you already know the person is reliable. This guy clearly isn’t with their communication otherwise you wouldn’t have had to chase them.
to tell him to go take a flying fuck at a polo mint but if you really wanted the bass more, very nicely handled.
I’m guessing the look on his face when he had to climb back out of the car was more than worth the ticket price.