Sellers Who "Didn't Know" or the Convenient Excuse

I was about to purchase a BAT VK60 amp from a very nice guy who only owned it a month. He advertised it as a Rev. E. There were six versions of this amp, and it is important to know which one you are getting for reliability, hum, noise & upgradability factors. When I told him how to double check the version by looking through the bottom rear slits for the letter on the corner of the circuit board, he discovered it was a Rev. C. The seller he bought from represented it as a Rev. E. He then contacted the original seller to tell him, and the seller's reply was, "I didn't know. The dealer I bought it from told me it was a Rev. E."

Hogwash! If you buy a piece of this caliber and have the intellect to deal with a tube amplifier, I find it impossible to believe that you would buy an amp like this, and not even verify the version on the unit itself, or call the manufacturer to have the serial number looked up. I have experienced similar situations where sellers "didn't know" there was a problem, i.e. tubes that were noisy or on their way out, wrong versions, incorrect manufacture dates, nicks and scratches, etc., ad nauseum. Always the convenient excuse of "I didn't know," serves to disavow the seller of any responsibility. I realize things do happen randomly, but quite frankly, it is clear to me that there are sellers out there who just want to dump their problems onto someone else.

The Rev. C cannot be easily upgraded because it has older boards. To revise it is prohibitively costly, and BAT informed me that no one has chosen to do so on the older versions.
Unfortunately, the sale to the Audiogon guy was not done on Audiogon, so he has little recourse. The maxim, "Caveat emptor" (Buyer beware) is certainly as applicable in high end stereo purchasing as it is in buying anything else.

Audiogoners, let's hear your similar experiences.......