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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
rlwainwright
1,904 posts
 
Your problem is that you did not "pre-qualify" your sales prospect. Savvy salesmen do it all the time - make *sure* your prospect has the means to complete the purchase of the product. But how do you do this without running a credit check on every schmoe who wants to demo your equipment?

There is a very simple solution to this problem: charge an up-front demo fee, say $50-100. If, as you claim, it was such a hassle to schlepp your amps over to his place so he could check 'em out, let him pay you for your time. If he bails, at least you got paid for your time and effort. If he buys, the honorable thing to do is to credit him the demo fee towrads the purchase price. This eliminates the tire kickers and makes sure you are dealing only with SERIOUS buyers.

And so ends lesson #1 - you will be ready for lesson #2 when you can snatch the remote from my outstretched hand, grasshopper...
herman
2,267 posts
 
Sorry to hear you got jerked around. You could start a thread on lawyer jokes.
clueless
763 posts
 
Geeze, I read your post and cringed. What does he/she being a "lawyer" have to do with it? Was he short or tall, or a Catholic or Jew, or white or black or a tube or SS guy? A jerk is a jerk. They come in all professions and flavors. Maybe I am sensitive to the issue because of the incredible amount of grief that comes with being in the profession (only thick skins need apply here). Now we're associated with being stiffs at Agon.

Sincerely, I remain
jvia
195 posts
 
Kinda glad to see the last few posts, cause where the guy was wrong to do you that way, a couple of things done on your behalf might have prevented it, as those described above. Regretfully its part of the learning process. And though I doubt it, maybe the guy thought he was backing out of the deal in a polite way, rather than just tell you he didn't like it for whatever reason(I mean after all, he does own the Boulders, gotta have or had a little money)
And by the way, this guy was NOT a buyer, as he did not buy. He is what a lot of salespeople call a lizard, whether it be the store lizard or the car lot lizard, they are all of the same family, genurus troublenotneedus, and they habitate the world. You see them every few days, scurrying around your store or lot, and about the moment you think you have them pinned down on something, they scurry away.
At least he didn't pull your chain farther and tell you he didn't want them after possibly succeeding in getting you to leave them for 3 days.
I would tell you as I would a friend over a beer, forget about the anger and stuff(and hard to do right now I know0, it will just make us all older but remember the deal somewhere in your mind, that way it won't happen again.
jeffloistarca
1,004 posts
 
I'd invite a prospective local buyer over to my place for a listen, that way if he didn't want it well..no time or effort lost, I woulda been listening to music anyway. I'm with Jvia, "don't sweat the petty things, and don't pet the sweaty things".
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