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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
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".
albertporter's avatar
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albertporter
4,949 posts
 
To me, Lawyer indicated a professional. Typically a financially solid prospect with good intentions.

I have several friends who are Lawyers, and feel those attributes apply. My take was that he was more disappointed than normal, having been let down. Like most verbiage in print, it is difficult to know the mood of the writer.

As for the situation, I understand the disappointment as I have had similar experiences. I allowed a friend to take a piece of audio gear before he had the money to pay. He did make partial payment, but never paid the balance. It is if nothing else, an example of how things could have been worse. However, I am not going to let it spoil my enjoyment of audio, nor should it for Charles.
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,216 posts
 
I agree w/ Griswold, you jerked someone around and then you got jerked. Is it justice? Probably not, of the three people involved you definitely got the worst of the deal. In direct answer to your question, you should do nothing to your local non-buyer, instead you should look in the mirror.
hager_charles OP
51 posts
 
Onhwy61, nice comments...you must be a lawyer too?

Please allow me to interject before you take this overboard. I NEVER jerked anyone around. I had 2 emails in my inbox at the SAME time. One read, "I'm interested in your amps for XXXX dollars". The other read "I'm interested in your amps and I live within 15 minutes of you." I wrote the "Out of State" offer an email that I had a strong possibility of a Local Sale which I wanted to pursue first as it was a local deal. I called the Local party who agreed. The local party wanted to have them for 3 days to demo. I TOLD the local party that I cannot do that as I have another interested party waiting on us to complete this negotiation.

In the meantime, on the day of getting both offers, I told the "Out of State Offer" that it was not right for me to play 2 buyers against each other for the max price, nor keep him strung along. Rather, I wanted to pursue the Local deal first for many reasons (No shipping, Less chance of Fraud, Less chance of breakage during shipping, etc.) I was completely up front and honest with the out of state offer that IF the local sale did not work out, and he was still interested, I contact him within 2 days, which was the scheduled time of the Demo. That is why the "Out of State Buyer" went to buy someone else's gear!!!

I am not the least bit mad at the "out of state" offer, I feel bad that I couldn't have had the chance to given him a BETTER deal than what he got. He was completely right to find the same product somewhere else! We all would have done the same thing. My concern is that I could not have negotiated with the ONLY genuinely interested party FIRST.

This has taught me a few lessons. I believe that I will no longer be doing local sales as I would rather have the troubles of mailing 360 lbs of speakers for a clear deal over dinking around with "unverified" buyers! In the end, this will only hurt the buying market of used equipment by people who are less than honest or up front. This used high-end audio market is tough enough without unreputable people participating. We are not in the business of doing this for a living. This is our hobby where we give up our
time on the weekends as a favor for someone who wants to
buy them.

Secondly, I loved a few of this ideas such as charging $50-$100 up front for a demo! How about making it $200 which is refundable with a closed deal??? I also like the idea of a credit check. My father suggested the same thing. The "buyer" actually lived in one the highest priced housing areas. Heck, he was bragging to me about just having bought a new engine for his Porche! Who would ever have thought he was penniless??? $2900 is not a LOT of money for people who own Porche's.
mejames
986 posts
 
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.
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