Weird eBay seller

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Bo Eder

Bo Eder

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Tell me is this sounds strange: I found an orphan drum and decided to watch it - good price and will work for what I need it for - then I ask the seller if he'd take a lower price. No problem. Cool.

Maybe this was wrong, but I asked him if I can take some time to verify I can actually a specific wrap for it to match one of my kits. He doesn't have a problem with that. So I decide to ask him a couple of questions, specifically how old is the drum and what happened to the badge, etc.,... He answers, so I tell him when I find out from my drum covering guy if I can get a match, I'll buy his drum.

Then I get an email from him telling me that he thought I was gonna buy it and not just ask a bunch of questions and make him wait?

Huh?

So he tells me the deals off and he'll just wait for someone else to buy it and his advertised price. I didn't think my questions were intrusive or anything - I figured anyone would ask those questions if he didn't include it in the item description, right?

Anyway, I didn't have the heart to respond. I just stopped watching the drum on eBay and deleted the messages. If you want to go crazy about selling a drum to a potential buyer then that's none of my business.

But with what I described, does it sound like I did something wrong? It's a head scratcher to me.
 
Maybe he was put off by the last question, where your decision became dependent on a third party.
 
Sounds to me like the guy was in a hurry to sell, and put a limit on how many questions you could ask. A lot of sellers on ebay are just that. Sellers and many are selling items tey found in garages, estate sales, etc., and ave no idea what they're selling except to research potential price. I wouldn't let it get to you Bo. JW
 
It's not getting to me. I thought it was rather strange. I suppose the waiting for the third-party might be strange, but I was up-front about that too (I thought). He seemed ok to me until I got his separate email. Maybe he was trying to rush me to buy - and that wasn't gonna happen anyway - so I'm not gonna get rattled.

It's his drum, he can decide who buys it, right? I do that sometimes too if someone is an out-right jerk - so I hope I didn't seem like a jerk. There's no way to tell now.
 
Push pull stroke said:
He’s probably a member here, and just wants the drum to be loved, and not just bumped around to the next foster home.
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It'd be interesting if he was a member here. He said he's in his 50s, into drums, so this would technically be his second home.

Again, I'm not bent out of shape about it. He had a chance to sell it to me if I could just confer with my drum wrap guy, but he'd rather sell for his price to somebody else. He'd probably eventually get his price, and that'll be good for him. It was just the strangest thing that happened to me today.
 
Couldn't you just ask your wrap guy then if he said he can match it buy it? Why did you have to ask the seller if you could ask your wrap guy? Were you asking the seller to hold it for you until you heard back from your wrap guy? If that's the case I guess I could understand him not wanting to hold it, he"s trying to sell it, he did answer your questions. It also sounds like you negotiated a reduced price before knowing if you really even wanted it. Maybe I'm misreading something but the seller doesn't sound too weird to me.
 
Part of buying something is negotiating price and communication. If the guy doesn't want to take the time to answer questions and work with you then he's a bad salesman and he's not worth your time
 
orionreturns said:
Couldn't you just ask your wrap guy then if he said he can match it buy it? Why did you have to ask the seller if you could ask your wrap guy? Were you asking the seller to hold it for you until you heard back from your wrap guy? If that's the case I guess I could understand him not wanting to hold it, he"s trying to sell it, he did answer your questions. It also sounds like you negotiated a reduced price before knowing if you really even wanted it. Maybe I'm misreading something but the seller doesn't sound too weird to me.
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I was just being honest. We discussed a lower price because he didn't have a "Make Offer" option, so I asked about the price and he agreed, but he still didn't give me a way to pay him the lower price, so in the interim I asked him about the drum and we discussed what it would be used for and how I'm waiting for a definitive answer on getting the correct wrap and he seemed ok with all of that for about two hours. Then he tells me I'm wasting his time and he'd rather sell it for his price to somebody willing to pay his price.

Does that sound normal to you?
 
Do you want the drum or not? It's ebay afterall not Craigslist or your local drum shop.

You asked for a better deal....he even gave you a better deal.

"Well...I would like to wait and see if my wrap guy......."

You what? Next...

He may have been a little short with you, I guess in some parts of the country even considered a little rude, but weird? Nah...

He's probably from Jersey...
 
One thing about eBay, if buyers waffle at all, it’s best to move on. The biggest reason, a bad buyer can spank a fantastic seller and drag them over the coals and seller has basically no defense.

In my case, I had no product (brand new by the way), a payment refunded by eBay after the buyer filed a damaged goods claim, gave me my first black mark of 8000+ positive reviews, when their reviews showed scammer throughout and I had my account frozen for having a bad attitude.

Bo, I would have dropped you like a hot potato too for being indecisive. That has problems written all over it. It wasn’t me though! For the last 3 years, I’ve given then my middle finger for never even listening to my side of the dispute!
 
I'm guessing he assumed that as he agreed to a lower price then you would buy immediately. Maybe things would have been different if you asked all the questions you had in one mail - it was probably the fact that he still had to wait for you to get an answer from a third party after he had already answered your other questions that p'd him off.

If I was in the same position as the seller I would have agreed to sell to you for the reduced price if you got a go ahead from the wrap guy, however if a buyer agreed to offer me a higher asking price before you contacted me again to buy the drum you would be shit out of luck. If you can't commit to buying the drum then its unreasonable to expect him to hold the drum for you if he gets other offers.
 
Someone educate me. I offer an item for sale on eBay and it is "buy it now" with no "make offer" listed. Will eBay let me sell it for less than the listed price? I sell on eBay but I don't know how to sell something for a lower price than I listed unless I add "make offer".

By the way Bo, I think your seller got a better offer while you were waiting to buy it.


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Hollywood Jim said:
Someone educate me. I offer an item for sale on eBay and it is "buy it now" with no "make offer" listed. Will eBay let me sell it for less than the listed price? I sell on eBay but I don't know how to sell something for a lower price than I listed unless I add "make offer".
By the way Bo, I think your seller got a better offer while you were waiting to buy it. .
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You can sell for a lower price by sending an invoice with agreed upon price, however you'll pay fees based on the buy it now price, UNLESS you sell it for more than the b.i.n. JW
 
I don't see any way that you did anything wrong. One thought that did occur to me, however, is that perhaps he's in a hurry to sell it because it's hot. My Dad is a tuba player and he has noted that stolen tubas have shown up on eBay in the past. The tuba community is fairly small (big surprise there), so when a hot tuba shows up on eBay, people note it an put it up on message boards like this (for tubas).
 
Personally, as a buyer I never talk money until I'm ready to buy something. If I'm still not sure if I even want something there's really no point in trying to deal. As a seller I'd expect the same, so I'd guess in this case it wasn't the questions per se, as much as the timing of them.
 
If you offered him a price and he accepted it, then to me, and people I have dealt with on selling and buying over the last 38 years, it's a done deal and you take it. No "well let me think about it" or "let me check if it will work".

If he offered a price, then its reasonable to ask to think about it. He also can sell it to the next guy while you are thinking about it. If you ask "Can I think about it two days?" and he accepts then he should honor that.

I would answer questions up to a point but it boils down to this: Money talks, and bull$h!t walks.
 
Hollywood Jim said:
Someone educate me. I offer an item for sale on eBay and it is "buy it now" with no "make offer" listed. Will eBay let me sell it for less than the listed price? I sell on eBay but I don't know how to sell something for a lower price than I listed unless I add "make offer".

By the way Bo, I think your seller got a better offer while you were waiting to buy it.


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That’s one thing there: unless he changed his listing allowing me to buy it at the new price, I couldn’t buy it since we were both in a holding pattern while I waited for word from the covering guy.

He may have gotten a better deal and I told him that was cool if he did while I waited. If that was the case, he didn’t have to be rude. If I appeared to waffle, then it’s his prerogative to drop me, but his reason didn’t make sense to me.
 
Bo Eder said:
Does that sound normal to you?
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Yeah, it does. Used to be, most of the crazies were on Craigslist, and not eBay. Well, they've drifted onto eBay now ..... so you get the good, the bad, and the ugly. Don't ask why .... just shake your head and keep on stepping.​
 
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