Buy/Sell/Trade Rant
 

Just need to get this off my chest and hopefully I'm allowed to do that here. I have bought, received, and traded lots of stuff with/from members here and they have mostly been amazing experiences meeting new people and getting to know the community more and more. In the short time I've been involved I can truly say it's one of the best groups of people I have ever met. Despite all this the one thing I just can't handle is people who flake on a deal without any notice given to you whatsoever.

As many of you know who have followed my build I have tried to keep things on a budget. Buying lots of used items or finding trades I could do to get the equipment I need. Recently I found out that the 2 100w heaters I have running in redundancy is not powerful to keep temps stable when only 1 is operational which isn't very redundant. I posted it up for sale so I could replace them with 150w heaters. I also needed some biopellets for the reactor I'm restoring and posted a thread on the forum here as well. A member contacted me offering to trade biopellets for one of my heaters. I had already bought pellets from J&L at this point but I could still return it and do the trade, great! Killing two birds with one stone. I asked that ideally trade would be done at my place or at J&L to return the pellets I already bought and since temps would drop if I pulled the heater out and would need to replace it soon after the trade. He told me that it would be best if I could meet him near his work in downtown. I'd have to do some extra work to meet in downtown but not a big deal, we arranged a date and time and I went to J&L to return the pellets and buy a new 150w heater. Came home to hook it up and back to class until we were meeting up. I texted to confirm if we were still good to go and got a reply back saying he forgot to bring the pellets to work this morning. Ok, not a big deal, I ask to arrange to do the trade the next day and he tells me to remind him the next morning. So next morning I did and he says we're still good to meet and out of nowhere asks me if $30 is ok for the pellets. What? I thought we were doing a trade I asked. He replies by saying Oh sorry I went ahead and just bought a heater yesterday so you're welcome to buy my pellets for $30 if you want. Are you serious? After I accommodated to meet at his work place, spent time to go return the pellets, and spent money on a new heater he's flaking out on me without any notice. This is simply unacceptable and totally inconsiderate thing to do to someone. I asked that he pulls through with his commitment to do the trade as I really need the heater gone and need the pellets. Now I have too many heaters and no pellets and he's been ignoring me for couple days and I just needed to rant about it. Looking at the history he seems to be pretty active member with lots of selling and buying. I just hope this isnt something he pulls on someone often. If you're reading this I hope you understand what you did is completely irresponsible. Maybe it's on me for trusting people too much. I just hope something like this doesn't happen to other members as it's seriously frustrating.

End of rant.

hmm , i understand your frustration. and see the need you felt to rant about it. But i dont understand all this running around Vancouver and trying to organize trades and wasting time over a $30 heater or bag of pellets ..

Heaters are something that should be purchased new period . Pellets well buy a bag of pellets and youll be good for a year .. or forget pellets altogether :mrgreen:

You're not officially indoctrinated into this hobby without the old buy and sell runaround. I wonder if you can give people negative reputation? I'll have to check.

The point I guess I'm trying to make is it doesn't matter if it was a mere $30 for a bag of pellets or $500 for a light fixture. The way he handled the situation was seriously inconsiderate to the other party. Also choosing to ignore subsequent messages is kind of childish imo, and I consider myself to still be a childish college student just trying to budget his way through this hobby any way I can. Cause I love it so far!

Try and buy/sell on kijiji if you want to get ..cked around , people who want to buy your car but don't have any money , like at all , and cant get any but can you hold the car for them they really want it . Or you ask if a car for sale has any rust and they say it dosent have any rust so you dive 45 min to see it and there`s a fist sized hole in the rear quarters and you say hey that's rust and they say but ya you could fix it easy so I didn't say any thing , and I say really have you replaced a rear quarter before and repainted an entire car because that's not (some words) easy (some words) hat, you (some words ) fix it and I will come back and buy it for the same price that you have it at now if its so (lots of words ) easy . Glad im not bitter about it any more though .

While I feel your pain, this is by no means specific to this hobby or this community. In fact, you can even get the same sort of run around with a commercial business! Been there, done that :neutral:

Yup. It's simply everywhere.

"Buyer beware" has been around for centuries for a reason. lol.

Either way, sorry for your luck. Some people are just plain stupid.

I have had tons of buy/sell experience here on the forum over the several yrs I have been a member and have only had 3 deals go bad getting ripped off completely. I do tend to go out of my way to be very accommodating to the buyer or seller depending on the deal. I don't live in an area with many reefers and have traveled lots to get something I want and also have to travel to ship items at my expense. My wife says I am to nice when it come to this but thats just me. A happy buyer/seller is a new contact IMO.

To many people just take others for granted and that just ****es me off so I totally do get where your coming from.

Don't see enough people giving rep points for positive transactions.

God I can totally relate, had to sell off my car in Toronto and buy a new one when I arrived in Vancouver very recently. Pretty much had the same experience. I think you're on the right track, I should stop being bitter about it and move on.

Right? I love it when a transaction goes great and one more acquaintance is made that I can share and enjoy the hobby with. This is why I try to be accommodating. After the extra work I had to put in, it's so rewarding to have made a new connection. Some people just try to take advantage of such situation for their own gain and that's what I can't take.

Ugh, I don't even want to think about how much more frustrating a situation like this could be if my career or financial income was on the line. I just had a stressful morning with having to write an exam and power going out an hour before I had to write the exam, along with this happening I just needed to vent somewhere. Had another situation where I was sold an equipment with the promise that everything worked and that he was willing to reimburse the costs if it happened to be faulty. It did happen to be faulty and the member has been unresponsive to my messages for a while but I still see him post on the forums time to time. I still have hope that he will keep his words and waiting on a response before I take action.

I really appreciate that some of the members took the time to read and respond to my rant. I think I've gotten it out of my system and ready to move on.

Rant is good. It helps to take off the steam. We all have experiences (well, almost all) that can be related to yours. And I am from a country where meeting a stranger to make a buy/sell transaction always carries a life threatening component to it :lol:

Sorry you had such a negative experience dude. I've also had literally hundreds of transactions over the years and I'd say only about 5 percent or less have led to negative experiences.

Yeah, Canreef should have a 'Trader Feedback' forum like RC. People should be held accountable for flaking out or ripping people off. There's no accountability right now, and they can continue to rip off other people later.

Brian:
Sorry to hear about your bad experience. It's true this type of situation is not isolated to this hobby. I've dealt with my fair share of bad transactions. I remember back in the day a guy came over to buy a frag for like $20. He got here and said "oh sorry, I only have $15 on me, is that ok?" I stood my ground and was like "No, sorry, it's $20." He kept looking and actually wanted more frags. Ended up spending $50. Surprise surprise, he HAD the cash. Like you said, it's not so much about the money, it's about the principle and your integrity as a man. So unless I've dealt with you before, or if you're a good friend, I wouldn't go out of my way for you. At the end of the day it's not worth my time to get nickelled and dimed over this little sht. Yes, I'm bitter :P. These guys grow balls of titanium cuz they can hide behind their computers and ignore you.

Advice to you in the future is not to spend your hard earned money until the deal is complete.

Sorry for the hijacked rant, I guess a nerve got touched :S


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Man or Woman :wink:
No need to be sorry, it's kinda calming to hear that others have had similar experiences before and puts into perspective that such a thing will happen once in a while. I do agree that a system like Trader Feedback would help tremendously.