what the heck is up with this guy?

[recorderdude]

So, I've been trying to buy a lot of video games on craigslist for a few months now. I may have mentioned it before. It has a CiB SNES Aladdin, CiB SNES Madden 96, Loose Super Return of the Jedi, boxed Sonic Spinball GEN, boxed Paperboy GEN, CiB Aladdin GEN and CiB Demolition Man GEN. It appears he's been trying to sell it for those few months too. From what I can tell, he's had no other offers, as he started the lot at $20, then went down to $15, then went all the way down to $10 a few days ago. He's obviously pretty damn desperate to move it. I contacted him multiple times throughout this period expressing my interest and he never responded. I most recently sent him an email offering $15 instead of the $10 he's asking for to cover gas costs to come to a meetup area I'm comfortable with (Which, judging by his location and distance from it, is more than enough). I've waited, and he STILL hasn't responded to me. I use the exact anonymized email from his craigslist address so I'm sure it's going through. I wouldn't mind if he just replied and told me he couldn't drive or something, that way there'd be a REASON he can't do that, but I've heard nothing like that at all.

So yeah. He's a seller that desperately wants to sell, I'm an interested buyer, why the heck doesn't he respond?

[Enmity]

I don't know if this is what your having issues with, but I have been told by a few people I've meet that they replied to some of my posts and I never received their emails. I always have a few posts up and they would reply to one I would get it and we worked out a deal and they replied to another one not knowing it was me also. The email from a different post I never got. After talking with them they would realize it was me and they told me. It is always random also never the same post not forwarding emails.

[recorderdude]

I don't know if this is what your having issues with, but I have been told by a few people I've meet that they replied to some of my posts and I never received their emails. I always have a few posts up and they would reply to one I would get it and we worked out a deal and they replied to another one not knowing it was me also. The email from a different post I never got. After talking with them they would realize it was me and they told me. It is always random also never the same post not forwarding emails.

Hmm...how strange. I did use the same email address as before to send out the message, and I think that he did get one around 3-4 months ago but I can't recall. Still, I've tried again multiple times and he hasn't responded to any. It'd be nice if webmail was similar to some smaller servers where you can actually see if the recipient read the message.

[Gameguy]

I had that happen once when I was trying to buy a SNES lot of games for around $100. The seller was close enough for me to get to, he just never emailed me back. He had a phone number posted so I called and left a message with my number to call me back, I never got a call back. I later called again and the mailbox was full. I kept calling and eventually reached him, he told me it was a bad time and to call him back later at a specific time, I phoned him at that time and his cell phone was off.

I started searching his phone number on google and after finding various postings on forums and searching more on his user name, I discovered that he was a known scammer on various sites including GameTZ. The address posted as a warning was in the same area as mentioned in the ad posting. I started to suspect that he avoided me because I wanted to pick the games up in person, rather than ask to pay for shipping and get scammed. Or someone just offered him more money as the games were worth much more than his asking price. For an ad with Aero Fighters and a bunch more games included I would try my best to get it, usually I wouldn't waste my time with people who never reply back.

Either way, just know that plenty of people online are jerks and should be avoided. If it's not something rare or extremely valuable don't bother wasting your time with them.

[recorderdude]

so today he put all of the games online in his listing, massively overpriced them ($10 for the boxed aladdin PLUS shipping? Come ON.) and they're just sitting there. Oh well. he had his chance. I guess stupid begets more stupid.

[SparTonberry]

If it's the SNES version of Aladdin, $10+shipping boxed doesn't sound that ridiculous.

[Enmity]

If it's the SNES version of Aladdin, $10+shipping boxed doesn't sound that ridiculous.

Shipping from Craigslist = usually bad.

[recorderdude]

If it's the SNES version of Aladdin, $10+shipping boxed doesn't sound that ridiculous.

it's the genesis version.

[GamerTheGreek]

His loss. I would say better sellers will find you in due time.

[InsaneDavid]

You know sometimes people just get a bad feel from someone and decide not to do business with them and leave it at that. Sometimes it is reasonably justified, other times just a gut instinct. I'm not arguing if it's warranted or not but I've done the same many times both as a buyer and seller.

As a seller it could be that it was a hassle for us to meet up, sometimes they flat out ignored things in the listing, sometimes they just seemed way too desperate to me and so forth. For whatever reason I got the "nah, not this one" vibe and left it at that. As a buyer I've had a few instances where I contact a seller and get no response. Then I contact them from another e-mail address and change up my request (usually simplifying everything much more as I'm usually pretty detailed when conducting CL business), act as if it's my first time contacting them, and they get right back to me.

It's all part of the dance and remember, the best deals are the ones where both the buyer and seller are satisfied with the transaction, regardless of the score, profit or lack thereof.