How long should a trade take to occur?

[DigitalSpace]

Not sure if this is in the right folder, so mods, if it isn't, feel free to move it.

I am new with trading and selling games to others. Since the end of February, I have been exchanging PM's with an anonymous DP'er who was interested in an anonymous SNES cart of mine. I agreed to sell it to him. Now, I'm not going to name this guy, since he has been mentioned as a good trader. At first, he said he needed to wait a week for a paycheck. Two weeks later, I heard no response, so I sent a PM. He apologized for not responding sooner, said he had been busy, and asked if I would prefer a check or money order. I responded. A week and a half has passed since this, and there was no response, although the message I sent is no longer in my outbox. Something tells me I should have gotten a response by now.

I am going to send him a PM again asking why I haven't heard from him, if he needs to wait a while to get some money, or what. But I think all of this is taking too long. I can understand being busy or needing to wait to get some money. But I am growing a little impatient and I want to get rid of this SNES cart. I am considering cancelling the deal and putting the cart up for trade on the board.

What do you guys think? Is this really taking too long? Or am I overreacting? Do I need to be more patient?

[Daria]

Sounds ominous he's not replying... if he's too busy to send he should at least respond to your PMs. But maybe he's feeling guilty for procrastinating.

Is he a regular who posts often, and if so has he not posted much lately? That could mean his life is truely hectic right now.

So it's been three and a half weeks? Nearly a month? Unless it's someone really reputable you might want to offer the game to someone else...
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LovelyWendie99 (http://www.lovelywendie99.com/)

[LazingBlazers]

It all depends. If it's a good trade for you, it may be worth waiting for.

Me personally, I like to do things fast. Even if I am busy with a ton of stuff, I specifically make time to contemplate and communicate about trades/deals so that I can complete them as fast as possible. It's like the people you see on TV who say they don't have enough time to go to the gym... it simply comes down to the fact that you have to make time to do something you want or need to... no matter what. Especially when you're involving other peoples own time.

If I had traded with this person before, I would wait. If not, I would forget about them and deal with someone else. I think a good timeframe is about a weeks worth of communications if the trade is somewhat involved. Life's too short to wait over a month to complete a minor trade.

[Nz17]

Yeah, that is definitely too long of a time. Even if what s/he is saying is true, it's still a bit flakey of her/him to have not cancelled out of the deal by this point. And if this person is lying, all the worse still. I'd send them a message saying that if you don't recieve payment by this time next week that you are cancelling the deal and selling the game to someone else.

[DigitalSpace]

The trade is minor. I'm just getting what the game is worth on the DP guide.

It seems a bit odd that I had to PM him again two weeks after he told me he needed a week to wait for his paycheck, and then got that response asking if I preferred the check or money order. When you guys do trades, and a guy needed to wait a week to get a paycheck, would you expect the person to PM you when he has the money to buy the game?

Anyways, what I'm getting here is that this is definitely too long and I should have expected a response by now. So I have sent him a PM, and we'll see what happens.

Thanks for the responses, and if anyone has anything else to throw in, I'm more than happy to hear it.

[kainemaxwell]

It all depends. If it's a good trade for you, it may be worth waiting for.

Me personally, I like to do things fast. Even if I am busy with a ton of stuff, I specifically make time to contemplate and communicate about trades/deals so that I can complete them as fast as possible.

I'm the same way. trades and buys I like to get my end of the payment out soon as I can, even if I have to make time to go to the PO to send them.

[Darth Sensei]

Jeez DigitalSpace, I promise I'll get the money to you. JK

Hey, I would just send one more PM saying that if I don't get the money within a week, I'm selling it to someone else.

D