MOTM

Yeah, the original auction made no mention of Italy, I found out after I
bought-it-now and it came out after the second email from her.  The original
auction said flat $20 US shipping fee which quickly turned into $100
minimum. (I'm guessing that a 20 pound box from Italy to the USA might be
around $100 give or take so it wasn't an outrageous amount but . . . . ) 

 

I said I was concerned with all of the changes and asked for some sort of
reassurances. She got mad about that and suggested canceling the auction if
I was going to take so long to pay.  I suggested we could use an escrow
service and she got madder and suggested a cancelation again.  I thought
about it for a while but decided to bail cuz I can't afford to lose that
much money on a gamble. Then she got even madder because I had wasted so
much of her time.  There was no mention of number of days payment was needed
by on the auction either. All of this took place with in less than 40 hours
after I clicked buy-it-now! ;-/ 

 

Maybe she's just a particularly frantic impatient person and I've been lied
to and burned too many times to move quickly on something like this and I'm
overly cautious . . . . 

 

I did have it in mind to contact Paul to see if he knew her at least as a
customer (thanks by the way Paul for the response) but it was all seeming to
be going bad so fast that I didn't want the stress anymore. Modular
synthesizers should be fun-full, not painful! ;-)

 

I actually had missed the fact that the location said "London, United
Kingdom" when I first saw the add. I was doing a quick check from work and
could only spend a few minutes. I saw the auction and almost said aloud
"HOLY CRAP!!!"  I added up conservatively estimated prices and it seemed
that pile of modules would sell for maybe 2 to 3 times what the asking price
was ($850 + $20 shipping!) I didn't actually want or need all of them at
this time but I figured I could sell the kits I didn't need (or build them
and sell them and possibly end up breaking even!)  I knew it wouldn't last
so I quickly checked some essentials and since it was in US Dollars and only
ships to the US, I assumed it was in the US. (my bad) PayPal was accepted
and there had been buying or selling activity in both April and August so I
thought, I MUST HAVE IT!    Anyway, I still think it's odd that someone
would only sell to a foreign country and not their own or neighboring
countries. I went back and checked her most recent transaction more closely
and that was for a synth she bought from a seller in Canada that also has a
fairly low number of transactions and that auction was for sale only to the
US!    

 

So . . . there was this Canadian shipping only to the USA that ends up
selling to a buyer in Italy that is also selling something and only shipping
to the USA but states in the auction they are in the UK . . . . 

 

Plus PayPal was showing they were only going to protect me up to $200 . . .
. 

 

Was I being overly paranoid?? ;-)

 

Sorry to ramble on about this. It was a pretty big emotional ride and I had
to get it off my chest. Thanks for the free therapy everyone! J

 

John L Rice

 

From: Ross Stapf [mailto:pristak@...] 
Sent: Thursday, August 28, 2008 7:21 AM
To: JohnLeightonRice; motm@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [motm] Just FYI - MOTM deal of the year??

 

I'm nervous right away with only 10 feedbacks, user regestered in the UK,
but says he lives in Italy.

JohnLeightonRice <Drummer@...> wrote: 

http://cgi.ebay.com/10-mods-DIY-of-MOTM-Synthesis-
Technology_W0QQitemZ200250015933

I actually nabbed this less than 2 days ago but there were a lot of 
things wrong with the listing and after a lot of emails we mutually 
dropped the transaction. I'll probably be sorry . . . . 

If you are braver than I, get a mountain of MOTM kits for a steal! 
(maybe give me first dibs on a couple of them you fon't want? ;-)

Seller was really impatient so exercise caution.