Problems with proposed transactions?

what, pray tell, is a "proposed transaction"? sounds to me like a recipe for failure. you either have a transaction or you don't. if you communicate intelligently with a seller or buyer, you should be able to avoid any and all problems. something happen here that has chaffed your thighs? -cfb

Just trying to avoid a bad situation. Seems that there are quite a few transactions where problems developed. It gives the appearance that there is more than a fair share of unethical dealing going on.

I've never bought or sold anything that was misrepresented; I've always received the item as described and if anything the condition was better than advertised. 'Philes are fussy and tend to baby their toys, it's rare you'll see stuff banged up. Transactional frustrations on the buying end are priamrily shipping related: insist on NO UPS and the seller sends it by UPS anyway, poorly packaged stuff due to the seller being too lazy or cheap to package it up properly. Selling frustrations are primarily low ball offers, it's amazing the slime out there. I can live with the inane questions but the ridiculous offers (and the tone in which they are presented) are offensive.

I think the percentage is low, but it's high enough that if you do a lot of transactions, you'll run into it. I don't think there are very many people who are out to purposely (grossly) mis-lead anybody, but there seem to be a fair number of people who are, shall we say, optimistic about how their gear grades out.

For the most part, I find people (esp. on Audiogon) go out of their way to be explicit about what they're selling and what condition it's in. I've been very satisfied in most of my transactions. I've had minor disappointments in more than one transaction - gear that is a little more scuffed up than advertised, etc. I've only had one purchase where something that was advertised as "perfect condition" had a malfunctioning feature - I worked with the manufacturer and got the piece needed from them (for free) and a friend repaired it, at which point it was "perfect condition". I've never encountered the type of seller horror story you occassionally read about.

I find the percentage of the time I encounter this type of behavior to be small enough to not push me away from this type of transaction, but anybody doing this type of purchasing has to factor the possibility into their expectations because you can lose a lot of sleep if "minor" mis-leadings are going to really get under your skin. -Kirk