Somebody's Trying To Beat Me Out Of $1,200
"I think that we may safely trust," Thoreau wrote, "a great deal more than we do." I've had the good fortune to buy dozens of relatively expensive items from various members of various Web forums over the past fifteen years, and although I've had minor problems --- items not quite as represented, damage not disclosed, bad packing or flaky communications --- until today I've never had a straight "take the money and run" happen.
A few weeks ago, a member of the Heritage Guitar Owners forum held a "fire sale" to cover some hospital bills. He had a few decent guitars that he was willing to sell at the low end of their net eBay pricing, as long as he could get the money in a hurry. I bought one of his two guitars for sale and another forum member bought the other. I paid him immediately, although it was more money than I just have lying around to randomly spend on guitars at the moment.
That was sixteen days ago. In the meantime, he's refused to communicate with either of the buyers of the guitars, although he's been busy communicating with other people in the community, trying to get more money out of them. Knowing as I did that he was sick, I didn't bother to start leaning on him until ten days had passed with no communication or product. Since then, he's been refusing to communicate with me or the other buyer. He has managed to find time to try to get some money refunded on a purchase that he made, however.
This individual is six hours away from me in Wisconsin. I suppose I could just go get my money. However, I am trying very hard to not be the kind of person who gets involved in situations like that. We'll see what happens.