I'm with you Joe - some sellers are just plain stupid.
Here in Oz we have gumtree.com.au which tries to differentiate itself from fleabay by giving you the option (which sometimes works) to restrict the area you search.
To explain, I utterly refuse to pay the "robbery with violence" prices for multi-function office machines, nor am I comfortable with leasing the same machine at a rate that means I've paid for it anyway in 3 ~ 4 years. Most leases include consumables, but that is a bit of a joke as I buy around 17,000 pages worth of toner for $35 and stuff like drums, blades, OPC, developer etc are less than a $200 spend at around 250,000 pages.
The current "love of my life" is a Konica Bizhub 282 which I bought at auction a couple of years back for $100, toner is $25 for 17,000 copies, I recently put a new drum kit, transfer roller kit, developer and paper path pickup and roller kit in it for around $220 *and a couple of hours of my time).
Anyway, I've recently had a flight of fancy that colour would be nice (the Konica being firmly B&W), so I've been hunting. Ideally I'd like another Konica, mainly because all the service software, service codes and secret technician passwords are available F.O.C from Konica Minolta, but the other brand I'm interested in is Ricoh/Afico.
Anyway, after a few weeks of waiting someone advertised a Ricoh - just what I wanted, colour, scan to folder/email, and best of all has additional paper bins for letterhead, envelopes and large (A3) paper.
The ad read like a familiar story - machine now 5 years old, leased for 3 years, then bought at end of lease and now wants something bigger and shinier....
Spotted the ad on Friday and would have liked to go have a look that day, but no - the seller didn't bother to include their phone number or email (gumtree, unlike fleabay, allows both) so the only means of contact is via gumtree's "interface".
Seller finally responded Friday evening, yes he still has it.
I responded and asked for a total page count, a copy of the current "status" report (which will tell me how much toner it has, and what the remaining life on drum and OPC is) - what I really want though is the print test report which will tell me if there are any immediate problems with drum, transfer rollers or laser scanners. I also asked for the address where I could come and look at it and a phone number so I could get to him a bit quicker than through gumtree, I also gave him (again) my email address and my mobile number.
Seller responded and said that they would do the status and print test printouts on Saturday and send them to me.
Saturday came and went with nothing....sent message via gumtree and seller responded that they had gone to their office but couldn't work out how to get the page count and do the status/test prints because their office girl normally does that stuff.
Ok, I said, I'll come look at it on Monday, when is a good time, and where is you office etc. etc.
Sunday has come and gone and no response, I'm betting that I'll get a response when he gets to work on Monday which means that I'll have lots of fun trying to park car and trailer (in case I do buy it) in the middle of a business day.
I'm grumpy because I wanted to look at it on Saturday and would have paid cash on the spot but I couldn't talk to the seller because they were too stupid to make it easy for a buyer to contact them (and it isn't like there is a buoyant market in 2nd hand office machines, most people are too scared to buy without the "protection" of a service agreement and "free" consumables - this thing has been on gumtree on and off for six months). So now I have to interrupt my own work day, get a park somewhere near where it is and do the basic test prints myself.
The seller doesn't know it but I kind of want this machine. On Saturday I'd have paid his price without quibbling, today I'll pay no more than $500 less than the ask and I'm going to start at $750 under the ask because his stupidity has annoyed me!
