I'm new to this forum, so please excuse and gently chastise me if this posting is inappropriate.

I'll introduce myself and my bikes in a bit, but before I do I want to relate an experience I had within a few days of joining this forum.

I joined on Wednesday. On Thursday I saw an SRM for sale. I emailed the seller, we had an email dialogue and immediately before I went to bed on Friday night I sent an email agreeing to buy at the negotiated price using the agreed payment method. I happily then went to bed wondering how to justify the purchase to my girlfriend but looking forward to finally being able to train with power.

I woke up the next morning to find he'd responded straight away confirming his Paypal email address, then sent another message a few hours later (3am my time) asking why I hadn't yet transferred the money, then another message an hour later saying that since I hadn't responded he'd sold it to someone else.

Is this normal behaviour here? I've been exposed to some pretty shonky stuff on eBay, but I presumed that it would be different here, that there would be a sense of community. Was I naive? Is there no honour amoung Weenies?

IME, there is usually a good sense of community. I had good experience with the market place on the forum. Maybe the seller was really in a hurry to sell his SRM and didnt want to loose time/money. Maybe he had a better offer. Regardless, just dont mind it. I shoped for a used SRM for some weeks lat summer and there are plenty on ebay, here on the sale section and on the clssifieds from slow twitch forum. Maybe it was a sign from god because your girlfriend would have taken it really bad

Be patient, keep shoping.

_________________
2013 rocky mountain vertex 29er
­Twitter
www.cyclingtrainingnuts.blogspot.ca

He probably thought that you were backing out of the deal. I've had this happen to me on ebay were someone will contact me after an auction ends,and after several emails and finally agreeing on a price, I never here back from them.

Has that happened to me before? Yes. Is it frustrating? Yes. There are two kinds of sellers on here and other cycling based forums: 1) Go on a first come first serve basis. Give me the money first and it is yours. 2) Go on the first person to contact me basis and it is yours. Then goes down the line until someone buys it.

Both are valid options I think. The seller should probably have realized you were asleep/couldn't respond to their email in 5-10 min every time. Maybe you should have mentioned you were going to bed on your last email and for him to send the rest of the payment info and you would transfer the funds in the morning. Just consider it one bad experience. You will find other SRMs for sale. You will find other things to buy on here. Most of the time everything will work out very smoothly. However there are times where something like this will happen, or the condition of the item doesn't match the description/pictures, or it takes the seller forever to ship it. But overall it is a great community here. Don't let this bad experience turn you off.

_________________
"Let's plunge ourselves into the roar of time, the whirl of accident; may pain and pleasure, success and failure, shift as they will -- it's only action that can make a man."

life to short ...
move on

_________________
i like people... i just can't stand assholes

Thanks for the welcome. Reading the forums this generally seems like a good bunch of intelligent and insightful people. I won't let one interaction put me off.

Yes, life is definately too short!

Now, back to more important things: it's time to go for a ride!

hey your getting the hang of this place

_________________
i like people... i just can't stand assholes

just seen this

_________________

Not much you can do. I've been on both ends of this type of a transaction. I've had people tell me they'll take it and never send money, never even respond to my emails. I've had buyers paypal me within 5 minutes. I've had items I couldn't sell and when someone says they'll take it, you're counting the minutes that they make the paypal transaction so I can understand someone doing what they did to you. Then again, you never know if they're legit or not so you wait and possibly lose the sale. I guess what's best is to set a time frame with the seller once you've agreed to a purchase, just so there's no misunderstanding and go from there. I usually give deference to the first to respond but there's a limit to how long you should wait if there are others interested.

Short story. There was a frame I really, really wanted and it was my size (I'm take a 50 TT so if I see my size I need to act immediately). I contacted the seller and told him I'll take it. Two minutes later my mother n' law calls and says she's not feeling well and needs to go to the hospital (she's 83 and has a history of high blood pressure). So I drop everything, go get her (lives 15 minutes from us), and off we go to the hospital. No cell service in hospital or surrounding area. By the time I got back to the seller, 3 hours later, the frame was gone.

It happens, hopefully not often.

No big deal. People are different. Although generally I'd say 24 hour turnaround is normal.

If it is a screaming deal, the seller tends to be in a bigger hurry to sell, and you may want to be more proactive.

_________________
Fast falcons: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3mTPEuFcWk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
twitter: Falco_bike
Facebook: falco.bike