The weirdest interaction on ebay I ever had was when I sold my PS vita.
The guy kept messaging me for about 2 days asking questions about video games and my thoughts on recent releases, etc.
I don’t know if he was just lonely or trolling, but his last question was “Do you think will still talk after this”. I said “yea, I have to message you the tracking number on Monday”. He then responded back with “no, not like that. Like conversations were having now”. I ended the conversation with “I don’t have time due to school and I don’t sell on ebay often”.
This was the most obscure interaction I ever had with someone on ebay.
I wish my local customers would ask me for MORE advice. Several of them have $25K> on credit cards for opened modern product thinking they are going to make it all back. I’m a CPA, and would advise any of my clients about the potential risks of being that leveraged on a collectable.
There’s a lot of people out there with psychiatric afflictions, loneliness, etc. I’d be respectful and polite, but I’d also not allow my time to be wasted.
Chances are it’s either a kid (in which case, a lot of kids are like that and don’t understand the concept of time management, which is expected) or someone with some sort of mental/emotional issue.
Your reply was good. You let him down easy and also did it in a way where you didn’t ruffle his feathers in the event that he is a clingy, obsessive type that would take it far too personally. I know it might sound funny, but those types of people actually exist, and while it’s definitely sad, there are times when it can get scary.
Honestly It was a very bizarre/awkward conversation. Even one joke he told was kinda out there, he said "Now that you have my address, don’t go out shipping me anthrax. I didn’t think nothing of the joke until I looked up what anthrax was.
It had to be some sort of emotion/mental issue like you said. Most kids don’t have over $350 for a handheld system and games and he payed straight through paypal, not through ebay.
The reply was the best I could think of at the time, I actually had finals (this took place last December.) so I couldn’t keep messaging him on two ebay accounts due to the message limit being reached. I also didn’t want to upset him and then lose out on the sale.
@wallstreetgamer , When he received the item he actually ended up bricking the system (he wanted jailbroken/hacked unit and when he was messing around with it, it wouldn’t turn on fully anymore). I was thankful he didn’t ask for a refund, he said he would just take off the accessories and put it on his other system. That was the last I heard from him.
I’ve certainly run into some, uh, “different” buyers on eBay, but they just end up being eccentric rather than genuinely strange and potentially dangerous like your experience.
For example, one guy last year made a purchase from me and messaged me saying how he bought these cards for his wife for their anniversary. He then said that if the cards ended up being legitimate, he would come back and buy a Base Set Charizard that I had listed as a “big present” for his wife for mother’s day. And he wrote me this long story about how he wanted to make the whole thing as romantic as possible.
I was immediately worried that he would end up scamming me because of the whole “if the cards are legitimate” line, but he ended up leaving me positive feedback and I never heard from him again, so it all went well.
But yeah. I’ve definitely never experienced anything like you did.
