Des Moines, IA
Quoted from mikelaka:So, there was recently a Sega Twister Pinball machine on ebay. I won the auction for $2,026.
I asked for location and I let Tony Pinto from Classiccoin-Op know that I'll bring a tech and go through the machine to be sure that everything works. Tony informed me that he had to move the machine to cold storage and that there isn't any power to test the machine. He guaranteed me that the game works 100%. I told him I would bring a heated box truck, let the machine sit for an hour inside the heated box truck, go have breakfast, and come back to test the game after the game adequately heated up. Tony insisted that he wouldn't allow the game to be tested at all and claimed that the machine should have been tested prior to bidding.
I see both sides here. I've sold Pin's on ebay. But telling someone that a machine works 100% and then telling them that they are not allowed to plug it in or test it, just doesn't make sense. He told me that if I sent payment through PayPal that he would immediately return the payment because he wouldn't guarantee the game. He also informed me that he had no where else to take the machine where it would be heated so the machine could be tested. I told him that I could wait a week or two and pick up the machine when it would be warmer. I even offered to pay for the machine and to wait until it was warmer to test. He openly refused any and all and told me that he would just cancel the auction and relist it.
Tony said the best I could do would be to visually inspect the game. Tony claims that my intent to test the game should have been done prior to bidding and that he has never had this ever come up before and that I am being unreasonable. He then cancelled the ebay auction.
My reason for posting this is so that no one else runs into the same situation. I can only assume that Tony Pinto from Classiccoin-op was hoping someone would purchase the machine and have it shipped. And when it arrived not working, Tony could state that the machine worked prior to being shipped.
Tony Pinto is also known as Droopydogy.
You should have asked to test the game BEFORE you bid. You had that opportunity and you actually added that contingency AFTER the seller took it off the market thinking he was just going to ship what he believed to be a 100 percent working game.
If you are going to add your inspection contingency, then you have to allow the seller to sell the game to a local person on your way to pick it up. Essentially, you are saying the game is not SOLD because you are inspecting it and YOU added that to the deal.
This is why I would never sell on EBAY. Every pin I sold I insisted on inspection first before settling on price.
