Hi everyone, I could use some advice or at minimum use this as a warning for others. I understand this is a long post but I think it's important to touch on these points. Hope you'll stick thru it to share your thoughts!
Back in September of 2018, I made a deal with a user here for their Transformers Decepticon LE. Unfortunately this pinsider lives on the Western side of Canada and I'm in NY, so we had to make arrangements for remote payment, shipping etc. I spent a lot of time discussing and coming up with a plan with this person, via phone, email, pinside PM's, the whole deal. I wanted to make sure he was legit and went thru his feedback. He sold many items before with good feedback (Mostly, turns out someone recently is dealing with this same BS as me). He sent plenty of pictures and even a video of the machine that all appeared to be legit. From what I could research these weren't photos of someone else's machine lifted off the internet.
After several conversations, I eventually was convinced he's a genuinely good dude and this was the real deal, so settled thru verbal agreement (I know, stupid me) to send 1/2 payment (+$2,000!) via bank transfer (I know, stupid me again). I considered it a trust exercise as he was iffy about sending a machine without full payment but I convinced him I was already taking the bigger risk as is, and shouldn't take the full risk. He wouldn't take paypal, but that wasn't unusual as I notice many people here refuse to use that service as well as it tends to favor the buyer.
After 1/2 payment, things started going south. The responses started coming much further apart with each one just being excuses of delays. It finally got to a point where he stated the machine has shipped but was 'stuck at the border' where it stayed for many, many months. He was in charge of shipping and states his broker messed up the paperwork and caused problems. That's not that far fetched, so I remained hopeful. However time kept passing and his responses were becoming even more few and far between, consisting of “Howdy hope all is well, don’t worry I’ll call you soon and we'll figure it all out! Hang in there!". Eventually he claimed the machine was back in his possession and stated we'll come up with a new plan. But here we are, two years later, and there's still no plan and nothing but "I'll get back to you" responses that never pan out. Meanwhile I’m out 2 grand.
Maybe I'm nuts here, but I'm still remaining hopeful that he's a good dude who's just not in any particular hurry and is truthful when saying he has limited internet access (though he refuses to call or answer the phone…). I mean, he did send to me separately the pin's game specific purple legs, coin box, extra LE parts, new side decals etc. that are all in my possession. If this was an intentional scam, a lot of effort was put into it…
I wrote the admins here for some advice and they had suggested I make a post in this forum. Perhaps see if anyone here in the community knows this person and would be willing to sort of step in and ask them what is going on...
If you stuck with me this long thru the post and have any advice, thank you. Would appreciate your thoughts. If you happen to know AUTODLR thru this community and have thoughts on how to get in touch with him and get this moving, that would be even better. Feel free to PM me. But I worry I have no recourse except for giving everyone here a warning before entering an agreement with Derek.