u/TikkyTak47

Long read ahead - I wanted to capture all the flavour.

I had a new Original Guitar Chair listed at $425, down from my initial price of $450 (bought in 2013 but never taken out of the box). I initially offered to ship within Canada but changed that later to cash/pickup only, like all my other listings. For those who don't know, these chairs are pretty niche - they're kind of strange looking (more on that later), were handmade in Arkansas, only available online, and most recently retailed for about $450USD + shipping/taxes/customs etc before the company went out of business a year or 2 ago. (I paid $350 + $70 = $420USD back in 2013.) I'd seen these posted (used) for $350-$550Cdn on sites like Reverb and $300-$400+ USD on various guitar forums (+ shipping etc). However, I saw those other ads awhile ago and am not sure if the company was out of business then. I guess you could argue that I had priced it kinda low, but it was on Kijijii for 6+ mos. and all I got was a message that read "Blahaha $50 chair for $450. I rather, sit on the ground, in dirt, than waste a dime, on that stupid idiotic looking thing." (I still love that.) Also, I figured I'd need to discount it a bit, considering I was limiting myself to my local market.

The second ever message I got on the listing was just recently, from someone in Toronto (3500km from my city) offering $900 if I was willing to ship, but he needed it asap for an upcoming concert. The guy's account was 1 year old, was one of those that had no data for reply time/ rate, and had 2 (5star) ratings, both apparently for buying small items. Of course, he offered to pay up front via E-transfer. Obvious scam right? I have e-transfer on auto-deposit but, as we all (should) know, even that's no safeguard if the $$ is from a compromised account.

Needless to say, my spidey senses were tingling. The tingling got even more intense when, after I said I don't ship, the guy said he was willing to make the 2 or 3 day drive to my city for pickup but, in this one case, was willing to send an e-transfer with no password since driving would be very expensive. I mentioned the password was irrelevant since I have auto-deposit and said that the only way I'd do this was if he couriered me a Canada Post money order and, after I deposited it into my account or cashed it at the PO, I'd send him the chair. (I was thinking 100% compromised account at this point.) I didn't address the driving thing except to say that I've done that drive myself and I thought he was underestimating the time involved (especially since something almost always goes sideways on a trip like that) although I was pretty much dismissing that as a real possibility. I thought that would be the last I heard from him.

To my surprise, he agreed to my terms and I received a $900 CP MO a few days later. Although I wasn't able to cash the MO at my local PO (their float wasn't high enough) they exchanged it for a MO from CP to to me, which is as good as cash. I shipped the chair, and the buyer confirmed receipt a couple days later and said he was really happy with it. I deposited the MO into my account soon after.

All in all my most memorable, and best, Kijiji experience since I joined the platform. Got way more $$ than anticipated, and actually restored a bit of my faith in humanity. I actually apologized once I realized everything was legit 'cuz I think some of my messages were falling just short of outright calling him a scammer, yet he remained calm and polite throughout our exchanges.

My last message requested that, if possible, he send me a video of his concert 'cuz I'm really keen to see him sitting on "my" chair and belting out some tunes.

Had too much time on my hands yesterday so just entered "scammer" in the search field. Made for some entertaining viewing, as some people aren't shy about making listings the sole purpose of which is to call out people who've ripped them off. Although I know you can't believe everything you read, I actually ended up blocking a couple of the villain buyers since the aggrieved sellers included some pretty convincing receipts.

Edited for clarification.

Was selling a brand new $60 item (still in original sealed packaging) for $30. Got a lowball offer of $10, to which I said "sorry, no" (I'm polite, even to lowballers). Then "buyer" raised the offer to $15 and said it was a $40 item. That turned out to actually be (kind of) true as, when I asked where he saw it for $40, he sent me a link showing that it was on sale for $40. I responded that I'd go down to $25 and that's the lowest I'd go. He then said "surely you'll sell for $20", I said no and that's the last I heard from him. (Sale was over the very next day and the item was back up to $60.)

Fast forward 2 weeks and I see a 1-star review from this clown saying my prices are "unusually high." (I actually sold the item for $30 last week and got a 5-star review from the buyer.)

Lol, all I could think of was a post I made in the Kijiji subreddit 4 days ago where someone was mentioning how petty FBM ratings could be and I mentioned that it hadn't happened to me but I was saying that with a mandatory "yet."

Edit: clarified the progression of his offers from $10 to $20. My mistake was responding to decline his $20 offer made after I said my lowest was $25. That's the message that triggered the rating option.

I'm in Calgary and Kijiji seems to be going nuts, I'm getting error messages galore.