I agreed to trade him my Ofna Ravager for his Rustler with the VXL system (old model rustler he had added the vxl system to) after he replied to my ad in the marketplace section. He said it worked fine and had nothing wrong with it. The buggy I sent him was in perfect working condition. First of all, it was packaged terribly. The box had a strip of cardboard taped to it and the mailman warned me to be careful carrying it in because it was very flimsy. I opened it up to see a very damaged Skyline 1/10 touring body resting on a battle torn rustler chassis. The spare parts he included were loose in the box, one of the radios he sent had no antenna, the rear wheels wobble badly due to missing hub pins (I hope that's all that's wrong), the batteries look homemade and only one of them has the proper VXL connector on it and the battery hold down strap is missing completely. I may have forgot some of the problems but these are the main ones. I contacted him via email and said pretty much what I've said here, and asked that we trade back and he pretty much says yeah well screw you because my car was worth more anyway. No denying the problems, no apology. I suppose I am just going to eat the costs of the replacement parts to fix it, which sucks, but I wanted to post on here so noone else will have the problems I had. Here's the email conversation (note the poor grammar and for the record my buggy was $349 on towerhobbies and the real rustler VXL is only $269 so I don't know where he's getting his price argument):



Original Message
From: [email protected]
To: Trey
Sent: Jul 29, 2008 11:02 AM
Subject: Re: Question Re: Item 414601 in Classifieds Marketplace

o hell no you know i had like 4 bids for the brushless system and escs on ebay and they where gonna sell for 200 but i decided not to sell them and thats just how much your buggy is not including how my the trcuk itself is and plus i had to buy a 30 dollar charger for that buggy so my truck is about a 100 dollars worth more than the buggy so dont give me that **** and all it needs is a battery and they cost about 20 bucks so and plus all the money that trcuk is worth more than the buggy you can go buy all the parts it needs and still come out ahead so screw that


My Email to him:
Well I got the rustler today. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting. I could deal with the thing being a little beat up mine is too, but it doesn't work. I plugged the 6 cell with the vxl connector into the esc and turned on the transmitter and it just flashed red and green on the esc. The body isn't even a truck body, and doesn't fit at all. One of the hub pins and the battery tie down strap are gone. Like I said, I expected it to be worn but fully functional. I want to either trade back or you can pay $200 for the Ofna.

Trey

If the item you traded is significantly NOT as described and you have records of the agreement, you could always offer him to either give yours back or press charges of mail fraud. The possibility of criminal prosecution might get his attention. I'd be leery of dealing with anyone who uses "superman" as part of their identity anyway.

i will never, ever use the marketplace on rcu to buy, sell or trade anything

not a week goes by that there's not a complaint about a deal gone bad
and there's very little, if any real recourse

I'm surprised that this doesn't happen more often

trading with someone you don't know, site unseen, and far away requires A LOT of trust on both sides to work to everyone's satisfaction

it's a huge risk

I've actually had pretty good luck. I try to be honest as possible including any major flaws when I sell something, and I haven't had any unhappy buyers yet. I also make it clear that I will not ship anything until I have received payment. I had one guy who never paid me for an engine he was supposed to buy, kept saying the check was in the mail, and I said I'd ship as soon as I got the check......he stopped returning my emails asking about the payment, and I re-listed the engine. I'd only worry about trading on here, personally.

Relocated from >> RC Cars, Buggies, Trucks, Tanks and more >> RC Car General Discussions

Inappropriate for the General Discussions forum.

Yeah I guess I should have anticipated something like this happening trading for something sight unseen. I don't know if it's worth prosecution over $200, I could easily sue him in small claims court but it's not worth my time really. I guess I'll just let karma take care of him.

The very few that go bad are probably a very small percentage of the thousands of good deals that go through.

Is it just me or does it seem that most of the deals gone bad like this one involve the car/truck crowd?