A year ago, I blog about an unreasonable man in yahoo auctions who demanded 'his' CD' that he was suppose to had won but got outbidded at the last minute by another bidder. He tried means and ways, including offering a 'higher price than $2.40' and threatened to pull out from other deals if he don't get his way. When I kindly point out that it is unreasonable to pull out from the deal and I will not hesitate in giving negative feedback, he claimed that I am using scare tactics. At the end, the auction ended amicably when he decided to pay for the item that he won and accept reluctantly that he lost the other.
A year later, I met with another unreasonable bidder in yahoo auctions. Which makes me wonder, are they (unreasonable bidders) a seasonal phenomenon? Anyway, let this be a lesson for me, you and everybody who reads it.
The whole account of the story is as follows. Richard surf the yahoo auctions and saw my advertisement about selling a used camera at $160. Everything starts from that point onwards.
The advertisement for the camera is as below.
Terms and conditions clearly stated. Take note of the point at the 2nd last line that states I had updated lately, the price is reduced now and no bargaining. And this is what happened chronologically.
This is what happen when he saw the advertisement.
27 May 2006, 2pm: Richard offered $140 and to get it from me at Clementi personally. He left his contacts on the question and answer option at Yahoo Auctions. (Obviously Richard did not read instructions, because he must had missed the no bargaining sign, anyway, I did not read the messages until I got the second one below)
27 May 2006, 4:20pm: Richard bidded for my camera at $160, the buy now price and won the auctions. See here for the page if you are those who need hard facts. He left another message at the question and answer option requesting for arrangement of meetup.
I have the screenshot of the questions he posted, which is only visible to me, the seller, because I have yet to answer his queries. Only questions that are answered by sellers would be published. I did not post the screenshot directly here because it contained Richard's private information.
27 May 2006, about 6pm: I checked my email just before dinner and found that someone won my P3, finally somebody wants to buy it after generating it's fair share of interest. Therefore I send a confirmation sms to arrange for meet-up to deal with Richard using the number he provided. This is roughly what follows in the intermitted 30-45min sms conversation.
- Me: I sms to confirm he won the P3 at $160 and suggest a time tomorrow for trade
- Richard: He sms to bargain for $140 (bargain x 2)
- Me: I politely remind him of my terms (no bargaining) and offer to trade for $140 but without the 256mb memory stick (which is still useful for me with my H1).
- Richard: He sms to confirm that he wants the P3 and agreed with $160 and he wants it tonight (If he backed out here, I would graciously let him off with a neutral rating)
- Me: I thanked him and offer meetup at any time before 10pm at my flat's void deck or 8pm at Clementi MRT
- Richard: He sms to bargain for $150 if he collect at my flat's void deck (bargain x 3)
- Me: I remind him politely not to bargain again and told him firmly that I won't give discount.
- Richard: (After some considerations) I want to cancel my bid because it's too expensive. (What the heck?!)
- Me: Sure, but I would have to give you a negative feedback because that is not a good reason. (You agreed to the price by bidding it on Yahoo Auction and agreed to it again through sms and now you are backing out?! He had taken me for a ride and is irresponsible with his bidding, therefore I politely inform him that I will give a negative feedback because I find his reason totally unacceptable at this stage.)
- Richard: It will be reciprocated (means giving me a negative rating too), thanks for your understanding. (Now that I don't understand. Is this a petty tic for a tac?). Screenshot of original sms here.
- Me: For what reasons may I know? (I challenge him to give a reason, because if I die, I want to know what killed me)
- Richard: Yahoo Auctions let bidders to back out (This is something unheard of, for all the years selling and buying in yahoo, all I knew was that a bid is a contract to buy, and this is what yahoo auctions say about bidders who don't honour their bid. In short, rate them negatively.)
- Me: If there is a good reason why not (rate me negatively) I have stated clearly (repeating my stand here)... I don't accept that (you reason to back out) as a good reason. I don't think you have good reason to rate me negatively. But that is your right to choose to do so. (Now this guy is seriously pissing me off, he is so unreasonable. He backed out from a bid, don't bother to say sorry and want to threaten me with a negative rating if I give him one?). You can read original sms here and here.
- Richard: It's your right and mine too. Good Luck but as a seller you would be more disadvantage for your potential buyer. Good luck to you. (Is that a threat? Can I sue him for criminal intimidation? Just kidding. I have a clean record as a seller and had been rated good by 81 other buyers compared to 27 sellers for Richard. On paper, I am 300% more credible than Richard. I don't need him to remind me of the disadvantage but I'm more concern in seeing justice done.) See sms here.
- Me: Good luck to you too, your actions would reflect well on your character. Thanks for your concern for my selling online. (I have no wish to pursue this matter any further with him and pointed to him that his actions would be good reflection of his character.)
- Richard: He asked me to stop and go to do what I want to do. (Which I have every intentions of doing)
Bid at buy price of 160 but keep bargaining for discount despite written clearly on the item info that no bargaining. Agreed at $160 finally but back out again last min, reason too ex. Threaten to give -ve rating in return for no good reason when informed.27 May 2006, 8pm: I'm expecting a negative feedback from him along the line "Seller is not accomodating." (For refusing to give him discount, which is just about the only reason that he could use to rate me negatively.) But what I get seems more like revenge than a rating.
Very foul temper and bad behaviour. Better think twice abut buying anything from him. No patience and never reply my earlier message to him27 May 2006, 10pm: After watching some TV, I checked my mail again to find his dishonest (to put it lightly) rating. Taking into account what MM Lee said before loosely, if I slander you, and you don't sue me, it means that there is some truth in what I said. Richard slandered me, therefore I took some measures to clear my name. By disclosing some of the sms exchanges to prove that there is no foul temper or bad behaviour involved.
As with regards to the not replying his earlier message, if you follow so far, his first message was at 2pm, he bidded at 4:20pm, I checked my mail and responded at 6pm, that is just mere 4 hours after his first question and he wants to claim that I had no patience and never reply his earlier message? How preposterous!
However, in the midst of preparing my defence, Richard strucked again. And the rest is more like Richard doing a Dr Chee Soon Juan style of mudslinging when he "questioned" our then PM Goh about the "money". He changed his strategy to attack my defence and claimed that I blew things up. Well, if he felt I blew things up, I hereby apologise to him again, but I was forced (by Richard) to do so because he lied. Here's what Richard tried to do online. Remember I am the seller and he is the buyer.
It's one whole page long on my 1280x960 resolution screen. For larger version, click here, for the latest version, try here and here.
After Richard hurled all sorts of insults and unfounded claims at me, he even disclosed my private number to everyone and tell others "who dared to bid for my cameras to sms me first". I got tired of his meaningless ranting and thought this was a good opportunity to end it. I thank him for his response and reminder to other bidders and pointed out politely that Yahoo also recommend bidders to find out what the terms and conditions of the item before they bid. This would be a good point for both of us to back down and let the issue go.
Unfortunately, the matter did not end, just like the evil boss that refuses to die in a game. He came back with even more feeble attempts to discredit me, calling me dishonest and tried to provide some evidence to back his word up (as opposed to making baseless claims). I was typing this article when I received the email notification from him and had to redo some of my screenshots and stuff too.
His "evidence" was just a lack of knowledge on how yahoo auctions work. He claimed that I "deleted" his question to hide my bad behaviour (I'm not so despicable lar) blah blah.. But he didn't know that his questions won't appear in public unless I answer his questions posted. So I had to politely tell him how yahoo auctions work and plead to him to stop making all these false claims as all he could achieved in doing so was to undermine his credibility.
Poetic justice? Perhaps. But I wouldn't had written this to share with you if he did not prove to me that he had such lousy character again and again. In gaming terms, I would say Richard was a noob in auction and got pwned by me big time even though both of us got pked eventually. But the key learning point is this: -
Dr Chee Soon Juan may be a well educated man but his character is very much lacking. Even the most educated man could have bad character. The latest development is that the Chee siblings wanted to void the recent elections, ask for donations to provide them with legal funds to fight their lawsuit and try to repeal the ban on political podcast. Their reputation is next to nought, nil and nilch.
Our actions are a direct reflection of our character. If you do bad things, it means you have bad character, but if you do good things, it means either you have a good character or you are a hypocrite. Therefore it takes a lifetime to build a good character but just a while to destroy all the good work. Richard was a fine person to deal with at the beginning, he was responsive and eager with the deal, until he showed his darker sides. This simple incident tells us that it's not easy for PAP to uphold their "clean" image all the time, especially with all the unfiltered, unedited information sources in the internet.
I had learnt a mighty lot today, I hope you did so too.
Update 28/5/06, 9am:
Forgot to mention, for completeness sake, that in the sms conversation account above, some time between No. 5 and No. 8, Richard asked if the spare battery was new (I thought I mention that this set was used in my auction?) to which I replied "Of course I would have used it before".
As of now, I am still under "assault" by Richard over the same fictitious arguments he had and pure hard concrete evidence against him does not seem to affect him the least bit because he does not seem to understand that he made many huge mistakes.
Disclaimer
Some of the time stated here (those for Richard posting questions) are converted from PDT time to SGT time using +15hrs as a factor. For some reason, my auction timings are in PDT. I hope my factor of +15hrs is right (I googled, PDT is -7, SGT is +8) but it may be off by 1 hr.
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