So, i am selling a 2010 Hasbro AT-AT imperial walker misb on Facebook etc and this guy from one of the groups messages me with an offer of scheduled payments. He proposed $30 a week and would even throw in $40 extra, asking me to hold onto it for him until he pays it off in full. I entertained the idea and talked to him some more and added him on FB. His account was created in January of 2018 and doesn't have a lot of posts nor any real life pictures, just banners and profile pic changes between DC heroes. Has no friends that i can see either. I checked his post history on that FB group and it seems ok, he has posted like 8 times over the course of 9 months on there, but not much feedback in regards to if any transactions ever took place.

If i accept his proposal and he pays me through paypal and i don't ship until the full agreed amount is paid to me is there any way i can be screwed over with this? Would having him pay G&S every single payment be the appropriate response? But doesn't that protect him more than me? I have the entire conversation history so i don't really see how i can get screwed over unless he somehow can submit fraud and get it all back? I'm clearly out of my element with this but seems like there is more risk for him than me since he is basically sending money weekly for an item he does not yet own, does that give any merit to his offer?

 

Either A. Have him send the payments as friends/family or B. Tell him to just set aside the money rather then sending payments and send it in one go

 

Well, it depends on how badly you want to sell the AT-AT to this person. Most would buy it from you straight up - installments means that you're locked in until he buys you out.

I wouldn't say it's a scam. I think he clearly wants the item, and this is the only way he can "secure" one with the funds that he has on hand (since you hold onto the item until he pays it off).

 

Thanks for the advice. I think i am going to suggest to him to hold onto the money if he is able to set it all aside hopefully and make a one time payment. He really wants the ATAT and I'm always the type of person who will work with someone before i say no.

 

Yes. Almost always. I’m not going to definitively tell you what’s what, but there have been a thousand cases where I didn’t trust my gut, and life promptly hit me with the “vats is a dumb bitch” pain-stick, and maybe a handful of instances where I DID trust my gut and it actually turned out to be wrong.

If your intuition tells you this situation is suspect, approach it with caution.

 

Ship it in pieces, every time he makes a payment send him a new one. Send him a leg for the first one, so on and so on.

Or send him the whole thing and if he doesn't pay break his kneecaps, like a bookie.

 

I would tell them that "with all due respect, if it's still available when you have the FULL AMOUNT, I'll sell it to you, but I'm NOT going to hold it." You're selling it because you want to move it. There are too many variables that can happen between now and whenever they have the full amount that could potentially murk up the deal. You want to sell and move the item now, not three months from now or whenever their deferred payment schedule is up.

I don't think it's a scam, but you don't know this person well enough to take them at their word.

 

"Maybe this scam will make us alot of 25 cents Double D! Think of all the jawbreakers!"

"Heh heh! Buttered toast!"

But really what The Dark Seeker said.

 

You don't really have recourse to recoup the money if they stop paying you in this instance. If you're feeling generous (or if they offer a premium to you), offer to hold the item and not sell it to anyone else for, say, a few months or whatever and then they can pay you the agreed price and you ship it then. Don't let the item out of your hands if they can't pay for it now, because chances are they won't be able to pay for it later, either, and they'll just start making excuses.

 

This, more or less, depending on how quick you're trying to move it. It's not personally something I'd do simply based on any potential variables that could come up... granted you're not shipping the item to him until he's fully paid, but at the same time if something came up in his life and he couldn't pay you for a couple of months than you'd be stuck holding it for longer and unable to sell to someone else without refunding him at some point.

Now, that said, while a payment plan may seem odd to us toy collectors it's actually something that's done in the Asian Balljoint Doll community regularly that my wife is a part of. Though, that's more to do with the fact that those dolls can range in price from $500 on the low end to $2000 plus on the high end. When you start talking huge sums like that most don't have it just to drop down and a lot of people looking to let a doll go to a good home (they refer to it as re-homing and not re-selling) will take set up payment plans. That said; the buyers are usually well known members within the community with verifiable feedback from various sites of completing similar deals. Also, payment is ALWAYS done through PayPal as goods and services with a notation on each payment that it's payment x of how ever many were agreed upon with the item to be shipped at x agreed upon date once the final payment is made. That way the buyer is covered in this case in case the seller tries to screw them as when doing payment installments the risk is more with the buyer than with the seller. My wife has actually sold three dolls this way and bought five this way and only once as a buyer did she have problems where the seller never shipped, but because the payments were all made with individual documentation proving they were all for the same item never received she was able to get her money back through PayPal. She never once had an issue as a seller.

The big caveat for me in this particular scenario is that you said the buyer doesn't seem to have any verifiable feedback. That's the part that feels really off putting.

The interesting thing here is that the guy isn't asking for the item until after it's been paid in full though. Seems to me a lot of the risk is on the buyer not the seller in that case. Still not something I'd go for though.

 

I would be wary. My opinion is that if your not comfortable doing the payment plan this person is suggesting, pass on the deal.

 

I like this idea.

 

They way I can see him scamming you with multiple payments is you won't have shipping tracking #s on them, just the final one. Can you add tracking to multiple payments? He could tell Paypal you never sent the goods on the non-final payments and they'd refund the $$$. So he'd have an At-At and all it would cost is the final payment amount.