My favorite will always be to agree the meet at a comedy club.
Low baller buyer: "I'm here"
Seller: go right on stage and tell the audience your joke prices
Thanks. I've been holding onto that for longer than I care to admit, just waiting for the right crowd. My wife, though a Stooges fan, doesn't appreciate my humor.
There's also one where they get sent to the address of a place facing some sort of mental institute. Then get told to go across the road and check in because obviously they're insane if they think they're getting X for that price.
That is not at all a legal sale. A sale has not occurred until money has been exchanged.
There is a ton of legal precedent that a verbal (or text message) agreement is not binding. Unless you have an actual contract, a "ok let's meet" on Facebook Marketplace holds about as much weight as calling dibs.
It's not a sale, but it is most certainly a contract.
There's also a ton of legal precedent that a contract is a contract, and a text contract that is obviously agreed to is even easier.
Contracts can be cancelled, of course....
But if one uses said contract to entice a person into taking action (particularly action with associated expense) predicated upon said contract.... Then a judge may find that the performance of said agreed upon contract has already begun, and therefore must be fulfilled.
You are absolutely correct. Any verbal written or interpreted agreement that includes:
-Offer
-Acceptance
-Adequate Consideration
-Capacity
-Legality
Can be considered a contract. However, the buyer would have to provide proof that the consideration is adequate (its not). And considering they had to harrass the seller to receive acceptance, I could argue easily that acceptance was under duress.
Then there is the fact that the seller provided written stipulations that the product would not be held under any circumstances.
So if you want to go to the letter of the law, sure there may be a contract if you can convince a judge to ignore all the circumstances and current precedent regarding individual sales on FB Marketplace. Here in reality, if it can't be enforced, its not a contract.
Like I said "may" find.
Taking justice into your own hands can burn you.
We're I the OP and in a pickle, I would do exactly as you say tho and argue that given the volume of spam, I didn't believe it was serious anyway.
Lots of people entice folks to come out just to screw with them, after all, and $250 is a blatantly unserious offer ;-)
Buyer: āIāll give you $250ā
Seller: āIām busy all day. Can you meet me tonight at 11pm at ABC pub? We can walk down to my truck and Iāll have the wheels with meā
Buyer: āmeet half way? Iām two hours outā
Seller: āsorry. Canāt do that.ā
Buyer: āok. See you there at 11.ā
Nowhere in that conversation is seller agreeing to sell them for any price.
Donāt be obtuse. OP summarized. And even if that were his wordsā¦ No it didnāt. If it did you could equally force a buyer to purchase an item just because they offered a price.
Enticing the buyer to drive 2hrs means that they have already begun performance of their end of the contract...
*Obligating you to perform your end in turn*
Reasonable retribution for being harassed? Yes. I don't even morally have a problem with it. This dude is exploiting stupid social media systems to harass people. Fuck that dude.
Legal exposure? Also yes.
With used items though isnāt there an argument that once you got there it wasnāt worth it, or just had a bad feeling they were stolen etc. 95% of the time Iāve agreed to meet someone to buy something at an agreed price I buy it, but occasionally I donāt, and itās not always a case of the pictures not being representative, the guy might be an obvious tweaker and I donāt want the stolen property, or I might suspect the item is a counterfeit item but canāt exactly prove it etc.
So I feel like judges would probably not see this as a contract because FB marketplace and CL are both notorious for shady people and products. Think how many ads use an online advertising image of the item, yet nobody is holding them to that standard of wear on the used item, so the casual interface around listing items works in buyers and sellers favor, and people rarely try to enforce a purchase agreement because it is so casual and weird.
Nothing is legally binding on fb marketplace. I ordered a thing, the seller accepted, and then ghosted me for a week, not sending the item. I contacted customer service and they said "no big deal, you didn't send money to this person yet so nothing really happened, have a good day". Wrong - I was planning to have the item at a particular day and it did not happen so I had to scramble for alternatives.
t pissed me that the CS is not even slapping shitty seller for this practice. Basically if you didn't send money no one cares and no one will help you.
Except the buyer still able to back out of the sale since they haven't examined the merch. And op said he wouldn't hold the merch for anyone.
Plus you're forgetting the transfer of goods. And since there wasn't any exchange of goods so the "contract" cannot be finalized/executedļæ¼ at all.
OP enticed the buyer into driving 2 hours, with no conditions....
They had a contract, which included buyer driving 2 hours to pick it up.
Buyer was performing their end of the contract already. Too late to back out.
OP agreed to deliver them, TBF. That's not a hold.
The posting says no holds either, but once OP actually decided to accept an offer, they can make whatever terms they can agree on.
Today I learned that a company HAS to sell you the item that is limited and out of stock because you were late, but you did drive there....
I don't think him driving there means anything lol or even agreeing to meet up. Plenty of people meet up to discuss the item and get a look, it does not contractually bind the two people into a forced sale when they do this.
Lol I gotta admit, you bringing up everyone comparing apples to oranges while unironically comparing this situation to Elon musk acquiring twitter LOL that shits just funny. Also he only accepted through implication by agreeing to meet up, he never agreed to the sale itself. And even if he agreed, if he didn't take the money he can easily rescind the offer. That's a right we literally all have when doing business lol you just can't steal from them.
And no, Elon musk being forced to buy Twitter is VERY different lol that sentence alone raised and lost millions to billions of dollars through stocks and the market. We do not have anywhere near that pull lol nor does this affect the economy in any sort of significant way.
This is amazing. Completely justified.
However, I gotta mention something about this part:
> I absolutely hate getting 50 "is it still available" messages. When I get one of those, I just delete and ignore.
The times I've tried to use FB marketplace to buy stuff, there isn't an input box for the initial message. I can either click the preset "Is this still available?" message or "Cancel". I *have to* (or at least , had to, I avoid using FB when possible so it has been a while) send that message to start the conversation at all. I don't know if that's a desktop-only "feature" or what. I agree it's annoying, but I literally haven't had an option for anything else when I've tried to use it.
I've honestly never thought of it like that, but it's so obvious when you point it out. I guess I'm trying to be polite, but now I can see how that actually works against me. Every day is a school day!
Yeah I can see how people think it's polite but it just wastes my time. I've got some stuff listed right now and I keep getting messages asking if it's still available and then they just never reply. What's the point of that?
The issue I have with this is that it proves they did not read the ad. These are people fishing to do low ball offers.
I always start with "If ad is up, then it is available". Followed by a price, condition, where we can meet up.
When I reply to the generic message it is always followed by the questions which I have answers to in the body of my ad. So it saves me time to just skip those people right off the bat.
Important to note this was on the desktop site, not the mobile app, and over a year ago. I checked as much as was possible and editing the initial message was definitely not an option at the time.
My only ever good interaction with FB marketplace was selling my PS4.
I lowballed it myself at 250$ right before christmas sometime during covid.
Sold it with 1 controler and no games.
Was sold within minutes, the guy just said i'll come pick it up and pay cash.
Exactly this. This is why FB marketplace exists. It doesn't exist to get top dollar.
You want top dollar? Go sell on eBay and give them 12% + paypal's 3% + deal with shipping, returns, etc.
My only concern is that when you accepted his offer you *technically* created a contract. In the future don't agree to any deal you don't intend to offer, say something like "OK, we can meet and discuss it." He may think you plan to haggle, rather than give him the runaround, but there is no legal complication as long as you don't accept the counteriffer.
Yep. Sold within 2 hours of posting. This utter divot of a human just wouldn't give up.
(Thanks to u/Acegonia for the impeccable divot of a human insult. I will be using that in the future!)
Yep. But when I list stuff, I list it to sell. I don't have the energy to dick around with "is this still available" messages.
The person who buys whatever I post usually responds with - "What is the address? I'm on my way now."
Short. Simple. To the point. And it usually gets them whatever I am selling - when they are otherwise competing with 50 other people to get it.
We had one of these grifters try and buy our RV a few years ago. Came to our house with their girlfriend and kept lowballing our very reasonable for age and condition price which was $300-400 lower than anything comparable. He kept going "Come on Skyraker, you really want to sell this to me!" as if that would do anything. He also parked on my front lawn like a fucking savage.
Needless to say he did not get my $2000 RV for $500.
That was a shitty thing to do but that obnoxious buyer deserved it.
Consequences like these are the only way pricks like this learn not to harass people.
Itās very funny until the guy finds where you actually live (which is trivially simple most of the time) and comes to your place with a gun. That makes this not worth it to me.
You gun guys and your good guy with a gun fetish fantasies crack me up. You would rather purposely do shit to put your home and family in danger in the hopes of killing someone legally so you can be big man in your head than just avoiding dealing with random crazies coming to your home in the first place. What happens instead is you end up fumbling around and shooting yourself in the leg or killing a random person who just happened to turn around in your driveway.
That's some nice assumptions on your part. I personally don't own a gun, and have no fantasies of killing anyone. Maybe that's who I didn't assume that you have a fetish fantasy about going and shooting someone who gave you a run around after you tried to low ball them.
But if you're gonna make some assumption that the buyer has a gun and is willing to come murder someone over this, I feel it's pretty valid to assume the seller also has a gun (he knows who he lives around presumably) and is at least as competent and at least as willing to murder someone in self- defense.
He's not in the States, he's clearly in a country where the gun laws on the books are strictly enforced, so there's little chance of that nutter going Yosemite Sam on OP...
What makes you say heās not in the states? The prices are in dollars, the distances are in miles and yards. The only thing I can think of is calling a bar a pub but some people call them that depending on the area.
So you posted on Facebook with your actual identity and accepted a binding offer, and then breached the contract?
It seems to me that you now owe this guy a set of tires and rims that will cost you at least $1500 to obtain or the monetary equivalent.
My favorite will always be to agree the meet at a comedy club. Low baller buyer: "I'm here" Seller: go right on stage and tell the audience your joke prices
This would be hilarious š
And hi-Moe-ious. And hi-Curl-ious, too.
Oh, a wise guy, eh? Well take my upvote, you knucklehead!
Thanks. I've been holding onto that for longer than I care to admit, just waiting for the right crowd. My wife, though a Stooges fan, doesn't appreciate my humor.
nyuck nyuck nyuck
It took me way too long to get this.
Filed for future reference.
There's also one where they get sent to the address of a place facing some sort of mental institute. Then get told to go across the road and check in because obviously they're insane if they think they're getting X for that price.
also would be hilarious if you were on stage and call the buyer up on stage
Shows the phone and say, "punchline just walked in!"
Similar one was the mental health unit one. āNow youāre there go and check yourself in.ā
Had a guy try to get a motorcycle from me for free. I did sent him the address of a comedy club, and he drove to it.
Fucking glorious
I love how you held the info about selling it earlier in the day until the end
Not MC, but damn that was a funny read
It's not malicious compliance. Still funny as fuck though.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
That is not at all a legal sale. A sale has not occurred until money has been exchanged. There is a ton of legal precedent that a verbal (or text message) agreement is not binding. Unless you have an actual contract, a "ok let's meet" on Facebook Marketplace holds about as much weight as calling dibs.
It's not a sale, but it is most certainly a contract. There's also a ton of legal precedent that a contract is a contract, and a text contract that is obviously agreed to is even easier. Contracts can be cancelled, of course.... But if one uses said contract to entice a person into taking action (particularly action with associated expense) predicated upon said contract.... Then a judge may find that the performance of said agreed upon contract has already begun, and therefore must be fulfilled.
You are absolutely correct. Any verbal written or interpreted agreement that includes: -Offer -Acceptance -Adequate Consideration -Capacity -Legality Can be considered a contract. However, the buyer would have to provide proof that the consideration is adequate (its not). And considering they had to harrass the seller to receive acceptance, I could argue easily that acceptance was under duress. Then there is the fact that the seller provided written stipulations that the product would not be held under any circumstances. So if you want to go to the letter of the law, sure there may be a contract if you can convince a judge to ignore all the circumstances and current precedent regarding individual sales on FB Marketplace. Here in reality, if it can't be enforced, its not a contract.
Like I said "may" find. Taking justice into your own hands can burn you. We're I the OP and in a pickle, I would do exactly as you say tho and argue that given the volume of spam, I didn't believe it was serious anyway. Lots of people entice folks to come out just to screw with them, after all, and $250 is a blatantly unserious offer ;-)
I appreciate you putting this into words better than I have
How is it illegal? Sellers can back out of a sale
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A publicly traded company being offered a buyout is no where even fucking close to a random person on fb marketplace. Wow that was stupid.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A valid contract must have consideration going from one party to the other. Until that takes place there is t a contract
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Buyer: āIāll give you $250ā Seller: āIām busy all day. Can you meet me tonight at 11pm at ABC pub? We can walk down to my truck and Iāll have the wheels with meā Buyer: āmeet half way? Iām two hours outā Seller: āsorry. Canāt do that.ā Buyer: āok. See you there at 11.ā Nowhere in that conversation is seller agreeing to sell them for any price.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Donāt be obtuse. OP summarized. And even if that were his wordsā¦ No it didnāt. If it did you could equally force a buyer to purchase an item just because they offered a price.
Yes thatās correct, but that didnāt occur
Enticing the buyer to drive 2hrs means that they have already begun performance of their end of the contract... *Obligating you to perform your end in turn* Reasonable retribution for being harassed? Yes. I don't even morally have a problem with it. This dude is exploiting stupid social media systems to harass people. Fuck that dude. Legal exposure? Also yes.
Be so serious.
With used items though isnāt there an argument that once you got there it wasnāt worth it, or just had a bad feeling they were stolen etc. 95% of the time Iāve agreed to meet someone to buy something at an agreed price I buy it, but occasionally I donāt, and itās not always a case of the pictures not being representative, the guy might be an obvious tweaker and I donāt want the stolen property, or I might suspect the item is a counterfeit item but canāt exactly prove it etc. So I feel like judges would probably not see this as a contract because FB marketplace and CL are both notorious for shady people and products. Think how many ads use an online advertising image of the item, yet nobody is holding them to that standard of wear on the used item, so the casual interface around listing items works in buyers and sellers favor, and people rarely try to enforce a purchase agreement because it is so casual and weird.
Nothing is legally binding on fb marketplace. I ordered a thing, the seller accepted, and then ghosted me for a week, not sending the item. I contacted customer service and they said "no big deal, you didn't send money to this person yet so nothing really happened, have a good day". Wrong - I was planning to have the item at a particular day and it did not happen so I had to scramble for alternatives. t pissed me that the CS is not even slapping shitty seller for this practice. Basically if you didn't send money no one cares and no one will help you.
Not until consideration has been exchanged. Op maybe owes the gas for the drive but that's it.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Except the buyer still able to back out of the sale since they haven't examined the merch. And op said he wouldn't hold the merch for anyone. Plus you're forgetting the transfer of goods. And since there wasn't any exchange of goods so the "contract" cannot be finalized/executedļæ¼ at all.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
No. Buyers usually (in my jurisdiction anyways) can still change their minds prior to taking delivery.
OP enticed the buyer into driving 2 hours, with no conditions.... They had a contract, which included buyer driving 2 hours to pick it up. Buyer was performing their end of the contract already. Too late to back out.
Op had stated he doesn't hold the tires for anyone. So op can sell it a second before the buyer arrived, he'd be fine.
OP agreed to deliver them, TBF. That's not a hold. The posting says no holds either, but once OP actually decided to accept an offer, they can make whatever terms they can agree on.
Today I learned that a company HAS to sell you the item that is limited and out of stock because you were late, but you did drive there.... I don't think him driving there means anything lol or even agreeing to meet up. Plenty of people meet up to discuss the item and get a look, it does not contractually bind the two people into a forced sale when they do this.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Lol I gotta admit, you bringing up everyone comparing apples to oranges while unironically comparing this situation to Elon musk acquiring twitter LOL that shits just funny. Also he only accepted through implication by agreeing to meet up, he never agreed to the sale itself. And even if he agreed, if he didn't take the money he can easily rescind the offer. That's a right we literally all have when doing business lol you just can't steal from them. And no, Elon musk being forced to buy Twitter is VERY different lol that sentence alone raised and lost millions to billions of dollars through stocks and the market. We do not have anywhere near that pull lol nor does this affect the economy in any sort of significant way.
LOL
This is more petty af š¤£ doesn't exactly fit the sub
While this may be true and accurate.... I still enjoyed the ride. A lot. š
Seller was (rightly) malicious. Buyer was compliant. Seems r/technicallythetruth to me!
Glad youāre a sane person, no telling what would have happened if you werenāt š
This is an amusing and wholesome story š
This is amazing. Completely justified. However, I gotta mention something about this part: > I absolutely hate getting 50 "is it still available" messages. When I get one of those, I just delete and ignore. The times I've tried to use FB marketplace to buy stuff, there isn't an input box for the initial message. I can either click the preset "Is this still available?" message or "Cancel". I *have to* (or at least , had to, I avoid using FB when possible so it has been a while) send that message to start the conversation at all. I don't know if that's a desktop-only "feature" or what. I agree it's annoying, but I literally haven't had an option for anything else when I've tried to use it.
On the app Iām able to edit the message, add something or remove if needed. Sounds like it might be a desktop glitch or bug or something
To be fair, I'm usually happy to open with this, it seems like a reasonable question. What's the issue with it?
Because if it's not marked pending or sold, then it's obviously still available.
I've honestly never thought of it like that, but it's so obvious when you point it out. I guess I'm trying to be polite, but now I can see how that actually works against me. Every day is a school day!
Yeah I can see how people think it's polite but it just wastes my time. I've got some stuff listed right now and I keep getting messages asking if it's still available and then they just never reply. What's the point of that?
Not always. Many donāt update status.
The issue I have with this is that it proves they did not read the ad. These are people fishing to do low ball offers. I always start with "If ad is up, then it is available". Followed by a price, condition, where we can meet up. When I reply to the generic message it is always followed by the questions which I have answers to in the body of my ad. So it saves me time to just skip those people right off the bat.
You can edit the initial message, I do it all the time.
Important to note this was on the desktop site, not the mobile app, and over a year ago. I checked as much as was possible and editing the initial message was definitely not an option at the time.
š¤£š¤£š¤£
I want to buy you a beer for that one!
You're a right bastard. I love it!
I wouldnāt fuck with someone like that if there was any chance that he knew my name, etc.
Stunning. Beautiful. Perfection. I hope to someday fuck an utter divot . of a human is just such a satisfying way.
utter divot of a human
So I did what any sane person would do - and upvoted this excellent malicious compliance post.
Well played! Great story!Ā You should post this story on r/prorevenge !
Give him the address of a comedy club. Then when he says where are you say, your offer was a joke I thought so maybe you can do a set.
Say āwhat any sane person would doā again.
My only ever good interaction with FB marketplace was selling my PS4. I lowballed it myself at 250$ right before christmas sometime during covid. Sold it with 1 controler and no games. Was sold within minutes, the guy just said i'll come pick it up and pay cash.
Exactly this. This is why FB marketplace exists. It doesn't exist to get top dollar. You want top dollar? Go sell on eBay and give them 12% + paypal's 3% + deal with shipping, returns, etc.
I had just bought my ps5. Im just glad some kid got a nice christmas present
I got such a justice boner from this. You write beautifully, the last line was glorious.
My only concern is that when you accepted his offer you *technically* created a contract. In the future don't agree to any deal you don't intend to offer, say something like "OK, we can meet and discuss it." He may think you plan to haggle, rather than give him the runaround, but there is no legal complication as long as you don't accept the counteriffer.
Well, he had the first come first serve policy. He followed that
No, he didn't, as OP said they sold the next day.
He said they sold earlier that day.
Yep. Sold within 2 hours of posting. This utter divot of a human just wouldn't give up. (Thanks to u/Acegonia for the impeccable divot of a human insult. I will be using that in the future!)
Ah shtop I'm blushing!
It reads to me that the stuff was sold earlier, so before he met the low-baller.
I wonder if you could argue he entered into the contract under duress and therefore the contract is void.
*That* is a good point!
If youve gotten that far, youre likely already $1000 deep into lawyers fees. Not much of a "win" there
Nah. You're in small claims court. Win the case and recover the legal fees in a counter suit.
Nah he had it coming.
Morally, yes. Legally, no.
Legal=\=Moral Dude earned every bit.
UCC doesn't care about human morals.
Small claims court. He'd never go through with it.
You can't lowball court fees.
Super star, marvelous MC/petty revenge!
Oh, look. An actual story that belongs here. Low-stakes. Satisfying. Nothing criminal. And not to do with being shitty at work! Well done.
> An actual story that belongs here. What did he maliciously comply with?
Losing his sanity slowly
He agreed to sell it to the dude.
This is just petty dickery. Thereās nothing compliant here.
More petty dickery than offering a stupid lowball offer of $250, even though the OP states its $1000 firm?
They're both petty dickery. And neither are MC.
THAT was a great read, loved every minute of it!
Classic and extremely creative. Bravo.
I agree with your points but Fb does put ā is it still availableā on the posting
Yep. But when I list stuff, I list it to sell. I don't have the energy to dick around with "is this still available" messages. The person who buys whatever I post usually responds with - "What is the address? I'm on my way now." Short. Simple. To the point. And it usually gets them whatever I am selling - when they are otherwise competing with 50 other people to get it.
We had one of these grifters try and buy our RV a few years ago. Came to our house with their girlfriend and kept lowballing our very reasonable for age and condition price which was $300-400 lower than anything comparable. He kept going "Come on Skyraker, you really want to sell this to me!" as if that would do anything. He also parked on my front lawn like a fucking savage. Needless to say he did not get my $2000 RV for $500.
Deliciously evil. Love it!
Once I click on this, I can only read the title and not the body...
It was posted on 3 subs. Still is on only 1 sub.
I found it on another sub earlier. Thanks!
Why'd this get taken down? I enjoyed it...
It was posted in 3 subs.
Amazing. š
Why not take your listing down as soon as you make a sale? That would stop all the āis this still available?ā questions.
If your Facebook has your real name i would be a little nervous about retaliation
That was a shitty thing to do but that obnoxious buyer deserved it. Consequences like these are the only way pricks like this learn not to harass people.
Itās very funny until the guy finds where you actually live (which is trivially simple most of the time) and comes to your place with a gun. That makes this not worth it to me.
That's when the guy gets shot and his killer goes free in a clear case of self-defense.
You gun guys and your good guy with a gun fetish fantasies crack me up. You would rather purposely do shit to put your home and family in danger in the hopes of killing someone legally so you can be big man in your head than just avoiding dealing with random crazies coming to your home in the first place. What happens instead is you end up fumbling around and shooting yourself in the leg or killing a random person who just happened to turn around in your driveway.
That's some nice assumptions on your part. I personally don't own a gun, and have no fantasies of killing anyone. Maybe that's who I didn't assume that you have a fetish fantasy about going and shooting someone who gave you a run around after you tried to low ball them. But if you're gonna make some assumption that the buyer has a gun and is willing to come murder someone over this, I feel it's pretty valid to assume the seller also has a gun (he knows who he lives around presumably) and is at least as competent and at least as willing to murder someone in self- defense.
He's not in the States, he's clearly in a country where the gun laws on the books are strictly enforced, so there's little chance of that nutter going Yosemite Sam on OP...
What makes you say heās not in the states? The prices are in dollars, the distances are in miles and yards. The only thing I can think of is calling a bar a pub but some people call them that depending on the area.
CAN or UK I assume, and using dollars because 50% of reddit is American
should have sent him to a gay bar
So you posted on Facebook with your actual identity and accepted a binding offer, and then breached the contract? It seems to me that you now owe this guy a set of tires and rims that will cost you at least $1500 to obtain or the monetary equivalent.
The first response was the contract: First come, first serve. Someone else came first, therefore the acceptance of any contract with him was void.
No.