Just met a buyer for my laptop, something doesnt seem right

@JFlare i think I said it in a previous comment
he said that if he was going to the other sellers, he would try lowering the price to 800$
So, I dont think he was ready to bargain that much

@FAST6191 how would you call that then?

As far as I am concerned it is a negotiation tactic just the same as walking away and hoping they shout after you with a better deal, or making a low offer to start with or any of the million other haggling and sales tactics there are available.

Doing it the way described/what I imagine it was joins the more underhanded, distasteful and manipulative ones (we could cover the psychology underpinning it all if you like) and I will certainly not encourage others to go out doing such things but I can't see it as any kind of wrongdoing, much less something that might involve the law.

Sounds like fraud to me, don't bother with him.

@Lilith Valentine yea, to my ears, its sounds like a form of fraud too...

could be fraud yes. i once heard there was a plague of people buying stuff second hand and showing the seller they paid with online banking they could see every step and accepted the payment but it happened to be a fake app so the payment never happened..

What xeph20 describes is fraud (it is paying with fake money), a haggling tactic like you witnessed is not that, not even close.

Spin it another way.

Say I am foolish enough to go use a second hand car stealership to buy my next van.

Find one I like. Say £2000 sticker price.
We then find ourselves sitting at their table discussing my upcoming purchase.
I say "I like the van but £2000 is too much. My neighbour has a similar one for sale for £1200 but I like the colour of that one more. Will you take £1300?"
My neighbour has no such van for sale, never has and actually does not even own a van.
Have I just defrauded, or attempted to defraud, the second hand car stealership? Have I bollocks; if they phoned up the police and said about it they would be laughed at and told to stop wasting police time.
This is the same scenario as what you experienced.

To cover some of the psychology at play. Laughing at you was supposed to undermine your confidence, and possibly even make it sound like you insulted them with such an outrageous offer. Humans being dumb pack/herd/social animals then get flustered and stop thinking clearly, doubly so if you are a computer nerd which is a class not known for being physically intimidating/confrontational in real life. Worse still many will want to appease them for the earlier insult. Next comes the premade ads. People trust computers for reasons I am never quite sure about ("Sir the computer says") which makes that even better, indeed it appears you did not think to question such things. Speaking of trusting computers then there is also a well known knowledge gap in computers for a lot of people so if they can be made to think they do not have what they think they have, say because this person that appears like they know their stuff just said it (never mind that they are actively negotiating with you at the time), then they scramble to get something from the negotiation (especially if they are already imagining what they will do/get with the $1300 that they are set to get -- I mean nobody asks for a real life meeting and walks away) and thus accept the crazy low ball offer.
If you are not trained in such things, see people as fundamentally honest or are generally a trusting person (which is to say the vast majority of the population) then such tactics can be hideously effective. This, and also the playing off of negative emotions*, is why I called them underhanded, distasteful and manipulative earlier. Still not fraud though and not even close.

*more general advertising will play off positive emotions. Buy this and you will be a member of the cool group, your life will have more meaning, this brand will do that... or if you prefer why do you think car adverts almost never talk about the technology in their cars.

It becomes fraud the very moment you show the salesman a fake receipt of the car of your neighbor.

yeah i think so to because you can often lower a price by showing the "competition" has beter prices

Under what system of law? I will give that I don't know every state level statute that might cover this but broad ideas of law making say all good and those places I do know well have nothing even close to this -- the closest I have to anything here is either widows and orphans law (a high level investment concept), those things governing dealing with the mentally incapable (not the case here), cases of threats/coercion (not the case here), and coming the other way about having to take offers to sell your item for the listed price if they are genuinely made (your moron price stickerer or website poker puts 10.00 rather than 100.00 and you can walk away from that, make a genuine offer though and you are bound by it in the UK).

@FAST6191 actually, I'm mentally disabled
but I doubt he was aware^^

well i don't know how far "falsifying a document" goes

LOL
he's now texting me that he got a better laptop for cheaper xD
yea... sure...

just congratulate him and go on with your life

@xeph yea just did

Noctosphere said:

@FAST6191 actually, I'm mentally disabled
but I doubt he was aware^^

Click to expand...

If it ended up in front of a judge then the judge would see a person capable of living by themselves without assistance, operating a website that is able to determine pricing for things, that was able to walk away from a deal/recognise one they did not care for. Case dismissed.
Your mental disability would have to have some bearing on the thing that went down, not just entitle you to some extra time in exams or something. Even then if it could be shown they thought they were dealing with an able person (there are things where people look and speak normally or near enough as does not matter but are otherwise very trusting) they might not get slapped.

xeph20 said:

well i don't know how far "falsifying a document" goes

Click to expand...

You can falsify transcripts, receipts, address documents, bills...
Having a picture/text document/hand written in crayon is just just -- a prop, something you keep for its emotional value... it does not matter. It is banter/discussion between private individuals.
Or if you prefer then you are probably in a place which recognises oral contracts. Why is saying something like previously covered OK but showing someone something saying the same a problem?

You sound like a crazy ex that doesn't know when to stop contacting someone tbh.
Meet buyer, reject buyer, move on. 0 contact after.

Guy sounds like a real dick, I hope he gets scammed.

@the_randomizer haha^^
i hope too^^

Are you a retail store? Since when do you have to price match?