I must relate a bad experience I had with an eBay seller. The account
name is "rexbassdesigns". The auction in question was a lot of three
Altair 8800's and an ADM-3A terminal. I was purchasing them for a client.
The ad stated that the units were in "very good" condition. The seller
fired them up and showed one picture with the unit on. The pictures
indicated that they were indeed in "very good" condition, and the photo
gave the impression that they had been stored in a good, clean
environment. The ADM-3A terminal was described as "missing a few keys"
but the seller said he might have a "replacement set or two".
Upon receiving the units, I noticed right away that the machines were not
as described. They looked as if they'd been stored in an outdoor shed or
something. They had a lot of dirt inside and some boards had obviously
been exposed to moisture over a long period of time.
The ADM-3A terminal was a complete mess. The seller's description of
"missing a few keys" was rather optimistic, as the keyboard was missing
half its keys. Overall it was in terrible condition, having obviously
been stored outdoors.
The lot is not a complete loss; the Altairs should be able to be restored
to working condition and cleaned up, and the price paid was certainly
reasonable. However, the seller was quite misleading in his description,
and the "replacement set" for the ADM keyboard turned out to be a spare
keyboard from a totally different terminal, which of course is silly.
I tried to explain to the seller that I felt he was misleading, but he was
way too defensive for anything constructive to come out of it, so I
informed him that I would simply have to leave him negative feedback,
which I rarely do (this is only the second time, the first was because
some guy up and disappeared and didn't send me the goods). I don't like
leaving negative feedback, but I felt I had to in this case to warn
others about this seller, as he's selling other old computer stuff.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=4193&item=2729439759
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Sellam Ismail Vintage Computer Festival
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International Man of Intrigue and Danger http://www.vintage.org
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Received on Fri Jun 20 2003 - 03:16:00 BST