maturity required to offer items of significant value 4 sale

[Alex C]

Many years ago, a pro playing in a 'second level' orchestra asked me to send an F tuba for a trial. After sending it I waited a couple of weeks and called... no answer so I sent a letter (this was before the Internet). I didn't hear anything for a ten days or so which made me nervous, I started calling and writing regularly. No response. I wrote to him at the hall, no response. I finally called the hall only to find out the orchestra was on tour in Europe. At least I knew why he wasn't answering.

Long story short, four months (and about two dozen letters later) later he sent the horn back without responding to me but none the worse for wear. Friends told me he really sounded great on my F tuba during the European tour.

Mature or not, ever since then my bottom line is "you send the money and I'll send the horn." Trial period may be included but everybody knows when the deal is finalized. I print up a contract and we both sign it. Too many nightmares to have to put up with that again.

[swillafew]

I am sorry to hear about all the troubles. I would recommend exchanging cash for merchandise face to face with the buyer or seller, and getting or giving a receipt.

[bigtubby]

Must have been an extremely "good deal" to elicit such ire and disappointment.

Astute observation.

[Donn]

Must have been an extremely "good deal" to elicit such ire and disappointment.

Nah, you know bloke isn't likely someone to count his chickens before they're plucked. My guess is that he made some super generous offer, and then when the other party backed out it, it was like a mortal affront. I'm picturing him jumping in the wagon with a pair of matching pistols and heading out to demand satisfaction ... but then he got to thinking about how it all boils down to the deteriorating moral fiber of recent generations, and he needed to post about it on Tubenet, so he turned around.

[Donn]

Well, that's awkward, and perhaps does go some ways to explain why we're checking this mole hill out for ski lift potential.

So there's context, consequences. You mentioned the possibility of relevant context on the other end, too "(particularly with no overwhelming reasons)". We can infer that there was in fact some reason, however underwhelming it may have actually been.

But of course it's normally not our business to know how a transaction fits in with the other party's plans, and stripped of that context, I don't find it surprising at all that someone saw nothing wrong with canceling a deal. I don't see it as a sign of immaturity or anything like that, I just can't see why it would be obvious at what point a sale agreement becomes a sacred pledge - the high school course that iipopes proposes that would teach us these fine points of business ethics doesn't exist, and even if it did, the reality is that an informal sale agreement is invariably subject to the vagaries of its real world circumstances. What I'm trying to get at is a distinction between social customs that we can only know by learning them from sources that agree with each other, vs. ethics that we can to some extent reason out for ourselves.

You're right that his squishy behavior reflects unfavorably on him. I'm just saying that on the face of it, for those of us who know nothing more about the details of the agreement or the circumstances around it, it just isn't the smoldering indictment of a generation and that generation's parents that some of us are making it out to be.

Now, the horn screwer guy ought to be out busting rocks. That's a case where he (and his father, apparently) could have known better without anyone having to instruct them in any social customs.

[MartyNeilan]

Here is the problem when a young person sells something:
Kid aggress to the deal.
Kid tells parents.
Parents say they paid twice that, and will only sell it for more than what they paid.
Kid renegs on deal.

[Donn]

There are millions of AMAZING and WONDERFUL people in America, but (yeah: go ahead and tear into me Donn...) over the last 35 years of dealing with people in business, bit-by-bit it's becoming a human wasteland.

I'm just saying they've always been there. The amazing and wonderful people, the human waste, both. The amazing and wonderful are more likely to be remembered long after they're gone, or even only 35 years later. Times change - life was different when I was a kid in many important ways, and I wasn't around for the world wars, the depression, etc. - and people are affected by the climate of their own era, and their regional culture and so forth, but the human waste has always been abundantly represented - and has always been a minority.