... in response to Re: Laptops, posted by Jeff S on Nov 19, 2003Hi Jeff.
Well, that was my theory too. I allowed for some bad ones, and bid accordingly. I thought I had it all worked out so that if I had 30% of them fail I would still come out ok.
I bought in 'lots' of 5 to 20. I purchased 70+ units varying in speed and capacity from P90s to PIII 700 MHZ. Here's how it looks to have turned out.
I had a good friend living in Pittsburgh who 'volunteered' to send them to me. I had them shipped to his house in May, with the understanding that he was going to forward them to me in balikbayan boxes. I had intended to open the store the first of September.
As it turned out, he failed to send them until August 18th. Seems he was 'too busy'. Nor could I get him to do an inventory so that I knew what was there and what was not there.
He informed me his ex wifes (Filipina) friend ran the Forex biz there, and that she was 'jacking him around'.
I had the store ready to go long before the boxes arrived. I recieved the first two boxes the first week of October after I had already been paying rent on the store for two months. The second two boxes arrived in the second week of October. Upon doing inventory, I was 26 units short.
I traced it all down to the guy who sold me two lots on Ebay. He was running a scam. He had sold these same two lots of laptops to numerous individuals.
Turns out, he had been suspended from Ebay in September '01 under one assumed name. In November '02 he was suspended under a different 'assumed name' for too much negative feedback. Although he was supposedly suspended under this name, I made the mistake of sending him my hard earned capital in May '03, six months after he was supposedly 'suspended'.
Much to my misfortune, by the time I figured all this out, it was much past the 90 day deadline you are given in which to get any recourse.
Out of the units I did recieve, I had about a 25% failure rate. We hope to be sold completely out by Christmas at which time we will close the store for good. At best, I will get most of my money back, minus the cost of rent and store renovations.
I did come up with two good sources for getting units directly from my Ebay contacts , but like I said we will be completely out of stock by Christmas, and it takes at least two months to get more. I am now sticking that capital into the restaurant.
I am positive the used laptop venture is a viable biz venture if someone were to pursue it with reliable resources, which I now have, but...
The funniest part of the whole mess is I recently recieved notice from Ebay that I have been suspended due to the fact that I am now in the Philippines. I am a 'fraud risk'!!
Cheers.
Larry.
