My dilemma, which S series to choose...

Nan,
Sorry man, no ebay links are allowed here.

No one here has a crystal ball to help you find out if this is a scammer...just do your research on a purchase like this. Check the seller's history, contact people they've dealt with and get references and use a 3rd party company to hold the funds until you've both satisfied the deal.

Is there anyway you can get to him? I'd ask if you could come by and see the machine...tell him you're going on a business trip near him and want to stop by...even if you can't, this will usually unearth a scammer as they will come up with all kinds of excuses as to why you can't 'see' the item first.

man, if you don't go for that 360p, woudl you pm me about it, him, his info?

Dont do it unless he lets you pickup up the laptop and you can pay him at the time of pickup. The first sign of any scam is bypassing ebay and selling directly. Even though ebay and paypal offer little protection, a little is better than none. The contract thing means little since the info he puts into it can be faked. I have sold and purchased many notebooks on ebay and the whole situation smells very fishy. By the way, I purchased my s360 new from ebay for $1499 and that was the lowest available price at the time (1 month ago).

Yeah I agree with others about this sounding fishy. Off ebay sales means the seller makes more money but there is a risk for the buyer. I would really seriously consider using some form of protection even a little as Shai-Hulud has said. If you aren't comfortable with it, just ask to use paypal and/or ebay if it makes you feel better. They lose some money but its a sales....

I myself had my own slight scare when I did an off ebay purchase. Granted my situation was a little unique but still risky. I live in California, purchased a pair of sport shoes (MBT) not sold in the states in the past for my wife, from a person in Europe. I wanted to buy off ebay.uk but it was listed as not shipping to US so I contacted the person and asked if she would send a pair to the US for me. She said sure and I sent the money via paypal... but a month later I had yet to receive the shoes. A few days right before I received the shoes I did a paypal refund on her since I tried emailing her about it and she never responded. Turns out she was out of the country at the time, this was around the time of the big earthquake in around Asia/Thailand that caused big tsunamis. When all was said and done, I did get the shoes and reissued paypal payment. (Paypal refunded my money) All I can say is, damn a month to ship a pair of shoes from Europe... crazy!

Hey Nanaki,
I thought you settled for the laptop S270. If I were you, I'd take the S270 at even $1750 shipped. The S360p is nice, but you have to put a lot of work into it.

Talking about going around ebay: Being a seller myself, I would love to if my customer accept going around it. Actually, I've been doing more than 10 transactions outside ebay with paypal. It went perfectly fine (the item was pretty expensive). I trust them and they trust me, done deal.

However, the ebay fees won't concern too much that make me write a contract with my SIN (or SSN for us in US). I think there is something fishy here. Watch out for it.

And yea, if the S270 deal is still available, PM me

Wow, this letter is kinda... Is he selling a laptop? I thought it's worth $1200. And he wrote a contract for it?

If i were him, I would have gone with the other buyer: no hassles, no contract, no meeting or arrangment.

I dont trust this guy :-| just my thoughts.

ps: about the S360p, I am waiting to see how hard the upgrade is, so... just want to have another option...

Good luck. At least there's somebody to do the BT upgrade with me

sure, whenever you need it. As long as you pay me

btw, the sony site is kinda slow. I placed my order on Monday and it havent given out the tracking number yet...

Nan,
Don't worry about the 'contract'. There is no legal recourse for this guy with something he typed up in MS Word and had you sign...zero.

Just be safe and I think you'll be fine. Keep us posted.

I have tons of feedback on eBay and I recently sold an XPS2 outside of eBay. Selling an expensive laptop on eBay means you incur serious fees. Combine eBay fees and PayPal and you're likely losing well over $100 on the deal. I understand when sellers want to complete the transaction off of eBay to save $50 or whatever in fees -- especially when they're already taking a huge loss on the product (which tends to happen with computer products). I wouldn't dismiss the guy just because of this. If he has tons of good feedback with high-dollar items, I would consider it. I'm not saying he's definitely legit, but as Craig said, just do your homework on him.

As for the price of the S360P, I can almost guarantee that he got in on a closeout deal that Office Depot had on this model a couple weeks ago. They were selling the laptop for like $1086 for pickup in-store. It was all over Fat Wallet. I know about this because I got in on the deal myself. I actually found one in my area and ordered it, but when I picked it up, it ended up being a store display. I decided I wanted a new one, but there wasn't one in my area. I worked with a guy on Fat Wallet to have one sent to me. I imagine that this seller bought several of these laptops hoping to make big bucks on eBay selling them (considering this laptop was around $1700-$1800 everywhere the day prior). Unfortunately, the "Fat Wallet effect" happened and eBay was flooded with these laptops. Now, he's just trying to make his money back or close to it. Anyway, the point of this huge essay was just to show that you might think it's a "too good to be true" type of deal, but it probably isn't. Perhaps ask the seller to show a copy of his receipt. I'd bet money he paid $1086 or whatever for it at Office Depot.

ouch, sorry to hear;

Didn't you meet him at the coffee shop? Personally I would have just brought it there after seeing the unit for myself.

Contact ebay and paypal if it was done that way.
Good luck with everything