Don't feel comfortable selling to buyer

[mtn.vintage]

Hello, I sold an item to what appears to be...not necessarily a scam but not really a person. I've done some research into these types of accounts and read anything from "I got scammed" to "everything was fine." I don't really feel comfortable sending my item to this "person" but I'm not sure about the etiquette of refusing to send something to an account I don't trust.  I'm not sure about reporting this account as I don't see that they've done anything wrong per say. It just smells fishy, so to speak. Any advice? Thanks!

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@richards*rock*collection wrote:

I don't understand why yourself and some other people feel this way, and when they do, why they don't reach out and try to communicate with the buyer? If the buyer will not communicate, then that could be a red flag. One sale for me, a very good sale had some really un-orthodox conditions, but I went ahead and sent them the thing. The buyer stated that he was on his touring bus and want me to send it to the front desk of a famous hotel in las Vegas in care of his name, so I did, and it did not come back, but it seemed bizarre to me because they had a zero score.  

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Man, you really got me curious who it was 😉  But, yeah as weird as that seems, I used to live a rock star life, that is, being on the road every week for a decade LOL.  Used to have stuff shipped to hotel's front desk fairly often.  It sounds odd, but it's not that unusual when you travel a lot & hotels are used to dealing with it.  Glad you took the chance.  

I would not hesitate to ship in OP's situation. 

[soh.maryl]

As far as I can tell, you've not really explained what your concern is with this buyer.  Pretty sure that everyone who buys here is a person.  

[mtn.vintage]

As I've said, I've been doing this for a year so I'm still pretty inexperienced but not a complete newbie. I've shipped to China via the international shipping option and it went fine. So far, to my knowledge, I've yet to be scammed and this is the first time I've had reservations about sending off an item. But posting here and receiving a load of positive replies has led me to reconsider my position and I'll be shipping the item out today. I just felt it was prudent to reach out to more experienced sellers for their advice and opinions. After all, that's why this message board exists, is it not? 

Thank you for your contribution. Any and all sellers experiences are valuable information for me.

[zee-chan]

As someone who use a forwarder/middleman to buy from Japan often, I can definitely tell you I get very annoyed when an overly cautious household seller refuse to sell to me as I'm buying via a middleman. Because I'd have paid for the item already in order for middleman to proceed with buying, and getting a refund from middleman is a big hassle).

With buying from middleman and what not, there is actually LESS buyer protection for me as I don't get the item until at least a month later, and it'd be hard for me to write in Japanese to express my concern (and I actually canNOT do it via a middleman). Moreover, if I *do* make an complaint about something, this would ruin my "relationship" with the middleman and they will refuse future orders from me because I'd be considered a "problem buyer" not worth their time to deal with again. So when I buy something via a middleman I do accept the risk that the item might not be perfectly as described. Fortunately it's very rare for me to encounter such problem. 

If the "buyer" is indeed buying via a forwarder/middleman, even if you message them, they might not reply... so bottom line is you just need to pack the item securely as usual, and ship it with tracking for your own protection if it's a higher value item.