Casting aspersions…….
Sorry for the long-winded story, but I am about to very subtly accuse someone of being a bit shady. As such, I should probably justify my actions somewhat.
Recently I sold a TCRA1103+ XR to a guy in Italy. On a personal level, he was a major pain in the butt. He would give a migraine a headache, but his money is as good as anyone else’s.
I won’t lie- the instrument I sold him was rough. Really rough. But I made that clear to him and took more photos of it for him than a grandmother at a children’s birthday party. Videos as well. It was fully functional and my conscience was clear.
But I was on edge with this guy because he had previously tried to buy a TPS1100 laser that I was selling. I ended up having a lot of trouble explaining that it was only the laser itself, and not the EDM board that he was apparently looking for. So, I knew that he was looking for an EDM board.
He took delivery of the instrument and instantly started complaining about the condition of the instrument and was making threatening “eBay dispute” noises. I reminded him of the photos and the fact that they had all been sent via eBay, so there is a record of it all. I had guaranteed in writing that it was fully functional, but also that it was about as pretty as I am.
He changed his tune and started talking about…….you’ll never guess……EDM board problems in the instrument. That made me nervous. I stood my ground and shut him down quick smart.
Suddenly, another Italian contacted me out of nowhere regarding a second TCRA1103+ XR instrument that I was selling (I’m slowly moving back to Australia, so I’ve been active on eBay of late). He is from a village that is 20 km’s down the road from the first guy (but initially denied knowing him) and wanted me to prove (via video) that the instrument did not have a very specific problem:
He had shot a slope distance to a target in RL, then shot the same distance to (allegedly) the same target in IR and had a ??SD of 0.006m in ??50m. He wanted me to perform the same experiment before he would buy the instrument.
After explaining to him that such an experiment cannot be done easily because one target was reflective tape and the other was a prism, and that setting up a baseline like that would be more trouble than it was worth, he sent me his hand written field notes of his experiment. I figured out that he was either trying to commit fraud by taking a reading, holding the target to maintain HZ and VA readings on the screen, then changing the scale factor in the instrument to simulate an incorrect slope distance reading to the same target, or was an imbecile who was maintaining tripod/tribrach positions and swapping targets.
Between that, and the fact that I managed to connect him to the first guy, I eventually told him to go and fornicate with himself. I then took preventative measures against the first guy by informing eBay of a potential fraud taking place. They backed me.
However, the second guy had become pretty friendly with me because he had lived in my hometown for a year. Over the course of this long-winded exchange he had sent me photos of his equipment, and that exact same instrument was used in his SD experiment.
I am 100% certain that the first guy is now selling that same instrument:
https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Stazione-Totale-Leica-TCRA1103-XR/264757086624
That is the instrument that had the “nonsensical EDM problem”. As I (hopefully) made clear, I think that he (or they) fiddled with the scale factor between readings to simulate the world’s weirdest EDM problem in an attempt to either:
a) return the battered (but fully functional) instrument that I had sold him because the photos didn’t do it justice, or
b) bought my battered instrument, swapped out the EDM board into his previously broken instrument, then tried to return the battered one to me via eBay’s return system.
The moral of the story is this: between those two guys, they have an instrument that has a broken EDM board (because he was looking for one earlier) and another instrument that might have an incredibly strange EDM problem.
Curiously, he is not accepting returns or Paypal. Naturally, I am casting aspersions and potentially slandering someone. I know that. The instrument might be fine. I might need to apologise to him someday.
But………buyer beware.
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