I have never bought anything from the ultimate egalitarian flea-market that is Craigslist but I decided to this week. I wanted a new CPAP machine to help me sleep. I have had sleep apnea since I was a rail thin child and even radical surgery didn’t completely cure it in my 20’s so I prefer to have an aid to make sure I don’t stop breathing during the night even though I can go without it.
I check out Craigslist periodically to see if there is an upgrade to my older and quite heavy model that is not travel friendly. One that showed up was a new Resmed Autoset S9 brand new for $350. Now most of you probably don’t know much about that type of equipment but that price is absurdly low. They run in the low thousands when you get them through official channels when you include all the medical studies required to get one.
I decided to respond to the ad and offered to pay cash on the spot. The seller responded back that he would take the offer but wouldn’t give me any details until I was willing to pick it up within a short time window. That started the alarm bells ringing within my head but I decided to go through with it.
I called today to see when I could drive down (the seller was about 25 miles away) and was met by a string of incoherence and profanity by a female saying something how I shouldn’t call while people are in the shower (during the middle of the afternoon). However, she did eventually give me an address and agreed a rough time to meet because I wasn’t giving up at that point.
I googled the address and found out that it was in the true projects and a man living there had just been arrested for robbery a few months ago. However, I pay no attention to unimportant details like that and drove right over after work.
I called the only cell phone number I have (asking for John) to get buzzed into the project and get let in right away. The smell of cigarettes was overwhelming even in the hallway. When I walk into the very small apartment, I see that he is a morbidly obese man in his late 20’s that lives with his frustrated chain-smoking mother. Seriously, he weighs 400 pounds if he weighs a dime.
He brought out the package that I came to buy and it was exactly as described. Perfect condition and a great deal. I simply said, ‘It looks good.’ as I rolled off $350 in $20 bills and a final $10. He thanked me and then said ‘See Mom, we can have Thanksgiving and Christmas if I sell the right things.’
It was perfectly legit but he didn’t have a good use for it.
Thank you. I already have it set up and it is as great as advertised. I felt really bad for the person selling it. He really needs it much more badly than I do but just doesn’t want to participate in any type of health management. As nasty as he and his mother were on the phone, they were really nice once I met them in person (and handed over the money). I politely deflected potential hugs in favor of extended handshakes but I got the impression they are somewhat decent people caught up in bad circumstances.
I do hope they have a great Thanksgiving and Christmas. I am not sure I am going to buy a lot of things off of Craigslist but I will not be scared off by any address in the future if they have something I want for the right price.
Craigslist can be quite the adventure. I usually end up finding the people who sold the thing three days ago and couldn’t be bothered to take the listing down.
The S9 is a great bit of work, even if I have a very slight preference to the Philips machines. Get the “clinical” manual for it for info on how to configure it if you haven’t already. On mine, I had to mess with some of the normally off-limits APAP settings so it wouldn’t fight me in the middle of the night. And get monitoring software as well. Sleepyheads is pretty good, and free, last I looked.
How do you even know if it works well? Or at all? Did you get to plug it in and give it a test run? Does it include a vaporizer?
How do you program it? The one I have has that all locked up – The doctor at the sleep lab writes the prescription, and the CPAP vendor programs it accordingly, and any changes require a new Rx.
They wouldn’t even sell me replacement air filters without a Rx!
It is brand new and he showed me the paperwork proving how he got it. He is morbidly obese and has trouble sleeping because of it. Insurance paid for a sleep study and the unit but he didn’t like the idea so he decided to sell it for pure cash. There is nothing illegal about that as far as I know. I have an Rx myself for an older model and used it for many years until tonight but I also make my living working on medical devices so programming a new one is not a concern. This one is not locked down and is easy to program. It has a mini-computer with a screen built into it. I have all the manuals on how to program it. It is also a ‘smart’ CPAP that adjusts to your breathing automatically so the specific programming isn’t the same as it is on older models. It did come with a humidifier and a range of different masks as well. It really was an incredible deal at $350 dollars for everything that was included.
I could have gotten the same one through my own insurance company for about the same total cost to me but I would have to go through another sleep study and miss work for follow-up appointments. I didn’t want to do that because I think would be a waste of time in my case. The problem has been well-understood for years.
When I got the script for the S9, my doc wouldn’t change the pressure recommended by the sleep study. I told her the machine was a “smart” device that adjusted the pressure automatically. She wouldn’t budge.
So, I got the S9, and it was locked in at 15 pressure. YouTube to the rescue. There was a video on how to change the settings. Very easy.
Even people who are reasonable and polite on craigslist are often no-shows and flakes. Once someone’s demonstrated clearly irrational thinking, I figure there’s no hope.
I insisted on an auto-titrating machine when I got mine simply because I had no trust in the results of the titration study. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever prescribe something different, but my husband was told his practitioner didn’t like them as much.
Really sad on the person selling it. Chances are it was purchased by Medicaid, so it’s kind of scummy of him to sell it. And he clearly NEEDS it at that weight level. If his apnea goes untreated he’ll have pretty major health problems sooner or later as a direct result of it, so he won’t be around a whole lot longer to take care of his mother.
I’m a little surprised your insurance would insist on another sleep study. Is your doctor not still overseeing your treatment? My husband got a replacement machine last year (his died) and they just phoned in a new prescription for the machine (this reminds me: mine is over 5 years old and, I think, due for replacement; not sure what my insurer’s policy is on that).
The results from my sleep studies have disappeared as far as I know because of this odd incident. The chain of sleep study centers in the Boston area, Sleep Health Centers, simply went poof one day without warning and they held all of my sleep study records. I would have to repeat all my sleep tests to recreate the results but I know they haven’t changed significantly so I just go with the best options I can for now.
How do you even know if it works well? Or at all? Did you get to plug it in and give it a test run? Does it include a vaporizer?