My objection has always been convenience. One cash payment is easier for the seller.
That I have no argument at all with.
I agree with Cheesesteak, the OP set themselves up as a buyer of last resort.
Anyone selling a tent in such a manner wants to have $400 and no tent. Whoever makes that happen the easiest is going to get the sale.
What LPN wanted was, “I’ll give you money I have, and promise you money I don’t have right now.” If she takes the deal, the seller now has $200 and an obligation that goes with it. What if the remaining money doesn’t materialize? Is she going to have to give the $200 back? What if she trusted the OP and already spent the money? Is a small claims judge going to have to decide? Is she going to have to meet with this person more than once, first to sign an agreement as to what the $200 stipulates, then meet again to hand over the tent?
Pain In The Ass. Someone else walks up with $400, tent is his. Period.
All the runaround she was giving the OP should have sent the message that the transaction he was offering was unappealing. Calling her on her bullshit as time went by only sealed his fate. When someone else has something you want that badly, you play their way or you don’t play at all.
Who cares about good faith? If they can’t pay me now and somebody else can, then to hell with them.
Also, why take even a full check, much less half a check, if someone else has cash?
I don’t think I would accept a check from a stranger as payment. I also would definitely not accept some weird two check payment plan. That seems to be the modus operandi of craigslist scams. Checks for not quite the correct amount.
Bald-facedly revising the original very punny thread title
so this is the whimper of your discount tent?
Again, Cheesesteak’s original post that I responded to was about the trustworthiness of it all, not the convenience and/or salesmanship of it all. I pointed out that the OP addressed why he/she thought he/she should be trusted (leaving the item with the seller). Cheesesteak, in a later post, disagreed that this was sufficiently trustworthy, but that’s a separate issue from the initial question that was brought up about the scheme.
Try to keep up here.
We don’t know what the other buyer paid with. From the OP’s description of the conversations, the seller certainly didn’t evince any reluctance at all to take a check.
If the seller had any common sense, it wasn’t a check unless she had a way to verify it and/or knew the buyer personally.
You got a different impression from the described conversations than I did. To me it sounded like the seller was anything but enthused about the idea, hence the runaround.
Sorry your tent deal fell through, Little Plastic Ninja. My husband and I have a Panther Pavilion that we bought “almost-never used” (it had been put up once at Gulf Wars), and we’re very happy with it. The owner had advertised it on the Medieval_Encampments yahoo group, and I recommend that group if you’re in the market for all manner of SCA encampment stuff. I never participate on the list, but they sure do have some good resources and nice deals posted there once in a while.
Y’all, the issue is not that I was not sold the tent.
The issue is the lack of communication.
First off: this is a person I know, have met, and have chatted with. We live in the same city. She knows about three dozen people who know my address and phone number and how to best harass me. This is a fairly close-knit group. It’s not like a Craigslist thing where you have no idea who the other person is.
Second: She has stated repeatedly that she was not uncomfortable with the payment arrangements, but only after the fact. If she had said (I think there’s an echo in here) “I would rather not do it like that, I just want all the money up front” I would have said “Okay then, here is your money up front. Would you like that in small bills?”
Third: The issue is not that I didn’t get the tent. The issue is not that I didn’t like the price of the tent. The issue is not that I did not like a lack of payment flexibility on the tent.
The issue is that I DID NOT KNOW whether any of this was acceptable or not. When I said on Friday morning “hey, can we do a payment arrangement?” I was expecting either a “yes” or a “no”. I was not expecting radio silence for three days and an answer of “Whatever, I’m not in a big hurry to sell, but I have someone else wanting to buy it” on Monday. A “no” wouldn’t have bothered me because hell, I probably wouldn’t have accepted the payment arrangement. I wouldn’t have been offended, I just would have shifted my other plans around.
It could be that the “can I make payments on it?” soured her to the deal and she just refused to tell me no, but if she’d had a problem with it all she had to do was say something. It’s not like I can smack her around over email. 
There were options – all kinds of 'em – but without a modicum of communication, all there was was confusion.
I did not know about this group! I will have to check them out. SOMEONE in Ansteorra’s got to be selling a tent…
…oh, and I’ll just wave cash at them up front to make all the rest of y’all happy. 
Oh, and –
A common retail trick: call the phone number on the check and verify funds. That way, at least you know the money is there now. It’s not 100% protection, but we know each other on a nodding and recognition basis and, as above, she knows a lot of the same people I know. I would be a pariah in the local society if I screwed her over. That is shit up with which they will not put. 
(But I feel compelled to repeat: she has told me she was not uncomfortable with the payment arrangements, she just sold it to someone else instead. That doesn’t bother me. I’m just bothered that she didn’t bother to tell me jack or shit at the time, that I wasted my time waiting for her rather than putting things together myself.)
She probably didn’t want to say absolutely no because she wanted to keep you as an option if all else failed. All she could really give you was a “maybe,” and that’s kind of what she did give you in a roundabout way.
Properly, then:
Me: Can I pay like blah?
Her: Really I’d rather you didn’t. Someone else wants to buy the tent and they’re willing to pay up front for it.
Me: Oh. Well here, have all the money then.
As opposed to:
Me: Can I pay like blah?
Her: silence silence silence Well, I know someone else is interested, they just haven’t given me a definite. They will tonight. I’ll let you know tomorrow.
Tomorrow: radio silence
Hey luc! Did you ever find those warrants?
…and since when do we need the warrant in advance, anyway?
…
damn you.
Dang. I was going to recommend a friend of mine who makes great SCA tents. I think An Tir would be a bit far for you though. 
Just a tad.
I have a local source for poles, though, so if they do shipping…
I foundd this thread interesting from the start. The fact that you had the guts to ask for payment arrangements on buying something from a private person is amusing. The fact that you actually asked to use it before it was completely paid for is hysterical. (Oh and pay by personal check no less.) Now you are ragging at the seller for not reading your mind to know you actually had the full payment if she really wanted it. (Which of course she did). Simply put, I am sure she kept you around as the last resort in case a reasonable buyer did not appear.
I am not being negative. As a matter of fact, I admire your big kahonas.
Maybe kahonas are the balls of a Hawaiian high priest.