Discussion: Would you buy stolen goods off Kijiji?

Spotted this thought-starter at RealityCheck:

Will you buy stuff off Kijiji if you suspect it to be stolen?

Example 1:

We are in the market for a new vacuum and the girlfriend has her eye on a Dyson, the DC23 ($650 at Future Shop), she finds a guy selling a Dyson Ball on Kijiji with a please contact for price. She sends him an email and he says he's looking for $275, she replies she would like to take a look but she was really more in the market for a DC23, he says he has one of those as well and wants $350 for it.

So she calls me and tells me she wants to go look take a look after work. First thing that comes to my mind is why does some guy have 2 Dyson vacuums and why is he selling them for almost half their price? So we get to the house and instantly I tell her these are definitely stolen, it's in shitty area of the city, with flags in windows, screen doors an hinges, garbage scattered all over the front yard, not really the type of house you would expect to find any type of vacuum in.

The guy was even better, when we asked why he had 2 of them he gave us a story about how he used to be an engineer and was amazed by the technology in these vacuums and that was why he had upgraded from one to the other, but he had lost his job about a year ago and now needed the money. The inside of the house looked like it hadn't seen a vacuum in a long time, and he claimed he had them for almost 2 years now, but strangely enough the canister was spotless and it had clearly never been used. All the accessories where there and it appeared to work flawlessly.

Example 2:

We are also looking to pick up a welder, she's a 3rd year apprentice and I don't like the fact that she can weld and I can't. So one day there is an add for a guy who says he bought 3 Lincoln Electric MIG-PAK 180's because he was starting a shop but it fell through and now he was selling them for $550 each ($770 at Canadian Tire). He had a phone number listed so I send him a text msg and offer him $375 ( I always lowball the fuck out of everyone on Kijiji) he replies and says he has one left and a buyer willing to pay $500 for it on Friday but I can have it today if I want to match it, we exchanged a few emails but he wasn't willing to move on the price so I said no thanks.

About a month later there is another add for a brand new Lincoln 180, add says he bought it for his Brother-in-Law for Christmas, but it turned out he had already bought himself one, so now he was hoping to sell it quickly so he could do some more Christmas shopping. Once again asking $550 for a $770 welder that is brand new in the box, so I send a text msg offering $400 and I can pick it up tonight. Now I don't erase my text msg's very often and I didn't even make the connection at first, but it was the same number I had msg'd almost a month earlier, (our previous conversation popped up once the text was sent) he replied with $450 if I pick it up tonight, I said no thanks. About 15 minutes he sends another saying he will take $400 if I take it tonight.


What would you have done in either of these situations?

Would you have passed on a great deal for what is clearly stolen goods?

What do you think I did?

This post was written by: Gord McCord

Gord McCord, webmaster at You Suck at Kijiji, makes fun of funny things on Kijiji. Do not take him too seriously. Also do not take yourself too seriously. Follow him on Twitter