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Sold my old laptop to a computer illiterate person
Elimination
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I sold my old laptop for $920 to someone in town, it's a high end gaming laptop, we had talked and he had checked the laptop over and over for a week back and forth. He made the buy and we agreed if anything went wrong within the first week i'd take responsibility. It's been over that week now and he has been texting me with various problems, usually easily fixable ones or just questions about how to use Win 8. Now he has been saying hes having trouble running TERA, that it kept using the onboard video card instead of the 7970m card. Now i advised him if he hadn't, to make sure he updates the video drivers (Can use the ones from AMD's website for mobility.) so i directed him to AMD's website, told him he'd find the drivers there. He gets back to me today reporting blue screen when he runs TERA for a while and it wont run it on high settings. This was after he said in the middle of the night "So i just go to AMD.com and click download drivers and choose windows 8?", he also has complained about bugs in win 8 that have been patched out ages ago, which means he hasn't even updated windows. I have the impression he's installed the desktop video drivers instead of the laptop ones. This is an easy fix and i've sent him a message walking through it.
He has asked me for 3 more days to see if he gets the blue screen again and is threatening that he wants his $ back now. I was a computer technician for a living in the past, i take EXTREMELY good care of my hardware, the laptop is still under factory warranty, and the laptop left my care in immaculate working condition (I used it personally up until the day it was handed over, and i ran BF4 and Crysis 3 infront of his eyes to prove it worked.). It's past the agreed week, and I don't feel like I should be responsible for his ignorance on how to use a gaming laptop/PC; but I also don't wanna be a dick about it. I'm not sure what the right course of action should be? The more I talk to him the more it's apparent he's very computer illiterate.
He has asked me for 3 more days to see if he gets the blue screen again and is threatening that he wants his $ back now. I was a computer technician for a living in the past, i take EXTREMELY good care of my hardware, the laptop is still under factory warranty, and the laptop left my care in immaculate working condition (I used it personally up until the day it was handed over, and i ran BF4 and Crysis 3 infront of his eyes to prove it worked.). It's past the agreed week, and I don't feel like I should be responsible for his ignorance on how to use a gaming laptop/PC; but I also don't wanna be a dick about it. I'm not sure what the right course of action should be? The more I talk to him the more it's apparent he's very computer illiterate.
PSN: PA_Elimination 3DS: 4399-2012-1711 Steam: http://steamcommunity.com/id/TheElimination/
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Honestly, you shouldn't have even given him the week, but even having given him that, it's not really your problem. The worst he can do is try to sue you in small claims court, but I'm not sure how far he'd get.
Really though you need to let him know that technical support was not part of the sale and if he wants continued advice/help with that sort of thing he needs to contact a company that can provide that for him. Or you can agree to do it for a fee. Whichever.
I think giving him the 3 extra days is a bad idea because it sets a precedent that if he appeals to your emotions he'll get more out of you. In the future, all sales are final.
Nothing in writing, the only verbal agreement we had was that i'd give him a week "free pass" if anything went wrong, it's been well over a week now. It's gotten to the point where it feels like i'm talking to someone who's never used a computer for anything other than web surfing (maybe that is the case?) he's in his 20's so i just assumed he had at least a basic understanding of how these things work. I don't know if i wanna tell him off but at the same time i KNOW this issue he is having is of his own doing, and not mine.
Maybe offer him $800 to take it back and sell it to someone else when you clean it up?
It's not that hard to type "how do i update my laptop drivers" in google and come up with an answer in 20 seconds, this is super basic computer stuff that especially someone who's grown up in the age of technology/home PC's should know by now. My grandmother who turns 77 this month knows how to keep her laptop updated. HOnestly I should have seen this coming, he told me he has never had a laptop last more than a year and a half before "breaking".
If he gets hostile, tell him you're going to call the police. If you need to you can and tell them he's harassing you.
Eventually it'll get to the point, if he is really dogged about it, where all he can do is take you to small claims court. That'll be a wonderful waste of everyone's time, but you probably will be agreed with.
Any writing at all would have been useful to show a small claims court in this context. At least send a confirming e-mail laying out terms if you do this in the future.
I will in the future, i've sold computers/parts/ect like this before (and done custom builds on the side or installed custom cooling ect ect.) for money, and i've never had these kinds of issues till this guy, most people that buy this kind of hardware usually know how to use it properly.
I'm a PC gamer myself. Can't stand consoles. But I can see why people like them. I personally like fiddling with drivers. Most do not.
Anyhow, I shouldn't have dragged the thread OT, so back to the OP's actual issue.
You hit windows update and use the WHQL drivers it finds.
If your specific program doesn't work... oh well, maybe they can tell you how to fix it. This is completely in the territory of "I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, you owe me because I gave you lots of money." I'd just stop responding and block his number, and any future number he uses. I'd never give anybody my phone number, email at the best case.
In a lot of states, if there's nothing in writing and neither party is a licensed business, a sale is considered as-is and the buyer can basically go fuck themselves unless the seller will help them out of the goodness of their heart.
If I were you, I'd probably see if you can meet the guy you sold it to so you can fix the damage he's probably done, but I'm a nice guy like that. After that though? Tell him to either start trying to learn some of it himself or take it to someone who will charge him. You can't be his permanent free IT guy, and its not your responsibility if he screws up the laptop any further. Gods know he probably got a virus after one day while downloading 20 gigs of porn...
And like I said, financially you have basically zero risk. Its an "as is" sale, and unless he can prove deception on your part or you have some written agreement, it should be impossible for him to actually get his claims in a lawsuit.
it's possible he's trying to extort you in some way, or just experiencing buyer's remorse. Frankly it's a bit difficult to imagine somebody even interested in buying a machine for high-end gaming being hopelessly baffled by the task of updating their video card driver.
next time he contacts you just tell him that you sold the machine in working order and not to contact you any more.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
In Canada, and if theres nothing in writing it's "as is" as well here, unless its over 10k or something like that. It's why you have to be really careful buying vehicles used here.
That's interesting - you sure you understand the law fully on that? It may only apply to certain sellers, or certain types of purchasers. Further, all that probably goes out the window once you start making representations or warranties yourself. I don't know canadian law, but there is rarely a simple, unqualified answer to a question.
I never made any representations or warranty's myself. The laptop is under factory warranty still, and we agreed 1 week if it broke he could give it back, its well past that 1 week and all he's done is come at me for tech support. Had the laptop a year with zero issues what so ever, and i hand it over to him and within a few weeks he's already fucked it up it feels like it's really something he's doing with it that's messing with it and not the laptop's actual hardware itself.
It still doesn't matter that much. Don't do anything else for him. Tell him to stop contacting you. You need to extricate yourself from the situation and he probably won't take you to small claims court. If he does, I still put odds in your favor that they'll decide it was an as-is sale and tell him to ship off.
we also talk about other random shit and clown upon each other
Yes. And my point is he may say (and even legitimately thought) that you were promising more than you were, either in terms of warranty or promises to help. Once you make representations, or he alleges you made representations, any default "as is" rule is not going to help you. So you will need to deal with your facts, not just point to whatever law establishes the as-is rule.
One thing you might think about doing is sending him a final text, not just asking you to cease contact, but restating the terms of your agreement. That will create a succinct summary of what happened for the benefit of the court if he does pursue a small claims action.
Oh boy yes. I started gaming in the DOS era, and you had to customize autoexec.bat just to get the better games to load. Kids these days, don't know what autoexec.bat is.
I'll match your Autoexec.bat and raise you an IRQ Conflict.
As for the laptop buyer, tell him this is it. Maybe find some good boards like Notebook Review he can post questions to and send those his way.
It's under factory warranty, why are you even talking to him? "You've had your week, you fucked it up, send it in for warranty repair. Call me again and I'll call the police."
Ooh, those were the days!
You didn't realize at the time that the game was actually trying to get it to run. The game itself was just a glorified "A winner is you!" screen.
Getting it to run was the best part of the game back then!
Unless the game sucked then you were just mad
I, <my name>, sell <product> to <other person> for <agreed price>. Product is sold as-is with no warranty given or implied.
There are two copies, we sign both of them, they get one, I keep the other.
Contracts exist to protect both parties. If someone thinks it's "too much" or whatever well, that's their problem. My time and patience is better spent not getting harassed by someone who doesn't understand where the transaction ends or what they're buying.
Having a Roland soundcard and 2/3 of the games you wanted to play didn't support it...
Or even worse (in my case) only having a pc speaker in your 486 and almost nothing supporting anything more than shitty sound effects over that...
I didn't know DOOM even HAD music until sometime in the early 2000s...
I had a SoundBlaster. Everything supported SoundBlaster :P
Yeah what cruel bastard talk you into a Roland? I bet OS/2 Warp had great drivers for it.
So it seems the general consensus is to just ignore him from now forward. I feel like that's probably the best route. Also it's a big city, so i stand not much chance of randomly running into him again. (Montreal.)
Or even worse (in my case) only having a pc speaker in your 486 and almost nothing supporting anything more than shitty sound effects over that...
I didn't know DOOM even HAD music until sometime in the early 2000s...
I learned this lesson the hard way selling a car for the first time about 4 years ago. Dude kept calling and texting me about random shit for 3 weeks after I sold him the car. To the point where a "clicking noise when im driving" Resulted in me driving 20 miles and pulling a stick out of the CV-axle because he drove his car up on his lawn for some fucking reason. You don't have any obligation to help him, anything you're doing is out of the kindness of your own heart. Remind him of that if you have to, just because you sold it to him doesn't mean you have to teach him how to use it and support him for the life of the product.
Hail fellow montrealer.
And yes, if he comes back to complain again, if you respond at all, just give him the number/website for the factory.
If he keeps complaining, block him. Your part in this is long done.