Thread: Who is interested in a pass-around for a Chinese scope?

Originally Posted by Gibo

Cool concept and good on you for trying to share the experience. The only bit that i dont quite get is the $400 part. You want trust from the testers to hold a $400 bond but have not paid it yourself. Thats not trust. Trust for me would be pay shipping and treat it well (trust) and see how it goes. Even if someone ran it over why should you make $400?

This is a fair question, the answer is in fact quite complicated. But let's try anyway.

On the issue of trust. I have spent a lot of time talking to the guy and talking to you guys over this proposal. Trust me it is not easy to convince him and equally not easy to convince you lot. What do I get out of this in the end of the day? A chance to play with this scope without paying retail price. Just like the rest of you. So for starters if you think I am not trustworthy despite plainly my efforts put into this would be disproportional if I just wanted to scam 410 dollars (the maximum amount I could possibly scam, if I was a scammer), then let the reading end at this point.

It is one thing that after all these discussions each interested forum member decides for himself if I am trustworthy. It is another thing to ask me to vet every single interested party. I cannot do it. No time and no able. I cannot possibly make the correct call to say, Gibo I do not trust you but Tahr I trust you. So the only way to make this work, from my end, is for a participant to deposit 400 bucks as bond.

Now turning to the ownership issue of the scope. The guy did not say "bro I like you so I am going to give you one for free". If that was the case why do I bother with a pass-around? He is willing to send one over, without me/us paying for it, to test/play with it. I told him that in the end of the day, it may break from recoil, it may get scratches from use, etc, so do not expect to get it back in good condition, or get it back at all. Now he is willing to accept that, but he is not prepared to just give one out and then forget about it. That is not the point of this exercise. I only just started talkng to him yesterday, he owes me nothing and knows no one in this forum. What he wants get out of this, is reviews and feedbacks. If someone (for argument sake) steals it, loses it or damages it through negligence , I will have to have an awkward conversation with him. He is not going to come to New Zealand and sue me (I do not think), but it certainly will be shitty. I am not sure what I would do in that situation, to pay him or not, but I certainly do not want that situation to happen in the first place. The best and fairest way to reduce the chance of it happening I can think of is the 400 dollar bond, so that everyone will take good care of it.

This scope can be bought from a few stores on Aliexpress for 440 NZD (then you will have to pay GST etc). On JD.com (China's Amazon equivalent) it is 2400 RMB which is about 500 NZD. So 400 dollar bond in my view really is very fair.