Travelling Surplus Buyers

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ccrtech

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Does anybody get these calls from traveling surplus breaker buyers? They seem to call the office all the time, offering to pay cash for any old breakers,wire, lighting, etc, we have. They are always from out of town and want to come by the shop that day. Seems like a scam of some sort to me.
 
yes it is a scam. They only want scrap wire and if you dont have any they will try and gt you to sell spools usually at a greatly reduced price. I had an iline panel with several breakers so when they called I had them come by they show up pulling a flat trailer piled with wire they ignord the breakers and imediatly started lookinbg for wire. I had a barrel that usually brings a hundred dollars thy offrd twenty i said sorry not today. I almost had to run them out of my shop one was talking to me while the other was piling spools I told them the spools were not scrap. Dont waste your time
 
I got scammed too. The guy claimed to be representing a group of children at an Indian reservation in Oklahoma. Showed up with a flatbed trailer that was about half-full and I showed him everything that was available for salvage. He moved everything into a neat pile in the warehouse, then made me an offer of $500.00 cash for the lot. He then cherry-picked the material, mostly cable and loaded it up before he supposedly ran out of room. He gave me $200.00 cash with the understanding that he would return the next day to pick up the rest of the equipment and pay the remaining $300.00. He even asked me to come in early to meet him since he had to get on the road.

He never showed or answered his phone. Of course, the cable that he took was easily worth more than the $200.00 he paid and the other equipment was nothing but useless junk that ended up in the dumpster.
 
That is one way to negotiate. When someone calls me from a hotel room asking to buy copper & breakers, I don't waist my time. If I am going to discount my materials and take half a day to do it I might as well do it myself.

I would be leery of them going through my shop or shopping through my assets and figuring out how to come back later and relieve me of my organized easily carried off assets.
 
To the guys that had them on site, you should have had someone siphoning fuel out of their truck while they were rounding up copper. When they are pulling away and run out while still in your driveway you can sell them their fuel back at any rate you choose:lol:
 
Yes I have had these guys come by fairly often with this pitch. They offer large amounts for old breakers but only really want the wire and offer you less than half of what the price should be. We usually escort these people off site pronto.
 
dduffee260 said:
Yes I have had these guys come by fairly often with this pitch. They offer large amounts for old breakers but only really want the wire and offer you less than half of what the price should be. We usually escort these people off site pronto.
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strange... all you guys are from states that aren't california.
i've never even heard of this scam, and we do scams here better
than most anywhere.

maybe that is 'cause here, they just steal the wire out of the pipe,
and be done with it. saves all the chatting. in some areas, i've taken
to drilling a pilot hole in the condulet, and filling it up with epoxy to
deter theft. there was a question in my mind about the epoxy damaging
the insulation, but the alternative is losing the wire next week, so if
the insulation lasts five years, they are money ahead.... ;-p
 
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I had a guy call a few weeks ago offering to buy old breakers at $/amp. I am slow, but as I am doing the math and thinking those are some good prices he continues to make his pitch and talk himself out of any purchases. He did not take "Thank you, I am not interested" even the second time, so I hung up. He had the b__s to call back and leave a message that I was "rude". Probably so.
 
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