I'm the OP, and I would've been more active in the thread the last 24 hours but my internet has been down.
I want to thank the head-fiers that have read this thread. I realize that it is beyond what is generally a standard topic, and that it doesn't necessarily effect the community directly- if nothing else I feel it brings to light issues that are relevant to all of us, and hopefully someone might learn from my mistake and avoid making this type of error themselves in the future.
To clarify the nature of my mistake- my thinking had been that I could essentially keep the headphones for a 6 month period of time, at which point I would need money and could sell them with little loss. I received a student loan in the form of a 'bulk sum' at the beginning of the year, and figured that I could either keep my money tucked away in my bank account, or convert it into headphones which I could use for the period of time that I would not need immediate access to the funds.
I am very aware that I made an error in judgment in assuming that there would be negligible risk associated with the decision. I didn't realize the risks associated with shipping expensive equiptment over large distances. I also was largely unfamliar with making these types of transactions, and as a result failed to establish expectations for how this type of scenario would be handled with the seller before it actually happened.
My perception that most of our equiptment holds it's value quite well over time (minus source components) caused me to believe I had a safe way to enjoy my passion for high quality audio with little risk until I needed to convert the assets into cash. I underestimated the possibility that things could go horribly wrong and I could end up with a major loss of money.
If I represented that I would be in a severe and immediate financial crisis as a result of this mistake, I appologize. I do feel that there was a mis-reading on the part of a few members that caused them to infer that I had spent "the rent money" on the headphones, and as a result was complaining about my lack of foresight. To be sure, I displayed bad judgment, but the consequences for me are not so immediate that I won't be able to try to recover between now and when I'd expected I would have to sell the headphones- which was going to be in spring.
My hope with this thread was to connect to the community to try to use the collective creativity and brain power of our members to generate ideas that maybe I had not thought of, or resources for possible solutions I was maybe not aware of, to try to solve the problem. The knowledge base here far exceeds my own, and my real hope was that there might be some obvious solution that I had simply failed to recognize.
My secondary hope was to try to get an idea of how other members have dealt with situations like this, and what the expectations were with the person they were involved in the transaction with.
It's reflective of the type of human beings that make up this community that members have volunteered money to put towards rectifying the problem, have offered potential avenues for possible solutions that I'd not considered, and have otherwise simply offered their support. It is appreciated. I've made a number of friends through meets and through posting that fit the mold of the type of person that would help in whatever way they can. I'm continually surprised by the generosity I've seen between members in my time here.
![[AK]Zip](https://cdn.head-fi.org/avatars/m/20/20281.jpg?1273083491){kind=avatar}
