For the longest time I’ve been looking to buy this drone called the Mavic Pro. It is supposed to be one of the best drones in the market. They first announced it in September or October last year and it’s now January and it’s still really hard to find.
My usual drone and camera equipment supplier is a nice guy named CM who has a shop in Berjaya Times Square. If anyone could get it for me it was him, but it’s expensive (partly because it’s so limited).
So I started looking around online and I found this ad on Mudah.
Most other ads price the drone at RM5-6K onwards so I was shocked when I saw one selling for RM3999. That’s even cheaper than the $999 they sell it for in the US (especially with our current exchange rate).
That’s impossible I thought. They say if something sounds too good to be true it probably is right?
So I read on to see how this seller managed to get the drone at such a cheap price.
Okay… to the regular Joe on the street that sounds reasonable. Until you remember that just about every retail shop that sells drones probably are trying to place an order for 65 units or more too. Yet none of them are giving this kind of discount.
What was the catch though? I decided to message this guy and ask him.
Ok. We have to go pick it up at Kuantan which is kinda odd but fine. If he really could sell me that many units it could be worth the trip. Heck I calculated that if I could really buy 26 units off him for RM4K and sell it to a retailer like CM for RM4.5K I could make like RM13K profit from a day trip to Kuantan. And if I sold it directly online I could probably make RM1K per unit or RM26K.
Why can’t he meet us in KL? Well… I asked…
Even with the trip it sounds like a good idea. I rounded up my friend Arnold to see if he would go on the day trip with me and he came up with the idea first of asking this guy to do a video call to show us his stock. To prove it’s legit.
He wasn’t up for it and showed he was really willing to walk away from it all if I wanted to make him jump through hoops for it.
Okay but still I can’t figure out where’s the downside here. What was he going to do? If we made a trip to Kuantan was he going to mug us? Steal our car?
Heck he even sent us a picture of his IC and told us how he’s from Kuantan but is now working in Singapore.
I probed a bit more and then I finally found the catch.
He wanted me to make a 50% deposit before I even go to Kuantan.
I tried to ask him for cash on delivery but he didn’t want that. And this was his lame excuse.
I found this part really ironic because here’s a guy who’s probably hiding from the police but yet he’s saying the police is warning him against guys who might scam him.
I then called it off politely. I didn’t want to call him a scammer and all that because hey how would I know with absolute certainty. From this I’m 90% sure it’s a scam, but heck there is that chance he’s legit so why offend him. Anyway I talked to my friend CM who sells this drone at his shop in Times Square and he seemed more certain than me that it’s a scam.
I got him worried for a while there.
In the end I bought my drone from CM for a lot lot higher than the RM4K.
If you’re looking to buy a drone or camera equipment from a legit source, please call my friend CM at +6012 515 5510.
Timothy Tiah – Co-Founder of Colony, Kuala Lumpur Co-Working Space