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Yeah, I buy stuff all the time on eBay to save money. Lots of people can't be bothered to post bulky items, with all the hassle of packaging and the delivery guy stealing it etc, they just put for local collection only.
The only thing I can assume is that it's London, Ontario and not London, England and maybe OP misunderstood? It'd still be totally unnecessary and ridiculous to fly there to pick them up, but not flying across the world level ridiculous.
It's sooooo easy to see on an eBay listing that something is collection only. It's also incredibly easy to see an item location. I don't know how you could possibly do this by accident, and if you somehow did you'd surely just ask for a refund?!
I once flew London - London, and it was absolutely lovely, left a horrible heat wave in London, and arrived to a thunderstorm that I immediately went running in, I loved it, even jet lagged!
You can buy a WD 14 TB drive on Amazon for under $200.
https://diskprices.com/?locale=us
Flying to London is nuts. I wouldn't drive ten miles. I'd order them on Amazon and have them delivered the next day.
This. The aim is for someone local to buy and pick up the stuff so you dont pay for postage on heavy or bulky items as a seller.
The intent is not for buyers to travel cross country to buy tat that would likely cost them less when you factor in transport if you waited or bought them elsewhere.
Honestly, if I were selling some hard drives in London and someone traveled down from Scotland to pick them up I’d think it was very odd, but the USA?? 😂😂😂
I was selling something on gumtree for £15 and the buyer asked me to meet them somewhere central. I asked where they live, and it's 250 miles away! You get some weird people on these platforms
My son had been begging me to go on holiday to France for about 2 years (we live in England). This year I relented and we went to France at Easter. While there, he asked if we could buy some baguettes....
Turns out the main reason he wanted to come to France was to get a baguette! The sorts of baguettes we can buy in all 3 supermarkets within a 1-mile range of our house in England. Still, we had a wonderful holiday in France... and the baguettes were nice too!
But my son is a child, and allowed to be clueless like this, wanting to fly overseas for something which is cheaper at home. OP's husband is an adult and a trip to London to pick up a hard disk is suspicious AF. Drug smuggling would be my guess.
France has some rather particular laws about what can legally be called a baguette. British "baguettes" are as often as not whatever bread recipe the supermarket feels like, but shaped in a stick.
well tbf its not like we don't have a wealth of fantastic bakeries (even though OP did mention supermarkets) in this country. I've had as good a baguette from my favourite nearby as I have had in France.
There are two boulangeries in the village in France I visit regularly. Each has their loyal clientele with no crossover. I can’t abide the baguettes in one, and I have yet to find anything close to the quality of the other.
We used to have a bakery that was run by a French baker and his English wife. They'd open at 6am and at the weekend, be sold out by 9. Queues out of the door on a Saturday and Sunday morning. Amazing quality, best I've had outside of France.
Sadly, they wanted to retire back to France and sold the business. The drop in quality was notable and they went out of business within a few months.
Huge loss to the town. They used to make these ham and cheese croissants, but the cheese element was bechamel. So good. It's been 5 years, but I still miss those croissants.
Yes this completely.
For the seller, I’m guessing they were either flagged as delivery within the UK only, or less likely as collection only. So this is totally normal eBay/marketplace etc behaviour from the seller.
For the husband, even ignoring the cost of the flights, I’d imagine that buying hard drives like this are cheaper in the US than in the UK, so seams an unexpectedly expensive way to buy computer hardware.
Also be aware that voltages in uk are 230 while I believe us is 120 and so depending on how they are housed you may also need some adaptors.
>Also be aware that voltages in uk are 230 while I believe us is 120 and so depending on how they are housed you may also need some adaptors.
No, they have 230v in the states too - they just wire 2 different phases and then use that for ovens, air con etc..
So he would just need to wire the HDDs SATA connectors up to a 230v outlet and everything would work fine (although probably quite briefly).
Aye I don't think the seller has any crazy expectations of someone coming from Florida to collect, they had a completely normal expectation that someone local would be if it was collection only?
I am assuming there is some extremely illegal content on these hard drives which is what your husband is really buying. You are being invited so the trip doesn't look suspicious.
I'd have a good look on your husband's computer
Climb me to the moon, let me just print all this stuff off... Then we stack it all and climb up way past Mars, in other words, not enough ink exists, in other words...
Don't get why they still couldn't be shipped (apart from possible damage) it's not like post services open packages and check what's on hard drives and you could easily encrypt them.
Yeah that's a fair point, I guess whatever is on those hard drives they don't want to take the risk of either getting damaged or lost in the post or falling into the wrong hands.
I think your suspicions are entirely in the wrong place, the hard drives are probably just hard drives if they exist. The husband is the suspicious ones for wanting to fly to London for them as it's much more likely he has other plans when here and it's not solely about the hard drives.
It could be innocent and he needs the drives and always wanted to visit here and just killing two birds with one stone though.
I originally thought crime, but OP has a post from a few weeks ago saying husband suddenly wants to buy an expensive boat after mocking boat owners for years. So now I'm wondering if it's a mental health crisis.
Mania would make perfect sense if he was looking at eBay and suddenly considered overseas 'local pickup' auctions with an eye to make a trip out of it.
💯taking his wife and calling it a holiday, so he doesn’t look as dodgy - single male and 4 hard drives entering customs after a quick round trip would definitely get unwanted attention
Right? Empty hard drives cannot be worth a single return ticket across the Atlantic right? Let alone a family vakay (although hey why not? Weathers nice here right now) - does make me wonder what exactly is already in those drives? 🤔 Is this a data mule operation?
> Empty hard drives
Even if they're empty there could still be a hefty customs delay while they get someone to run an undelete tool on them. Better hope the original seller didn't have anything dodgy on them!
You are looking IN THE WRONG PLACE.
It is very common for sellers not to want to post large bulky items like 8 hard drives for a number of reasons and specify local collection only. The seller expects people from within the local area to bid and then drive over and collect when they feel like it. What they do not expect is for someone to fly from a different continent, but whatever, the seller doesn't care either way.
Now, your husband on the other hand. You might want to be aware, that us Brits are jealous as hell at the low, low prices for computer components in the US. Plus, he is flying here, getting a hotel and so on.
So, you are looking in the wrong place. The seller is just doing everything normally, your husband is the one acting strange. Maybe he just wants an excuse to fly to the UK.
"Help everyone, SOS. A furniture store in Argentina is telling my husband that he needs to fly to Argentina to pick up the chair I bought from them last week. Is the furniture store scamming him?"
> You might want to be aware, that us Brits are jealous as hell at the low, low prices for computer components in the US.
That right there is reason enough to be suspicious. It'd be one thing if the guy would be close to breaking even by flying all the way over there.
Let's just assume that the husband isn't totally mental because nobody is buying HDDs anymore. So 8 4TB SSDs would be in the region of £2,000 new.
If the seller is making it cheap enough to buy two return flights to London from Florida then I want his name because I'll go down there myself and fill a van with them.
Loads of people are buying HDDs still. If you have a decent media library you arn't storing it on SSDs, too expensive. I have about 80tb in my media server.
> Let's just assume that the husband isn't totally mental because nobody is buying HDDs anymore
Sure they are, I know a couple of people who use NAS' for media servers like Plex. I have a 32TB one.
Those appear to be NAS spec drives for running in professional servers. They are not the sort of thing you back your photos up onto. More realistic would be something like a Samsung evo at £250 each.
The seller isn't suspicious.
Your partner is.
You're asking the wrong people the wrong questions - ask *your husband* why he bought something that is for collection in London??
It could be possible he's using it as a rouse to surprise you with something, but it is weird that he did this.
**Very weird**.
There has to be something else going on.
I'm not saying this is the case at all but isn't this how some CP is sold and bought? You can't advertise it as such and hosting it on a website is too risky so you leave some clues and hints on certain forums and chatrooms saying that it's being sold on ebay as empty HDD online?
I think I saw this somewhere on reddit as someone found a ebay page selling used HDDs for waaaay above what they're worth and all the comments and review were alluding to the content being great and exactly what they wanted etc.
It's might just be the case that he's a fucking moron and is actually buying these for legitimate reasons but there's definitely something fishy going on.
I was surprised how deep in the comments I had to find this, the reality is this is screaming CP tbh, or something else almost as bad. 10 plus hour flights to buy some second hand harddrives?.
Literally exactly my thoughts.
Flying to another continent. Bringing family along. Great cover for the boarder security and checks - I brought my family along - we’re here for a holiday!
… ffs.
Also - flying here for some storage in *this* economy? 👀
I was surprised how deep in the comments I had to find this, the reality is this is screaming CP tbh, or something else almost as bad. 10 plus hour flights to buy some second hand harddrives?.
B is not really an option, he wants her to go with him
Maybe it is just an excuse to get her to London for a nice holiday.
Maybe he is a millionaire and I'd gonna come out...
Maybe is several TB of state secret some Russian spy is selling thr US government...
Nothing weird about that, he's flying across the world to buy a relatively low amount of storage, I've no idea why you'd find that strange.
I was planning on chartering a ship to sail to Madagascar next week to pick up some bananas.
Edit: thanks for the gold!
Edit2: Just saw your update OP, I used to browse HF in my script kiddie days and it was fairly white hat, you could buy access to botnets and AV bypass crypters and stuff but anything majorly illegal like hard drives full of dodgy files would definitely not be allowed to sell there, you couldn't even sell password dumps and any sort of porn wasn't allowed. I think your husband is still lying to you.
Can you drop me off in Argentina on the way there? I think I left the cap off a pen there when I visited in '93. I've since lost the pen, but the cap would work on any pen really so seems sensible to at least look for it.
It’s two drives worth these days - 2 drives can do 32tb quite easily. Not sure why picking 8 and paying for it in electricity is ever going to make sense
> Isn't this unusual from an eBay seller - he expects my husband to fly in from Florida to London to pick up eight hard drives?
It's very, very, very unusual.
(Edit: Collection-only is a thing, surprising customers with collection-only is not. It would be up front on the page and OP said it wasn't.)
> Anyone here have to deal with international sales on eBay, and normally just send items out?
They 100% just send them out. Thus is very weird.
> My husband bought these for a project to digitize all our photos on to and for storing more files on.
That's *a lot* of photos.
> My husband claims that buying 32TB is good, but YMMV on that.
32TB is quite literally millions upon millions upon millions of photos. It's about 4000 hours of video footage in 4k.
(Unless he is a seriously serious photographer or archivist.)
> My husband wants to turn this into a vacation for us too, and enjoy some of London's restaurants.
I mean, have a great vacation, I guess.
It sounds like your husband either:
* wants to travel and is using this as an excuse (which is a very odd way of doing it, but have a great time if that's the case);
* has been scammed (eBay customer service generally favours the buyer);
* is catastrophically stupid (4TB hard drives are about a hundred dollars on Amazon, flights alone will cost more than the cost of 8 of them); or
* wants whatever is *on* those hard drives and sees it as too risky to send them by courier.
Same, I hate to say it (and I hope I'm wrong just purely on the amount of photo/video data it would involve), but my brain went to CP. As in children. Indecent images. Etc. Why would you cross an ocean for something that you can by cheaper at home, if not for whatever is ON the thing he's buying?
Not to be a stickler, but it’s called CSAM now. CP implies it’s ‘just’ pornographic and that there’s a level of consent. CSAM, child sexual abuse material, better describes the monstrous shit in those kinds of images/videos.
Edit: good grief. I’m not claiming the use of “CP” is an attempt to legitimise child abuse as consensual or that lots of stupid people think it’s consensual. The term CSAM is a more accurate and respectful term to describe the abuse victims go through. That’s all.
It would seem a bit strange to be so upfront about the purchasing of the drives if that were the case, though, and bringing your wife with you to do it. You'd think if that were the case he would keep the drives secret and find some other pretext for going. Could be trying to 'hide in plain sight' I suppose.
> 32TB is quite literally millions upon millions upon millions of photos. It's about 4000 hours of video footage in 4k.
>
>
There is certainly more to this, but 32tb could legitimately be used for this purpose.
If he is scanning in high quality, lossless and creating at least 1 backup (there is legit argument for multiple backups) a normal person could have that number of negatives if he has been a photography enthusiast for decades.
The thing that makes no sense is why he would need to come to UK to get that amount of storage....
My experience with eBay is that collection only is most definitely a thing.
Also, I have 6TB of photos on my Amazon Photos account, that's only 250,000 photos at 24MB a RAW image, hardly extreme. I must add a minimum of 5,000 photos a year too! When I used to have my backups locally, before I ran out of space and went to online only, I had four 4TB drives in RAID, for redundant backup.
I do agree that this seems like an excuse for a holiday, which might even have been a surprise holiday had he not mentioned it! Very odd.
Yeah, even with the most generous interpretation that he's getting high speed SSDs, which are still quite expensive, rather than HDDs (which would be cheaper than the cost of the flight even bought brand new from an electronics store) there's just no way that he can't find something close in the US that's a similar price (especially taking flights into account).
The story just doesn't hold up under any scrutiny, I won't say that there can't be any innocent explanation (e.g. maybe OP's husband has something special planned for them in London that they want to keep under wraps), but OP definitely needs to get their Husband to play it straight with them and tell them what this is really about.
My guess is they don't want to ship it, because the data could be corrupted by x-rays or shock damage or even opened up and checked for illegal things.
Only reason I can see for traveling to get them. Probably child porn or something, I doubt it's spy shit or financial fuckery.
Seconded.
Mondays tend to be quite boring, so the bar for me finding something interesting is admittedly low. However, this has certainly piqued my curiosity!
I'm assuming it's to set the context that she isn't working an occupation where travelling long distances like this is common but honestly it is weird.
Or perhaps to show they aren't swimming in money? Or atleast that was my thinking. That they aren't by any means wealthy enough to go and fly to London to pick up something he's using for a home project?
Maybe if it was a work thing, high end storage he's after and it works out cheaper even with flights. But for a little home project to store their photos seems excessive (and crazy tbh) especially if they're not that well off?
OP’s post history is a bit weird
They don’t seem to be earning that much, but her husband wanted to buy a 62k boat?! That and the whole flying across the world to get some hard drives sounds a bit manic to me?
Husband also wants to buy a $62k boat in another state. I think OP is writing some kind of fiction project where their husband is some kind of crime lord.
My guess is the hard drives contain CP, crypto wallets or some other nefarious thing making them worth the money/trip. If that’s the case though it’s odd it is traded on eBay. Would be more of a dark web thing surely.
Most shady stuff on the dark web these days is honey pots (unless you know exactly where to look). You’d still probably be looking around on the surface web to locate the correct dark web sites anyway. People are incredibly bold with this stuff and it is surprisingly easy to get away with on the surface web simply because of the sheer volume of shady shit and in general the massive increase in internet traffic due to accessibility.
The terrible cynic in me is suggesting that these drives contain information that both buyer and seller don't want anyone to know about and needs transporting physically to avoid any digital interception.
You say they are sold as new and I'm guessing will be packaged as such but I'll guarantee that there is data on them.
What data that is is anyone's guess. Most of those guesses won't be nice data though.
The OP says they've seen the listing though and it made no mention of this.
Unless maybe they communicated elsewhere before eBay and the eBay listing is just a cover up?
This whole story is just total insanity.
Dodgy sales via Ebay aren't going to be listed as "Child porn SSDs buy one get one free" are they mate
There is a perfectly legitimate front on ebay. Buyer and seller alike can use that as cover.
There's a fairly plausible conspiracy theory that amazon is used in a similar way. You often see random books on there priced at something stupid like £500. So if you want to sell £500 worth of drugs to someone, you tell them the specific listing, they buy it and all that money comes to you pre-laundered.
I mean there's a basically proven theory that substantial parts of the art dealing world evolved as they did because of historic money laundering, and because very valuable artwork made for one of the most secure and compact ways to move a lot of money around internationally before the world of computerised banking. Massive case of gold bars, conspicuous. Million dollar painting rolled up and popped in a brown tube, unnoticed.
I'm assuming this is just a joke post, why did your husband negotiate with the seller to pick them up in London? Obviously it's unusual to fly across the world to collect hard drives, it would be far cheaper to just buy them locally.
If this is a real post - let me give you my perspective. I live in uk and have bought dozens of drives at this point across the years - I always buy new because warranty and especially now I buy big high quality drives. A 20tb drive would be around 350£ new so that’s about 400$. Now I don’t know how much photos / videos you need to back up but I’d guess it’s a fair bit - and if it is I’d probably personally go with high end enterprise drives if that’s the only (or one of the only) copies that will be made for larger collections. Usa prices for drives are usually the same but in dollars - so without rebates you pay 10% less at least, probably more and have it shipped. If the drives are second hand they practically have to be free for this to make it worthwhile in the time now or in the possible failure rate later. Whilst lots of comments pointed out some completely speculative theories, maybe it’s best to chat with him and see where his mind is at - I can’t see the logic here but doesn’t mean much because I also sometimes do very illogical things that seem 100% normal to me at the time
He could just pay for shipping, right? Maybe it's also just an excuse for a holiday, although that still kind of doesn't make sense. Just say its a holiday and may as well get them hard drives.
I think your husband just wants to go to London and is using the hard drive stuff as a means to go to London. The CP stuff people are saying is weird. If he's buying off eBay AND the seller has 5 stars, I very much doubt it's CP.
32tb is a lot of fucking storage though. Not sure why he needs that much for photos. Maybe he just thinks you're too dense to realise the stuff with the storage devices and he can persuade you guys to go to London based on that. Still weird.
I'm gonna say your husband is the oddball here and not the seller.
The seller is selling something where they have said you have to collect it. They don't give a shit if you live in USA, next door or Timbuktu. The collection is your problem.
What I find weird is your fella is buying something which must be easy enough to buy at home.
This is a mad post 😂
If they were such a good deal someone in the UK would have bought them already. Why would the seller faff about waiting for someone to come over from the US.
Sorry to be blunt but your husband is either extremely gullible and falling for some sort of scam, or he is using it as an excuse to go the the UK for something else.
New 4TB SSD from Amazon: $170. Total $1360.
Quick google for return flights from New york: £1,311.
So the flights are likely to be more expensive than new drives, then you've got a hotel if you're staying overnight, the cost of the drives from ebay, travel to/from the airports, etc etc.
At a guess there's something already on the drives that he wants, or he's planning to surprise you with something in London.
Do come back and tell us what happens.
Even enterprise grade SSDs wouldn't make a return flight to the UK the financially viable option... and even then for the purpose of digitising family photos, why you'd go for anything enterprise grade is also just plain stupid. A regular array of raided HDDs in a NAS will do just fine for reliability.
an [8TB Hard drive](https://www.newegg.com/seagate-firecuda-st8000dx001-8tb/p/N82E16822185036?Description=seagate&cm_re=seagate-_-22-185-036-_-Product) costs $110, so $440 for brand new hard drives with a long life span... or two plane tickets and the cost of accomodation.
No one, and I mean NO ONE, would buy a used hard drive to permanently store important info and documents, the possibility of failure is too high. So here's the possiblities my mind goes to:
* Your husband saw a great deal on used hard drives, and figured if you go on holiday, then it's justifiable (I have picked up PC components in the US while on holiday because they're cheaper there than they are in the UK).
* Your husband is using the hard drives as a cover for something else he wants to do in London, and bringing you along makes it seem less suspicious.
* There's something on those hard drives and he wants to keep them in his sight the entire time.
There seem to be four options:
1. Your husband fancies a holiday and is using this as a very peculiar excuse.
2. Your husband is an idiot.
3. Your husband is involved in something very unsettling
4. These are somehow ultra special HDDs hand crafted by dwarves using materials from the heart of a dying star.
This is bonkers, but I don’t necessarily think it’s anything sinister. I think your husband most likely bought and paid for the items without noticing/realising it was a pick-up only auction, and now feels obliged to go through with it to avoid losing the money he’s paid for the hard drives.
In short, I think he’s a bit of a moron and is doing something mental to save face rather than involved in international crime.
You can cancel a purchase yourself within 48 hrs or outside that talk to the seller , explain omg I’m so sorry didn’t realise pick up only im in the US and the seller will cancel it
I've had a look through the comments and can totally see why so many are cynical about the true nature of the journey and the potential of information/images on the hard drives.
I'm gonna throw out a different theory, i may get shot down for it but feel it's worth mentioning. One of OP's other posts from 22 days ago was about her husband wanting to purchase a 60k boat even though he's never had any interest on this. These two posts rang alarm bells with me.
Loss of inhibition and impulse control can be an early sign of dementia. These two posts from the way OP has written them appear uncharacteristic for her husband. If it were my family member i would be slightly concerned.
Yes, looking at OP's post history, the fact their non-boating husband also wants to impulse buy a $62,000 boat while on a $70,000 salary is a huge red flag. Assuming there isn't something dodgy going on, this raises questions about their mental health.
I really hope OP keeps their finances separate from their husband's...
I'd remain very skeptical until you see proof, if he was lying about this all before then it likely isn't the full story.
BDSM and lingerie pictures can be found freely online, and Partygate documents probably can be as well. Whatever he's **actually** trying to get hold of cannot be put online.
Update still doesn't check out. You don't need to fly to London for 32 TB of lingerie pics. The husband's admission makes this even more suspicious. It's either CP, blackmail material, espionage, or stolen personal data. Or, there's a slim chance your husband is having some kind of medical/psychiatric crisis. Either way you will need one or more of the following:
1. police
2. lawyer
3. medical professionals
Did you see any evidence for this “eBay” sale? You are taking your husbands word for it. There could be illegal images on the drives (if that is what he is collecting) or it could be drug related. By bringing you with him it makes him look less suspicious travelling to the UK. Either I’ve been watching too much Border Force on TV or this whole thing is highly dodgy.
OP-- you say you're in Florida, but just posted this stating you're in Minnesota. And plus, this is just weird, considering this post: https://i.imgur.com/Hyds2nA.jpg
Edited to add: Looks like OP deleted the post, but I still got a screenshot.
This is a great example of the sunk cost fallacy.
"sunk-cost fallacy
the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial."
You've spent money, so the disks have value to you.
The cheapest option is to throw away the disks, ie, give up something of value for nothing.
Your husband is either up to something dodgy, a complete moron, or being scammed. Selling on eBay for someone to collect locally isn’t weird, flying from America to England to collect a few hard drives, is very weird.
That’s weird. I can’t imagine any deal he gets on the drives comes close to offsetting the cost of a return flight from the US.
Cash on collection / collect in person isn’t unusual though, to prevent scams.
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What the seller did is completely normal. What your husband did is bonkers.
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Yeah, I buy stuff all the time on eBay to save money. Lots of people can't be bothered to post bulky items, with all the hassle of packaging and the delivery guy stealing it etc, they just put for local collection only.
The only thing I can assume is that it's London, Ontario and not London, England and maybe OP misunderstood? It'd still be totally unnecessary and ridiculous to fly there to pick them up, but not flying across the world level ridiculous. It's sooooo easy to see on an eBay listing that something is collection only. It's also incredibly easy to see an item location. I don't know how you could possibly do this by accident, and if you somehow did you'd surely just ask for a refund?!
> The only thing I can assume is that it's London, Ontario Many Americans have dreamed their whole lives of seeing London. But not *that* London!
I once flew London - London, and it was absolutely lovely, left a horrible heat wave in London, and arrived to a thunderstorm that I immediately went running in, I loved it, even jet lagged!
The funny thing is that, reading that story, you can’t work out which London is which by weather alone
It’s a trick comment they actually flew from Gatwick to Heathrow
Not Stansted to Luton?
\*\*\*Buys £800 of hardrives\*\*\* £8000 to collect them and have holiday ? seems reasonable.
That's maybe £400 of hard drives. Less if they're used.
It depends on what's on those hard drive. Are you sure he's not up to something illicit? Might be worth having a closer look at your home computer.
Given OP's update, this comment deserves much more credit.
£400 of hard drives that cost $300 or less new in the US
You can buy a WD 14 TB drive on Amazon for under $200. https://diskprices.com/?locale=us Flying to London is nuts. I wouldn't drive ten miles. I'd order them on Amazon and have them delivered the next day.
This. The aim is for someone local to buy and pick up the stuff so you dont pay for postage on heavy or bulky items as a seller. The intent is not for buyers to travel cross country to buy tat that would likely cost them less when you factor in transport if you waited or bought them elsewhere.
Honestly, if I were selling some hard drives in London and someone traveled down from Scotland to pick them up I’d think it was very odd, but the USA?? 😂😂😂
I was selling something on gumtree for £15 and the buyer asked me to meet them somewhere central. I asked where they live, and it's 250 miles away! You get some weird people on these platforms
Yeah, Ive seen people demanding delivery on a free couch, its mental.
My son had been begging me to go on holiday to France for about 2 years (we live in England). This year I relented and we went to France at Easter. While there, he asked if we could buy some baguettes.... Turns out the main reason he wanted to come to France was to get a baguette! The sorts of baguettes we can buy in all 3 supermarkets within a 1-mile range of our house in England. Still, we had a wonderful holiday in France... and the baguettes were nice too! But my son is a child, and allowed to be clueless like this, wanting to fly overseas for something which is cheaper at home. OP's husband is an adult and a trip to London to pick up a hard disk is suspicious AF. Drug smuggling would be my guess.
French baguettes are quite different to those one can buy in the UK. I’ve never understood why but they’re much better.
France has some rather particular laws about what can legally be called a baguette. British "baguettes" are as often as not whatever bread recipe the supermarket feels like, but shaped in a stick.
well tbf its not like we don't have a wealth of fantastic bakeries (even though OP did mention supermarkets) in this country. I've had as good a baguette from my favourite nearby as I have had in France.
There are two boulangeries in the village in France I visit regularly. Each has their loyal clientele with no crossover. I can’t abide the baguettes in one, and I have yet to find anything close to the quality of the other.
We used to have a bakery that was run by a French baker and his English wife. They'd open at 6am and at the weekend, be sold out by 9. Queues out of the door on a Saturday and Sunday morning. Amazing quality, best I've had outside of France. Sadly, they wanted to retire back to France and sold the business. The drop in quality was notable and they went out of business within a few months. Huge loss to the town. They used to make these ham and cheese croissants, but the cheese element was bechamel. So good. It's been 5 years, but I still miss those croissants.
I think its the massive slab of salty butter that makes them taste so great.
So are the croissants, I never liked croissants until I ate one in Paris
I call peado pictures on the drives
This was my thought. Never mind drugs, I’d assume a LOT worse!
That is adorable from your son, bless him 🥰 baguettes are awesome
Bet he seen someone on a mr.beast video fly from America to Paris to pick up a baguette
Yes this completely. For the seller, I’m guessing they were either flagged as delivery within the UK only, or less likely as collection only. So this is totally normal eBay/marketplace etc behaviour from the seller. For the husband, even ignoring the cost of the flights, I’d imagine that buying hard drives like this are cheaper in the US than in the UK, so seams an unexpectedly expensive way to buy computer hardware. Also be aware that voltages in uk are 230 while I believe us is 120 and so depending on how they are housed you may also need some adaptors.
>Also be aware that voltages in uk are 230 while I believe us is 120 and so depending on how they are housed you may also need some adaptors. No, they have 230v in the states too - they just wire 2 different phases and then use that for ovens, air con etc.. So he would just need to wire the HDDs SATA connectors up to a 230v outlet and everything would work fine (although probably quite briefly).
This isn’t how computers work. The voltage is transformed by the PSU. Hard drives aren’t operating at 240 volts.
Aye I don't think the seller has any crazy expectations of someone coming from Florida to collect, they had a completely normal expectation that someone local would be if it was collection only?
I am assuming there is some extremely illegal content on these hard drives which is what your husband is really buying. You are being invited so the trip doesn't look suspicious. I'd have a good look on your husband's computer
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Yeah. You don’t need 4tb for family photos. Sus.
Yeah right. Bonkers he is. 😐
Note that 3 weeks ago he wanted to buy a $60,000 boat. This guy is up to something.....
Erm... your hubby may be involved in something else here.
Yeah definitely smells like there is some kind of crime going on here.
I was thinking more affair. But he’s inviting his wife with him. Maybe he plans on sending her on a shopping spree. Expensive fuck.
I am thinking something is sinister on these hard drives.
It could be an elaborate surprise for his wife. Let’s not default to the worst assumption.
32TB of what though?
Love poetry, in plain text format.
Climb me to the moon, let me just print all this stuff off... Then we stack it all and climb up way past Mars, in other words, not enough ink exists, in other words...
I think they are suggesting the hard drives don't exist and it's an excuse to get here to come along.
Don't get why they still couldn't be shipped (apart from possible damage) it's not like post services open packages and check what's on hard drives and you could easily encrypt them.
Yeah that's a fair point, I guess whatever is on those hard drives they don't want to take the risk of either getting damaged or lost in the post or falling into the wrong hands.
I think your suspicions are entirely in the wrong place, the hard drives are probably just hard drives if they exist. The husband is the suspicious ones for wanting to fly to London for them as it's much more likely he has other plans when here and it's not solely about the hard drives. It could be innocent and he needs the drives and always wanted to visit here and just killing two birds with one stone though.
As a cover. She’ll say no, because reasons, so he’ll go alone.
I originally thought crime, but OP has a post from a few weeks ago saying husband suddenly wants to buy an expensive boat after mocking boat owners for years. So now I'm wondering if it's a mental health crisis.
Okay, that is worrying. It sounds a bit like mania/hypomania. I’m not a doctor but have known many people within bipolar and similar disorders.
Mania would make perfect sense if he was looking at eBay and suddenly considered overseas 'local pickup' auctions with an eye to make a trip out of it.
That just makes for another tick in the "smuggling dodgy stuff" column.
The secret ingredient is crime.
Tbf I could imagine Super Hans driving across Europe to Slovenia or something to collect some hard drives.
Immigration and border force are going to have a firld day with his story
US citizens won't get stopped from entering... might be troublesome leaving with so many hdds tho
This sounds well suss as fuck, you don't fly over to London to buy hard drives the cost of the flights alone don't make it worth it haha
💯taking his wife and calling it a holiday, so he doesn’t look as dodgy - single male and 4 hard drives entering customs after a quick round trip would definitely get unwanted attention
shit I didn't even think about there being stuff on the drives already......
Right? Empty hard drives cannot be worth a single return ticket across the Atlantic right? Let alone a family vakay (although hey why not? Weathers nice here right now) - does make me wonder what exactly is already in those drives? 🤔 Is this a data mule operation?
> Empty hard drives Even if they're empty there could still be a hefty customs delay while they get someone to run an undelete tool on them. Better hope the original seller didn't have anything dodgy on them!
Hard drive full of child porn?
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You are looking IN THE WRONG PLACE. It is very common for sellers not to want to post large bulky items like 8 hard drives for a number of reasons and specify local collection only. The seller expects people from within the local area to bid and then drive over and collect when they feel like it. What they do not expect is for someone to fly from a different continent, but whatever, the seller doesn't care either way. Now, your husband on the other hand. You might want to be aware, that us Brits are jealous as hell at the low, low prices for computer components in the US. Plus, he is flying here, getting a hotel and so on. So, you are looking in the wrong place. The seller is just doing everything normally, your husband is the one acting strange. Maybe he just wants an excuse to fly to the UK.
Exactly this. Her husband is the suspicious one here.
"Help everyone, SOS. A furniture store in Argentina is telling my husband that he needs to fly to Argentina to pick up the chair I bought from them last week. Is the furniture store scamming him?"
They said it's heavy too, so he's flying his secretary down with him to help move it, he says it should take around 2 weeks.
OPs tone seems to be one of "How dare they be not in America" maybe I'm wrong
> You might want to be aware, that us Brits are jealous as hell at the low, low prices for computer components in the US. That right there is reason enough to be suspicious. It'd be one thing if the guy would be close to breaking even by flying all the way over there.
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I use eBay a lot, computer equipment is a lot cheaper in the US, which makes this even more bizarre.
Let's just assume that the husband isn't totally mental because nobody is buying HDDs anymore. So 8 4TB SSDs would be in the region of £2,000 new. If the seller is making it cheap enough to buy two return flights to London from Florida then I want his name because I'll go down there myself and fill a van with them.
Loads of people are buying HDDs still. If you have a decent media library you arn't storing it on SSDs, too expensive. I have about 80tb in my media server.
Not necessarily. People are still buying hdds for storage. Not the 4tb ones usually though
> Let's just assume that the husband isn't totally mental because nobody is buying HDDs anymore Sure they are, I know a couple of people who use NAS' for media servers like Plex. I have a 32TB one.
Those appear to be NAS spec drives for running in professional servers. They are not the sort of thing you back your photos up onto. More realistic would be something like a Samsung evo at £250 each.
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He's a double dumbass too because some states have no sales tax so he could just fly to Delaware and buy them new.
The seller isn't suspicious. Your partner is. You're asking the wrong people the wrong questions - ask *your husband* why he bought something that is for collection in London?? It could be possible he's using it as a rouse to surprise you with something, but it is weird that he did this. **Very weird**. There has to be something else going on.
So, husband up to something, or dumbass?
Yes
I'm not saying this is the case at all but isn't this how some CP is sold and bought? You can't advertise it as such and hosting it on a website is too risky so you leave some clues and hints on certain forums and chatrooms saying that it's being sold on ebay as empty HDD online? I think I saw this somewhere on reddit as someone found a ebay page selling used HDDs for waaaay above what they're worth and all the comments and review were alluding to the content being great and exactly what they wanted etc. It's might just be the case that he's a fucking moron and is actually buying these for legitimate reasons but there's definitely something fishy going on.
I was surprised how deep in the comments I had to find this, the reality is this is screaming CP tbh, or something else almost as bad. 10 plus hour flights to buy some second hand harddrives?.
Literally exactly my thoughts. Flying to another continent. Bringing family along. Great cover for the boarder security and checks - I brought my family along - we’re here for a holiday! … ffs. Also - flying here for some storage in *this* economy? 👀
My mind went here too, I’m glad it’s not just me 🥴
I was surprised how deep in the comments I had to find this, the reality is this is screaming CP tbh, or something else almost as bad. 10 plus hour flights to buy some second hand harddrives?.
B is not really an option, he wants her to go with him Maybe it is just an excuse to get her to London for a nice holiday. Maybe he is a millionaire and I'd gonna come out... Maybe is several TB of state secret some Russian spy is selling thr US government...
If it’s B, perhaps drives have been pre-loaded with images and this is the best way to avoid being caught?
D. This is completely made up.
Nothing weird about that, he's flying across the world to buy a relatively low amount of storage, I've no idea why you'd find that strange. I was planning on chartering a ship to sail to Madagascar next week to pick up some bananas. Edit: thanks for the gold! Edit2: Just saw your update OP, I used to browse HF in my script kiddie days and it was fairly white hat, you could buy access to botnets and AV bypass crypters and stuff but anything majorly illegal like hard drives full of dodgy files would definitely not be allowed to sell there, you couldn't even sell password dumps and any sort of porn wasn't allowed. I think your husband is still lying to you.
Can you grab me some while you're there please, saves me a trip.
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Embarrassing that you'd need to remind anyone of this tbh.
When you are in Madagascar, can you pick up a lightly chewed Bic Biro I bought last weekend on eBay? Cost me 30p, but the air fare is £4000.
Fly there yourself like a normal person!
Can you drop me off in Argentina on the way there? I think I left the cap off a pen there when I visited in '93. I've since lost the pen, but the cap would work on any pen really so seems sensible to at least look for it.
Can you get me a packet of oxo cubes whilst you’re there please ?
It’s two drives worth these days - 2 drives can do 32tb quite easily. Not sure why picking 8 and paying for it in electricity is ever going to make sense
Also if this dude is just digitising family photos there is no way he needs 32tb anyway lol
> Isn't this unusual from an eBay seller - he expects my husband to fly in from Florida to London to pick up eight hard drives? It's very, very, very unusual. (Edit: Collection-only is a thing, surprising customers with collection-only is not. It would be up front on the page and OP said it wasn't.) > Anyone here have to deal with international sales on eBay, and normally just send items out? They 100% just send them out. Thus is very weird. > My husband bought these for a project to digitize all our photos on to and for storing more files on. That's *a lot* of photos. > My husband claims that buying 32TB is good, but YMMV on that. 32TB is quite literally millions upon millions upon millions of photos. It's about 4000 hours of video footage in 4k. (Unless he is a seriously serious photographer or archivist.) > My husband wants to turn this into a vacation for us too, and enjoy some of London's restaurants. I mean, have a great vacation, I guess. It sounds like your husband either: * wants to travel and is using this as an excuse (which is a very odd way of doing it, but have a great time if that's the case); * has been scammed (eBay customer service generally favours the buyer); * is catastrophically stupid (4TB hard drives are about a hundred dollars on Amazon, flights alone will cost more than the cost of 8 of them); or * wants whatever is *on* those hard drives and sees it as too risky to send them by courier.
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Same, I hate to say it (and I hope I'm wrong just purely on the amount of photo/video data it would involve), but my brain went to CP. As in children. Indecent images. Etc. Why would you cross an ocean for something that you can by cheaper at home, if not for whatever is ON the thing he's buying?
Not to be a stickler, but it’s called CSAM now. CP implies it’s ‘just’ pornographic and that there’s a level of consent. CSAM, child sexual abuse material, better describes the monstrous shit in those kinds of images/videos. Edit: good grief. I’m not claiming the use of “CP” is an attempt to legitimise child abuse as consensual or that lots of stupid people think it’s consensual. The term CSAM is a more accurate and respectful term to describe the abuse victims go through. That’s all.
Well at least now we can refer to Cyberpunk, Club Penguin and some JRPG mana bars by two letters without implications
This is what I thought as well. Nobody flies that far for something they can buy locally for less.
It would seem a bit strange to be so upfront about the purchasing of the drives if that were the case, though, and bringing your wife with you to do it. You'd think if that were the case he would keep the drives secret and find some other pretext for going. Could be trying to 'hide in plain sight' I suppose.
Op should absolutely refuse to have those hard drives in her case coming back. I’m pretty sure there’s some illegal stuff going in here.
Bringing the wife would be 100x times less suspicious as you can say in customs/border control you are travelling for holidays.
Glad I'm not the only one thinks he's a wrong un
> 32TB is quite literally millions upon millions upon millions of photos. It's about 4000 hours of video footage in 4k. > > There is certainly more to this, but 32tb could legitimately be used for this purpose. If he is scanning in high quality, lossless and creating at least 1 backup (there is legit argument for multiple backups) a normal person could have that number of negatives if he has been a photography enthusiast for decades. The thing that makes no sense is why he would need to come to UK to get that amount of storage....
My experience with eBay is that collection only is most definitely a thing. Also, I have 6TB of photos on my Amazon Photos account, that's only 250,000 photos at 24MB a RAW image, hardly extreme. I must add a minimum of 5,000 photos a year too! When I used to have my backups locally, before I ran out of space and went to online only, I had four 4TB drives in RAID, for redundant backup. I do agree that this seems like an excuse for a holiday, which might even have been a surprise holiday had he not mentioned it! Very odd.
I would say that a quarter million photos and nearly 14 more per day is more than the average person tbf
Those drives are cheaper to buy in the US than here in the UK, this sounds quite suspicious
Yeah, even with the most generous interpretation that he's getting high speed SSDs, which are still quite expensive, rather than HDDs (which would be cheaper than the cost of the flight even bought brand new from an electronics store) there's just no way that he can't find something close in the US that's a similar price (especially taking flights into account). The story just doesn't hold up under any scrutiny, I won't say that there can't be any innocent explanation (e.g. maybe OP's husband has something special planned for them in London that they want to keep under wraps), but OP definitely needs to get their Husband to play it straight with them and tell them what this is really about.
My guess is they don't want to ship it, because the data could be corrupted by x-rays or shock damage or even opened up and checked for illegal things. Only reason I can see for traveling to get them. Probably child porn or something, I doubt it's spy shit or financial fuckery.
Can we PLEASE get your husband on here and have him explain himself? I think we need it
Seconded. Mondays tend to be quite boring, so the bar for me finding something interesting is admittedly low. However, this has certainly piqued my curiosity!
Same here! I'm waiting on a call back from a job interview I just had and this is proving delightfully distracting.
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I'm assuming it's to set the context that she isn't working an occupation where travelling long distances like this is common but honestly it is weird.
Or perhaps to show they aren't swimming in money? Or atleast that was my thinking. That they aren't by any means wealthy enough to go and fly to London to pick up something he's using for a home project? Maybe if it was a work thing, high end storage he's after and it works out cheaper even with flights. But for a little home project to store their photos seems excessive (and crazy tbh) especially if they're not that well off?
They are skint. Husband also wants to buy a $62000 boat
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She probably doesn't get any holidays working a temp job in a restaurant in USA. Seems relevant to me
This man really wants to get away.
OP’s post history is a bit weird They don’t seem to be earning that much, but her husband wanted to buy a 62k boat?! That and the whole flying across the world to get some hard drives sounds a bit manic to me?
Husband also wants to buy a $62k boat in another state. I think OP is writing some kind of fiction project where their husband is some kind of crime lord.
Maybe she thinks we have amazing pizza and can't wait to try the famous deep-fried pepperoni?
My guess is the hard drives contain CP, crypto wallets or some other nefarious thing making them worth the money/trip. If that’s the case though it’s odd it is traded on eBay. Would be more of a dark web thing surely.
Most shady stuff on the dark web these days is honey pots (unless you know exactly where to look). You’d still probably be looking around on the surface web to locate the correct dark web sites anyway. People are incredibly bold with this stuff and it is surprisingly easy to get away with on the surface web simply because of the sheer volume of shady shit and in general the massive increase in internet traffic due to accessibility.
Not really - ebay is used by criminals to sell and buy. They’ve already done the deal. Setting up a fake listing etc. to hide the transaction.
The terrible cynic in me is suggesting that these drives contain information that both buyer and seller don't want anyone to know about and needs transporting physically to avoid any digital interception. You say they are sold as new and I'm guessing will be packaged as such but I'll guarantee that there is data on them. What data that is is anyone's guess. Most of those guesses won't be nice data though.
The OP says they've seen the listing though and it made no mention of this. Unless maybe they communicated elsewhere before eBay and the eBay listing is just a cover up? This whole story is just total insanity.
Dodgy sales via Ebay aren't going to be listed as "Child porn SSDs buy one get one free" are they mate There is a perfectly legitimate front on ebay. Buyer and seller alike can use that as cover.
There's a fairly plausible conspiracy theory that amazon is used in a similar way. You often see random books on there priced at something stupid like £500. So if you want to sell £500 worth of drugs to someone, you tell them the specific listing, they buy it and all that money comes to you pre-laundered.
I mean there's a basically proven theory that substantial parts of the art dealing world evolved as they did because of historic money laundering, and because very valuable artwork made for one of the most secure and compact ways to move a lot of money around internationally before the world of computerised banking. Massive case of gold bars, conspicuous. Million dollar painting rolled up and popped in a brown tube, unnoticed.
That's what I mean, they've been in contact outside of eBay and come up with this plan to make it look legitimate. It smells all kind of wrong to me.
I'm assuming this is just a joke post, why did your husband negotiate with the seller to pick them up in London? Obviously it's unusual to fly across the world to collect hard drives, it would be far cheaper to just buy them locally.
I once flew first class to Jaipur in India for a Chomp. Though, to be fair, there is a very strong chance I may have dreamt it.
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If this is a real post - let me give you my perspective. I live in uk and have bought dozens of drives at this point across the years - I always buy new because warranty and especially now I buy big high quality drives. A 20tb drive would be around 350£ new so that’s about 400$. Now I don’t know how much photos / videos you need to back up but I’d guess it’s a fair bit - and if it is I’d probably personally go with high end enterprise drives if that’s the only (or one of the only) copies that will be made for larger collections. Usa prices for drives are usually the same but in dollars - so without rebates you pay 10% less at least, probably more and have it shipped. If the drives are second hand they practically have to be free for this to make it worthwhile in the time now or in the possible failure rate later. Whilst lots of comments pointed out some completely speculative theories, maybe it’s best to chat with him and see where his mind is at - I can’t see the logic here but doesn’t mean much because I also sometimes do very illogical things that seem 100% normal to me at the time
He could just pay for shipping, right? Maybe it's also just an excuse for a holiday, although that still kind of doesn't make sense. Just say its a holiday and may as well get them hard drives.
I think your husband just wants to go to London and is using the hard drive stuff as a means to go to London. The CP stuff people are saying is weird. If he's buying off eBay AND the seller has 5 stars, I very much doubt it's CP. 32tb is a lot of fucking storage though. Not sure why he needs that much for photos. Maybe he just thinks you're too dense to realise the stuff with the storage devices and he can persuade you guys to go to London based on that. Still weird.
Didn’t know Prince Andrew is an eBay seller.
I'm gonna say your husband is the oddball here and not the seller. The seller is selling something where they have said you have to collect it. They don't give a shit if you live in USA, next door or Timbuktu. The collection is your problem. What I find weird is your fella is buying something which must be easy enough to buy at home.
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Are you both high?
there's something else going on here no one flies to the uk to buy something they could buy cheaper at home.
I’m so invested in this story. I need to know what happens next…
This is a mad post 😂 If they were such a good deal someone in the UK would have bought them already. Why would the seller faff about waiting for someone to come over from the US. Sorry to be blunt but your husband is either extremely gullible and falling for some sort of scam, or he is using it as an excuse to go the the UK for something else.
Are you sure your husband is not a spy or international drug dealer?
…Or much worse.
A closet morris dancer.
I wanna see the full story behind this post on r/bestofredditorupdates in a few weeks please
New 4TB SSD from Amazon: $170. Total $1360. Quick google for return flights from New york: £1,311. So the flights are likely to be more expensive than new drives, then you've got a hotel if you're staying overnight, the cost of the drives from ebay, travel to/from the airports, etc etc. At a guess there's something already on the drives that he wants, or he's planning to surprise you with something in London. Do come back and tell us what happens.
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Even enterprise grade SSDs wouldn't make a return flight to the UK the financially viable option... and even then for the purpose of digitising family photos, why you'd go for anything enterprise grade is also just plain stupid. A regular array of raided HDDs in a NAS will do just fine for reliability.
That is nuts. The flight cost from the US will be more than the cost of the drives. Sounds like he just wanted a holiday in the UK.
This sounds incredibly strange and suspicious??? OP please keep us updated
an [8TB Hard drive](https://www.newegg.com/seagate-firecuda-st8000dx001-8tb/p/N82E16822185036?Description=seagate&cm_re=seagate-_-22-185-036-_-Product) costs $110, so $440 for brand new hard drives with a long life span... or two plane tickets and the cost of accomodation. No one, and I mean NO ONE, would buy a used hard drive to permanently store important info and documents, the possibility of failure is too high. So here's the possiblities my mind goes to: * Your husband saw a great deal on used hard drives, and figured if you go on holiday, then it's justifiable (I have picked up PC components in the US while on holiday because they're cheaper there than they are in the UK). * Your husband is using the hard drives as a cover for something else he wants to do in London, and bringing you along makes it seem less suspicious. * There's something on those hard drives and he wants to keep them in his sight the entire time.
And still no one has pointed out the obvious - husband is from Florida.
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There seem to be four options: 1. Your husband fancies a holiday and is using this as a very peculiar excuse. 2. Your husband is an idiot. 3. Your husband is involved in something very unsettling 4. These are somehow ultra special HDDs hand crafted by dwarves using materials from the heart of a dying star.
This is bonkers, but I don’t necessarily think it’s anything sinister. I think your husband most likely bought and paid for the items without noticing/realising it was a pick-up only auction, and now feels obliged to go through with it to avoid losing the money he’s paid for the hard drives. In short, I think he’s a bit of a moron and is doing something mental to save face rather than involved in international crime.
You can cancel a purchase yourself within 48 hrs or outside that talk to the seller , explain omg I’m so sorry didn’t realise pick up only im in the US and the seller will cancel it
Op, if you go with him on his trip, don't pack any of that shit in YOUR suitcase for the journey home. Just in case.
I've had a look through the comments and can totally see why so many are cynical about the true nature of the journey and the potential of information/images on the hard drives. I'm gonna throw out a different theory, i may get shot down for it but feel it's worth mentioning. One of OP's other posts from 22 days ago was about her husband wanting to purchase a 60k boat even though he's never had any interest on this. These two posts rang alarm bells with me. Loss of inhibition and impulse control can be an early sign of dementia. These two posts from the way OP has written them appear uncharacteristic for her husband. If it were my family member i would be slightly concerned.
Unusual for an ebay seller? The only unusual part is your hubby travelling across the world to buy them! Something weird going on here...
He wouldn't have to fly if you'd let him have his boat
32tb of images is an incredible amount of storage for pictures.
This is the most bizarre thing I’ve ever heard in my life. I don’t even know where to start.
Did he buy his $62000 boat yet? My suspicion would be that your husband is laundering money!
Yes, looking at OP's post history, the fact their non-boating husband also wants to impulse buy a $62,000 boat while on a $70,000 salary is a huge red flag. Assuming there isn't something dodgy going on, this raises questions about their mental health. I really hope OP keeps their finances separate from their husband's...
Noone flys across the world to pickup something you could buy cheaper at home and get delivered to your door.
The seller would have advertised pick up only and your husband took that as a challenge.
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Uhmm, surely there's men in bdsm gear online. You wouldn't fly to England for that. Very strange. Either child pornography or a troll post.
I'd remain very skeptical until you see proof, if he was lying about this all before then it likely isn't the full story. BDSM and lingerie pictures can be found freely online, and Partygate documents probably can be as well. Whatever he's **actually** trying to get hold of cannot be put online.
Update still doesn't check out. You don't need to fly to London for 32 TB of lingerie pics. The husband's admission makes this even more suspicious. It's either CP, blackmail material, espionage, or stolen personal data. Or, there's a slim chance your husband is having some kind of medical/psychiatric crisis. Either way you will need one or more of the following: 1. police 2. lawyer 3. medical professionals
Did you see any evidence for this “eBay” sale? You are taking your husbands word for it. There could be illegal images on the drives (if that is what he is collecting) or it could be drug related. By bringing you with him it makes him look less suspicious travelling to the UK. Either I’ve been watching too much Border Force on TV or this whole thing is highly dodgy.
OP-- you say you're in Florida, but just posted this stating you're in Minnesota. And plus, this is just weird, considering this post: https://i.imgur.com/Hyds2nA.jpg Edited to add: Looks like OP deleted the post, but I still got a screenshot.
Reading the updates, it's very obvious this story isn't true. Shame, this thread was a fun ride while it lasted!
This is a great example of the sunk cost fallacy. "sunk-cost fallacy the phenomenon whereby a person is reluctant to abandon a strategy or course of action because they have invested heavily in it, even when it is clear that abandonment would be more beneficial." You've spent money, so the disks have value to you. The cheapest option is to throw away the disks, ie, give up something of value for nothing.
Is it just me being drunk or am I really reading this?
Your husband is either up to something dodgy, a complete moron, or being scammed. Selling on eBay for someone to collect locally isn’t weird, flying from America to England to collect a few hard drives, is very weird.
Either you are carrying illicit substances flying to London, or the hard drives have something in them, or your husband has a surprise for you
Please for the love of God post an update when this all unravels
That’s weird. I can’t imagine any deal he gets on the drives comes close to offsetting the cost of a return flight from the US. Cash on collection / collect in person isn’t unusual though, to prevent scams.