I don’t know if he treated his “friends” any different than his mortal enemies.
Everyone has their own anecdotal and limited experience with sellers/buyers. It’s anecdotal. And limited. Anyway, here’s some of mine:
Before I’d had any prior dealings with a certain breezy perambulator, he sold me some chips which he knew (from my Wanted pleas) that I badly needed... Sold ’em to me at an astronomical price. He insisted he would not take less, and I relented out of desperation.
Our deal came relatively early in his “chipping journey.” Later I saw that he did sell some of the same denom for a lot less... And then even later he tried to buy back from the community some of this denom at almost double my original purchase price. (I did not take that profit, as I still needed those chips.)
Whatever, that kind of thing happens. And I’m not going to rehash the full extent of our negotiation, which went way off the rails. But FWIW, as we were wrapping up I gave the seller a
very gentle and (I thought) helpful piece of advice about unwritten but totally standard PCF etiquette. A minor point, just something I thought a relatively newbie could benefit from knowing.
Big mistake. The dude went absolutely nuclear on me... Even though I made it repeatedly clear that I was not mad at him, and not even criticizing him. I was just trying to give him a heads up, to help avoid him getting into needless spats with other, pickier members in future deals.
Again, at that point I knew nothing about him, and he knew nothing about me.
Eventually, when (a) it became clear that I was not a pushover and (b) that my advice did in fact reflect common accepted practice on PCF, he did back down and apologize. He also offered a rebate, which I did not want. At last after much back-and-forth discussion, we wrapped things up on what seemed like a positive note.
Unfortunately, subsequent interactions suggested that despite the seemingly heartfelt apology, I had been put on a permanent shitlist.