A Wasted Night in Leuven

I just wasted about 4 hours.

After a plethora of emails, to and fro with *person* about a lot of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 books; we agreed meet tonight to settle the deal. I found his add through both Kapaza.be and 2dehands.be. €150 for some DnD books – it wasnt cheap, but I didnt feel like bargaining much since I wanted to close the deal quickly. He told me I was welcome the whole evening after 18.00 & I responded that his original proposal of 18.30 would be too early and that I would come slightly later, but definitely today.

So tonight I drove to Leuven, took me more than an hour, to meet up with Mr *person*. I had to look for a bit before I found his apartment and was quite happy to find it.

I rang and waited. No response.
I decided to call *person* (had to get the phone nr from my GMail account with my cell) but I struck a voicemail.
I left a message to tell him I was there as agreed upon and that I would wait 15 minutes and try again. I naively figured he was probably out getting whatever.. No problem.
So 15 minutes of waiting later I called him again. Only to find he had shut down his cell phone.
Thats not nice; but when I was standing in his hall earlier I had noticed the poor cell reception there, so I figured he might be at home and tried there again. Again, no answer.
Having driven that far and being quite anxious to check out the books, I decided to wait. I called and the phone rang again; idle hope I realized when the voicemail kicked in again. I left a message telling him I was still waiting for him to sell me those books he wants to be rid of.
I walked around some and found that there was no decent parking space nor restaurant in the street nor the adjecent one. I got in the car, checked the GPS and discovered that Mr *person* lives near the center of Leuven, so I parked the car in a better spot; called *person* again only to discover he had switched OFF his cell again. I left a message telling him I would go out for dinner nearby and try again later that night. Reminding him I came far to get those books and as such would rather get them tonight than to have driven to his home in Leuven for no reason.
I went for a walk to the center; had a disgusting McD burger, enjoyed some nice ice cream on the terace of an ice cream parlor on some historical square (quite nice there actually.. pretty buildings, lots of young folk, ..) and after a while; walked back to the car. I called him once more and discovered his cell was still turned off.

At this time I gave up on the matter; having waited for more than 2 hours without even a courtesy call or message explaining the rude behavior. *person* had just malignantly wasted my time and I had enough. I drove home and checked the clock to see that *person* had wasted 4 hours of my precious time!

So far the adventure of trying to buy Dungeons and Dragons books from *person* I guess my €150 wasnt even worth the slightest courtesy!

*person* has proven himself to be highly unreliable and rude. Based upon my experiences tonight; I would advise anyone to steer clear of him in any matter of business or leasure where his name should arise, lest you be disappointed in even the most minor of your expectations and you be treated as I was tonight!

A fine evening wasted.

Edit: *person* mailed me about car and phone problems, so we re giving it another try. Lets hope things go better this time; although I have to admit that I’m still not too happy about it all!

Edit: I went to Leuven tonight & we met. He was very charming and apologetic. We talked about all sorts of RPG systems and he told us about a very interesting persistent world system. FunFun. And whats more; I got the books I wanted. I now have a cool scenario; the Ravenloft campaign setting & a copy of the player guide bound in leather. Its really a Wonderfull book! The production value is amazing.
So my anger yesterday was quite extreme yesterday and quite undeserved. *Person* turned out to be quite the nice guy & I thank him for the books and wish him the best 🙂