I became reluctant to to buy appliances second hand, long before craigslist. I had a much worse story with a refrigerator ,which I got a 30 day written warranty on from a former captain of an air craft carrier. Sucker didn’t want to return my money when it didn’t work. I ran the serial number through product customer service and found he had lied about the age. He also did not disclose that he already knew it did not work,which I figured out. I threatened to get a friend and throw it in his front yard landscaping while making trips back and forth to my truck to honk the horn all the while screaming bloody murder about the bad deal, so his neighbors would know what a shit he was.He threatened to get some people to try to fire me from my job in Navy defense contracting.So… I told him he was lucky I was a nice guy and probably wouldn’t stick it through his plate glass window… but that he better give me my money back just in case. Yeah, that’s my style as needed. He had a guy come and pick it up from my house with a cash refund in hand.
I suppose if he wasn’t kind of “upper crust” Point Loma, I wouldn’t have had any leverage though. You need leverage unless you are willing to hurt someone physically, which I am not. No way I would have spent my time going to small claims but I knwo people who would go over whatever the minimum requirement is, out of principle.
Moral of the story,don’t buy stuff people can easily lie about unless it would still be a good deal with a surprise, or you have some low hassle recourse,hopefully short of something like throwing refrigerators at people.