I just bought a fish tank off some guy on Craigslist a week ago, since I don't have a Facebook account to use Marketplace. He told me it was in good condition, and the pics looked ok but were from kind of far back and it was full of crap. I drive 45 min to get it and the thing is horrendously scratched up on the inside because he used it for turtles and then storage.
Falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, since I drove all that way, I took it off his hands for 25% less than we initially agreed.
I did something similar with an Aeron chair on Facebook Marketplace recently. Drove around an hour to the next city over to take a look at one, apparently the good ones had been picked over already (and he only posted photos of one out of the batch, presumably the best), but I felt a little obligated to buy something since I'd taken the person's time and driven all that way.
After cleaning it up at home, it ended up being usable for now, but definitely felt crappy driving back with it knowing I wasn't really happy with it.
I tried buying a truck. Every seller would say "totally rust free!!111" and promise there wasn't a dot of rust. I'd get there and practically every time I managed to push a finger or a fist through a panel.
Falling victim to the sunk cost fallacy, since I drove all that way, I took it off his hands for 25% less than we initially agreed.