CAVEAT EMPTOR (with apologies to Blue Viking)
There are a number of valid reasons for not wanting to publish openly the name of someone who may demonstrably have acted in bad faith or worse. Fear of being sued for defamation is not the least of these -- and while truth may be a defense, it is not cheap or pleasant to have to defend against a law suit (I write as a litigator who primarily does defensive work). A suit can be fairly easy to bring, and a sleazy business person might bring such a suit just to be able to claim that he is defending his "good reputation." An further, if by "up north" Mark meant Canada, that adds a further complication -- the law of defamation is likely to be considerably different there (and if like British law, much more favorable to someone claiming defamation).
An undefended suit is likely to lead to a default judgment, which can lead to all sorts of difficulties, including a serious negative hit on a credit rating.
Finally, I personally would be leery of using the internet or any form of writing when discussing another's reputation -- I would prefer face-to-face or telephone.
On the other points of advice in Mark's first posting -- asking questions, lots of them, even dumb ones, is good advice. You might get a better picture of the item for sale, and the way a seller responds can give some insight into how he deals with things -- openly and candidly, or careful to the point of weaseling, or ignorant, or . . ..
Getting things in writing may be of some help, but probably not much, unless the seller is acting in good faith anyway. While something well-written may bring clarity and certainty, a badly-crafted writing can introduce ambiguity. A writing's chief use is in a law suit, and as I have said above, you don't want to be in a law suit. Unless you can proceed in a local small claims court, a suit is just too expensive and time consuming to resolve the sort of disputes that are likely to arise around the purchase of a canoe.
The best advice, I would think, is to get lots of current pictures. In this day of digital cameras and the internet, getting an adequate number of detailed photos should be easy, and if a seller is unwilling to provide them, that could be a sign of problems.
I recently bid on an ebay canoe where the seller described several non-fatal problems, most of which either needed no photo or were shown in the listing photos. He did mention a scarf joint that needed regluing, and there was no picture. When asked, he did send a good detail picture, which showed me both that he was not hiding anything, and that the problem was one I could live with (alas, I was the second-highest bidder).
If you can get a trusted person to look, that would be good also, although that may create other problems, as noted above. It is also not necessarily easy to set up an inspection, as I found when trying to take a look at a boat for Denis and Kathy.
If time allows, I would be willing to look at a canoe in the New York City area.
So the starting point certainly remains -- buyer beware!
