Car Buying/selling Etiquette

[DaveW 6]

Ebay i will never sell a car on that site again, no one wants my gti im nearly giving it away and still get tossers offering me £250 or part ex for a 106 1.1! it clearly states on my ad ' NO SILLY OFFERS OR PART EX'S'

[blue_haddock 2]

a 1.0 litre fiesta with a 'wikkid kit on thats jus bin lowerd'

 

i dont suppose you still have the number do you? i hear Petes after a new daily driver!

 

 

When i sell a car its usually on ebay now. I take lots of decent photo's including any dents, scratches etc and write a full description including mentioning the bad points. I think that being honest and up front saves me having to answer lots of daft questions and also i think if i'm honest about the car then people will pay more as they are confident they're not buying a shagger.

[Bogsye 22]

Just put our Polo 16V on Gumtree, so I guess I'm about to experience more pain <groan>

[u47sb2 27 2 Cars]

A possitive is that it has made the country very small for car buyers - you can find the car you want with the click of a few buttons without trawling magazines and newspapers.

 

Agreed

 

Ebay is crap. Last car I sold tried ebay first for a quick sale. Several messers later I chucked it onto Gumtree and it sold within 24 hours (to a guy who flew up to Inverness from London then drove it home!!)

[AJA_GTi 0]

Agreed

 

 

Steve - it makes the country smaller buy Inverness to Crewe is still a bloody long way!!

[welshpug 1,657]

The lad that bought my 309 came down from Forfar, north of Dundee!

 

He saw the car on pistonheads, checked a few details via email, I sent a few more pictures and was happy with what he saw, agreed a price over email.

 

Sent a text to confirm he was on the train at 9am, 3pm met him at Cardiff central, and he had a look around the car fired it up then drove home

 

 

 

It took a few months of advertising it to get to that point, but that was truly the first proper enquiry about the car and it went.

[Batfink 201]

having just bought a car, I went and looked at the car with its faults listed. I found a few more but I basically knew what I was buying before I walked up the driveway. Thats important to me when I am scanning the ads and eliminating cars which potentially may have had a hard life. The car overall was so well loved I only knocked £50 off his asking price. I could have bartered harder I guess but it had already been lowered £400 from when he first advertised it.

2 days later the speedo sensor packed in. I didnt phone the guy, I just fixed it for 23 quid.

Its a nice car and was even in Evo Magazine so it has a little bit of history

[Edp 67 3 Cars]

Ifallgti, I believe you have far too much time on your hands if your worrying about the buying and selling etiquette of old motors.

[Baz 421]

Funniest was when i sold the old Wheeler Dealers car, the chap called me on a saturday morning, had a chat then got a flight down from Newcastle that afternoon, had a look around it, a drive around the farm, and then basically haggled exactly the way Mike Brewer did when he 'bought' it on the programme, and for the same price iirc too! We had a bit of a giggle about that, it was overall a pleasant selling experience!

 

On the subject, apparently WD's are re-visiting their past cars, i wonder if they'll contact me...

[lfallgti 12]

Ifallgti, I believe you have far too much time on your hands if your worrying about the buying and selling etiquette of old motors.

 

 

Indeed i do, i'm off work (still) with my fingers bandaged up, but stitched on again, after coming off worse against a guillotine.

[allye 530 3 Cars]

Indeed i do, i'm off work (still) with my fingers bandaged up, but stitched on again, after coming off worse against a guillotine.

 

ummmm, photo!?

[lemmingzappa 75 1 Cars]

Funniest was when i sold the old Wheeler Dealers car, the chap called me on a saturday morning, had a chat then got a flight down from Newcastle that afternoon, had a look around it, a drive around the farm, and then basically haggled exactly the way Mike Brewer did when he 'bought' it on the programme, and for the same price iirc too! We had a bit of a giggle about that, it was overall a pleasant selling experience!

 

On the subject, apparently WD's are re-visiting their past cars, i wonder if they'll contact me...

 

 

 

=

 

 

[Bogsye 22]

Just put our Polo 16V on Gumtree, so I guess I'm about to experience more pain <groan>

 

Blimey. That took less than 24hr and was quite easy, and involved no chancers.

 

Had three people text me - no text speak either, which was good. Two people chose to call (Revolutionary I know)

 

First guy that appeared bought it - negotiated down to my target price, less about £25, so not too shoddy.

 

I was going to have to re-insure on Friday, so that was a welcome and swift sale

[Edp 67 3 Cars]

Indeed i do, i'm off work (still) with my fingers bandaged up, but stitched on again, after coming off worse against a guillotine.

 

 

Blimey,

 

no working on the pug either then?!

[Edp 67 3 Cars]

Funniest was when i sold the old Wheeler Dealers car, the chap called me on a saturday morning, had a chat then got a flight down from Newcastle that afternoon, had a look around it, a drive around the farm, and then basically haggled exactly the way Mike Brewer did when he 'bought' it on the programme, and for the same price iirc too! We had a bit of a giggle about that, it was overall a pleasant selling experience!

 

On the subject, apparently WD's are re-visiting their past cars, i wonder if they'll contact me...

 

 

I watched that again recently. I wanted to know how did a new gear linkage sort out the smoke coming out the rear?

[lfallgti 12]

Blimey,

 

no working on the pug either then?!

 

 

Annoyingly no. 4 weeks off work would have been the ideal oppurtunity as well.

[Edp 67 3 Cars]

Always the way!

[lfallgti 12]

It's not so much that i can't use my hand, more that it f'in hurts when i do.

[Baz 421]

I watched that again recently. I wanted to know how did a new gear linkage sort out the smoke coming out the rear?

 

As far as i could work out it was just edited really badly so appeared that Edd was changing the gear linkages to sort the smoke etc. There was a minefield of issues though, wrong steering wheel, gearknob, and they never did explain the smoke/steam, which was the cracked block, and the beam was goosed!

[lfallgti 12]

How could they not tell the gearknob was wrong?

[Baz 421]

They probably could, I think it was more of a case of they didn't care!

[Andy_C 50]

So as not to waste your and the potential buyers time.

 

I'm far more likely to go and look at a car if the faults etc are all listed and explained in advance than I am if someone hasn't listed anything and is cagey when asked with answers like "come down and have a look and see what you think" - I've little interest in driving 50 miles to look at a car only to find obvious faults that immediately put me off, and equally, if I'm selling a car then I've little interest in standing around for hours while people look at a car only for it not to be what they've wanted.

 

Indeed, I'm pretty sure that of the six 205's I've sold, not a single one of them has been test driven by the buyer (four of them people on here, one a family member of someone on here, and one a friend of mine) which has always stuck me as strange. However, well in advance of them coming to look at the car I've always described them honestly and very much "warts and all" and hence people have turned up knowing what they're buying, to the point that in a couple of instances they've given me the money without so much as looking at the car!

 

To the best of my knowledge, 5 of those 6 cars are still owned by the people that I sold them to

 

I haven't bought a car that's been advertised in Autotrader, the newspaper or similar in many, many years now, as the woeful lack of information and inevitably rubbish picture puts me right off - yes I can phone the seller to get more information, but in my experience more often than not I've been sorely disappointed. All the cars I've bought have been from forum members, Pistonheads or eBay, where there's (usually) plenty of detail, pictures, and some ability to look back at the cars/sellers history. Generally rarely buy from traders either, as often seeing the owner of the car tells you as much about it as the car itself - judge and stereotype I might, but my gut instinct rarely lets me down.

 

Buying mine from Anthony was a simple transaction - we agreed a deal initially via PM based on bottom line price, I viewed and agreed to buy at said agreed price and a couple of weeeks or so later I drove to Swindon, handed him some pound notes and drove away in my 1.9, simple.

 

It's a 19 year old car so it's not perfect, it didn't expire on the way home and is still running strong - Anthony mentioned a few points which needed attention during the exchange of PM's and all is good.

 

The bloke who bought my old 205 exchanged a load of emails, initially offering 20% or so less than the asking price and eventually ending up paying me around 5% less which was the figure I was happy to take and he was happy to buy. I went through the car's bad points as I didn't want him travelling a 150 mile round trip expecting to buy the crown jewels - been there, done that myself.

 

Likewise, did the deal on my BMW via PM on a forum - the buyer bought an old E36 with a year's ticket and 6 months' tax for a price which got shot of it and enabled me to get back into a 205. I was brutally honest about that car as it wasn't far off a skip in my eyes TBH.

 

When buying I try to make life simple - I will make stupidly low offers to main dealers and this works more than it fails. I'm currently in the process of changing my daily driver (and my job too for that matter ); my budget for a new car is £22k so I'm looking at cars up to £25k - I'll either find one or I won't - if I can then great as I end up with some more kit, less miles or whatever and if I don't then it's not the end of the world.

 

I don't think the art of haggling is dead - just that the interweb has taught us all to ignore this fine old skill which is a whole heap of fun if done right.

[chocolate_o_brian 0]

I remember when it came to selling my 205. Rich (Dr Sarty off here) was obviously online at the right time in Afghan and msg'ed me within 15 mins, pretty much striking a good deal for the pair of us. It was a couple weeks before the deal could be done and in the mean time I must have got two dozen different people emailing me about the car. I was very honest about the cars good and bad points (as I'm far too honest for my own good) and to be honest probably waffled on in the advert. But I like to be 100% sure the prospective buyer knows what they are buying so they don't have any means of comeback should anything unfortunate happen. Had the usual muppets offering well under the asking price (even off other forums) and anything I couldn't understand on email/text I simply ignored.

 

Tell you what though, the replacement car which was part of the deal with Rich (a little Peugeot 106 1.1) has been the most reliable (yet cosmeticallt battered ) car I've ever owned. Has only needed a backbox (£30) and alternator belt (£4) since March and starts bang on every cold morning

[GLPoomobile 958]

I don't think there's anything wrong with electronic dealing, as particulalry in the case of email you can be just as detailed in your discussions as you can be face to face (in fact better sometimes, as you have time to pick and choose your words carefully). I had a couple of long email discussions with the seller of the Saab I bought, although we did the deal in the flesh when I went to see it. And my old red 1.6 GTI I sold to a guy on here unseen. He came all the way from Manchester to buy it but we'd PM'd and emailed loads before that and I gave him a ton of photos and info on it before he committed to buying it.

 

But there's a big difference between 2 sensible people discussing a deal in a professional and grown up way (It doesn't matter what communication method you use) and chancing pikey idiots who do business by sending badly worded texts to sellers with offensively low offers on cars they've not even seen.