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Most stupid message while flogging a shiter


Alan Prost

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1 hour ago, Rod/b said:

I wouldn’t even bother replying to a 50% offer online

I offered 50% on some wheels this week.  I pointed out that they were missing the centre caps, and were scratched and scuffed, and linked to some better nick ones which had sold recently for not much more and also to the reproduction centre caps.  I put it all in one message explaining why I was offering so little compared to the asking price and said that I wasn't expecting it to be accepted, but that if it was convenient for me to collect it that evening then they would be out of their way.

 

In the end she found the centre caps and I gave her an extra tenner for them.  So 60% of the asking price or thereabouts.

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2 hours ago, Talbot said:

Well.... yes.  You've to expect that.  That's been true in second-hand car buying for years.  You advertise a price which is at least 10% more than you'd be happy with.  Anyone who puts an ask-price on a car (other than on here maybe) that is absolutely fixed with no wiggle room is naive.  You accept a slight drop over the phone/internet, and then expect another when they view.  If I had a car that I actually wanted to get a grand for, it'll be advertised for £1295.  I know it's worth a grand, the buyer knows it's worth a grand.  They offer £750 for it and we go from there.

If you laugh in the face of someone who's turned up to buy a car from you, you're going to at best still be left with the car for sale, and at worst end up knifed.  People will try their luck, but a "that won't buy it" will be a billion times safer than laughing at them.  As said above, the offer they make isn't what they're actually going to buy it for, they know that, you know that etc.  It's about playing the game.

‘End up knifed’... why on earth would I enter into inviting someone round that if I didn’t accept their offer I’d be having my intestines spread all over the driveway? So let’s get this right, you’ve a car for sale for £1,250, if you don’t accept my offer of £500 I’ll pull a knife out? 

Just scrap it if that’s the likely people you are having round your house! 

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2 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Trouble is you just don't know who's going to turn up - we had a car load of Greek? Turkish? blokes first then an "Irish" Gentleman. Neither made me feel especially comfortable 

I was selling a k11 micra years back.

Got a phone call at 9pm Friday night asking to see it. Bit late but I didn't have work in the morning. He explained he was a taxi driver and just finished. Seemed genuine, fair enough.

Three Leeds taxi cars turn up outside and 12 blokes get out. Oh oh this isn't looking good. Only talked to one of them, so we could see the car properly I drove to the nearest petrol station a mile away. (All lit up with ace cctv)

All three cars followed. Spoke to the one guy again who said his mate didn't want a black 3dr one. I was in the petrol station just 60 seconds.

Obviously there were full pictures of a black 3dr one in my advert.

We parted as "friends" and I drove home. They just left.

Very unnerving to be honest. I'm assuming they thought they could intimidate an old giffer into giving it them for £100 or some crap. Car was a 2002 at £1500 a fair few years ago.

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Generally if you speak to people you can gauge what’s going off. Normal people don’t arrive at 9pm to look at a car. A shyness to speaking on the telephone is another red flag. 

Thinking back I had one where he communicated solely by the semaphore of text, again a sign of someone with something to hide. Anyway I told him if he was interested he’d better ring, straight away I could see he was fucking crushingly stupid, he wanted me to bring the car round to his, he was having another bloke bring a Vectra round at same time. I just told him to get fucked. I don’t know who he thought he was, it would be a bit like needing some bread and asking if Morrisons and Sainsburys would bring you some round do you could let them pitch to you and decide.

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Just now, sierraman said:

Normal people don’t arrive at 9pm to look at a car.

The shit is this?  Normal people don't have time to get out and do stuff like look at cars till 9pm, they're busy at work and dealing with family etc.

 

Getting potential sellers to bring their wares to you for inspection and direct comparison, mind that's a frigging brilliant idea.  Love it.  

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3 minutes ago, loserone said:

The shit is this?  Normal people don't have time to get out and do stuff like look at cars till 9pm, they're busy at work and dealing with family etc.

 

Getting potential sellers to bring their wares to you for inspection and direct comparison, mind that's a frigging brilliant idea.  Love it.  

You come across as a fairly normal well reasoned chap. You wouldn’t drive from Leeds to Doncaster in a pack of 12 to view a car you’ve no interest in buying. 99% of these crazy people you can suss out in a 5 minute call and tell them you are busy that day and in fact any other given day they are free.

Like when someone knocks on your door in a white vest and asks to unblock your gutters for £3,000. Anyone with any level of sense can spot exactly what the craic is there and decline their kind offer in an appropriately kind manner.

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12 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Generally if you speak to people you can gauge what’s going off. Normal people don’t arrive at 9pm to look at a car. A shyness to speaking on the telephone is another red flag. 

Thinking back I had one where he communicated solely by the semaphore of text, again a sign of someone with something to hide. Anyway I told him if he was interested he’d better ring, straight away I could see he was fucking crushingly stupid, he wanted me to bring the car round to his, he was having another bloke bring a Vectra round at same time. I just told him to get fucked. I don’t know who he thought he was, it would be a bit like needing some bread and asking if Morrisons and Sainsburys would bring you some round do you could let them pitch to you and decide.

To be fair, I absolutely hate talking on the phone and will avoid it at any opportunity. It's 2021, all communications by thumb plz 

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I know it’s terrible to do but the prices for scrap these days means that you get at least £300 on a small car so anything around £500 isn’t worth the hassle trying to sell on.

I recently went to sell my Mini Cooper and it really is a nice example with a spare set of alloys and  run flats and advertised it for £875 Ono and the first person who inquired never turned up the second person offered my a broken bora and the 3rd £500 tops but only if it’s as good as it looks but will look after it so I must sell it too him  lol.

All this was through Facebook marketplace so after an hour or two I decided I couldn’t handle it anymore so the car will now  stay.

I had a buyer years ago when I was selling my immaculate £500 50000 mile Audi A4 that started crying in my kitchen and went over the car for two bloody hours and started showing me their bank statements saying I needed to sell it cheaper to them as they were skint and I now have decided life is too short for that hassle. 

 

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3 hours ago, loserone said:

100%.  telephone absolute last resort

Its a very common feeling. 

I've had jobs where I spent half the day on the phone, I very often still do at work but once I'm at home I can't be doing with it.

 

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11 minutes ago, Jerzy Woking said:

Just why do people try to buy cars when they don't have the money anywhere near the asking price? And houses?

Houses, before the agent will give you the time of day on an offer he’ll want an Agreement in Principle proving you are good for the credit. They know full well who to fob off and who to take seriously. In the end last house I sold I insisted they had this before they viewed. Eventually worked as it sold quite soon after. 

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I sold one car ,a Vento 1.9d, where the buyer offered €500 on an €1100 car After an hour of haggling it went for €1050 and I was freezing from standing outside.

I sold a Panda where the buyer phoned at 8pm from about 70 miles away and got there at 10:30. A very easy sale as it turned out.

If you want to sell your car you have to take the rough with the smooth. As long as it's not too rough.

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On 2/3/2021 at 11:13 AM, HMC said:

One issue with gumtree is that auto filled message “hi is this still available?” Or something like that- I ended up with about 20 of those on a golf I had on there with nothing back after I said it was. I see on a few ads it says yes still available I’ll remove it when it isn’t- And I think I’ll post the same in future to avoid a load of pointless replies I had to make.

I'm genuinely not a troll and I've ever enquired about cars when I'm not looking to buy. However seeing those lines on  advert really makes me want to ask if it's still available. A bit like a red button with a do not press warning. 

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13 hours ago, sierraman said:

‘End up knifed’... why on earth would I enter into inviting someone round that if I didn’t accept their offer I’d be having my intestines spread all over the driveway? So let’s get this right, you’ve a car for sale for £1,250, if you don’t accept my offer of £500 I’ll pull a knife out?

Now read what I actually wrote.  My comment was that if you laugh in the face of someone making a lowball offer you might (worst case) get knifed, because laughing in someone's face is staggeringly arrogant and rude.  Even if someone offers a stupidly low amount, you're a lot better off simply saying "that's too low" or "that won't buy it", and then start the haggle process.  The best haggling is done with a smile and a pleasant attitude, not being a dick.

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6 hours ago, Talbot said:

Now read what I actually wrote.  My comment was that if you laugh in the face of someone making a lowball offer you might (worst case) get knifed, because laughing in someone's face is staggeringly arrogant and rude.  Even if someone offers a stupidly low amount, you're a lot better off simply saying "that's too low" or "that won't buy it", and then start the haggle process.  The best haggling is done with a smile and a pleasant attitude, not being a dick.

So what if I don’t want to spend 4 hours haggling, it’s £800 and that’s the price? So if I came round your house in a car, with several other people and started aggressively haggling with you for hours you’d be fine with that? 

Whatever happened to someone saying that it’s £800 and I’m not prepared to accept any offers and someone respecting that? If you can’t hack that then don’t view the car.

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Once did that on Freecycle, advertised a Capri that needed shifting out of a garage. Getting muggy peoples hopes up was piss funny, then telling them that the 2.8 Special I’d found in the garage of the house I was doing up had gone, I’d got some blokes to chop it up and throw it in the skip. 

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Haggling for 4 hours might be a tadge* long, but a few minutes spent negotiating the price on a car isn't unreaonable.  Again, you're misreading what I wrote: aggressive haggling with a load of blokes for backup would not be reasonable and isn't what I suggested.  What I suggested was a buyer and a seller having a reasonable, amicable discussion over the price and coming to (or even not coming to) an acceptable price for both parties.  It should take maybe a minute to come to an agreement.

TBH, when a seller puts "no offers" in an advert, it immediately reads like they're trying to play hardball from the outset.  It might make me less interested in the car, but that's just me.  Almost every "how to buy a used car" guide I've ever seen suggests that a discussion over the price is reasonable, and adverts with "no offers" might be best avoided.

 

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9 hours ago, DodgyBastard said:

To offset all of the wankers I've had to deal with lately I've put up a bogus bargain advert to wind people up.

Sent from my moto g(8) power using Tapatalk
 

Reminds me of the 'barn find MK2 Escort' I advertised one April fools Day.

 Much fun was had... 😂

 

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You can use it to weed out overly optimistic sellers though "no offers m8" combined with high price suggests they think their reject from the Just Scrap It thread is the crown jewels and there is no point talking to them.

Likewise £12345/testing the water/sensible offers tells you they have bought a scrapper for close to £0 and are changing their arm to see how much they can blag.

Must say though a blanket rule of not negotiating on the phone or by message would have lost out on a few sales to me, for example I recently bought a scooter from That London and after a few messages about the condition, location, pictures etc we talked about price.

If the seller had been "nah m8 need to come and look at it first" there would have been no chance I would have driven 4 hours to find out he wasn't going to accept what I thought it was worth.

As it happens it was slightly worse than I was expecting but I paid the agreed price and took it anyway as that is my fault for offering blind.

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