Todd's car, for sale on ebay...
I know you guys often expect humor from me. Today, my entry is deadly serious.
Todd has put his car up for sale on ebay. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and frankly, I think Todd has lost his mind. Two reasons:
1. That is a nice car, and I think a van, once actually parked out front of his place, may let him down. He'll miss that car a lot. I think the jump from a cute black civic to a van will be chilling.
2. Ebay? Really? I'm not sure about selling nice cars on ebay. And I'm about to tell you, my enraptured audience, why in 250 words or less.
Many autos being sold on ebay are sold by "Used Kars on the Korner" types of establishments. Naive people may feel an assurance of quality because of this and be more likely to purchase the car basically sight-unseen. These establishments can do a lot of the bankwork toward working out payments, lightening that paperwork burden on the customer, which is appealing. An exchange between two individuals means either the buyer has all the cash in hand, or the buyer appeals to the bank for the loan.
So let's leave Kars on the Korner and focus on individual sellers. Buyers who are interested in the car but will only consider it after seeing it in person (in other words, people who live within a few hours' drive) are basically, through bidding on ebay, engaging in the same dickering process that the buyer and seller could engage in face to face. This initially seems kind of nice; no ugly bargaining, no frustrating encounters.
But from what I've seen on ebay, bidders nickel-and-dime their way up to pitifully low offers and in many cases never meet the owner's lowest acceptable price. Todd's posted his lowest acceptable price, but I don't think that the general ebay user (and I do not mean that as an insult, as I frequent ebay myself) will yield higher dollar amounts than an old-fashioned face-to-face deal; in fact, I doubt that the offers would be even comparable. I mean, let's face it: that Civic is not as irresistable as an Erin Bear Beanie Baby.
I am very interested in all this, as anyone who knows me knows that I, uh, buy cars as a hobby. Todd, I wish you luck, but I am really regarding this as more of a social science experiment than anything else... And I suspect you are, too.
I know you guys often expect humor from me. Today, my entry is deadly serious.
Todd has put his car up for sale on ebay. I've been thinking about this for a couple of days now, and frankly, I think Todd has lost his mind. Two reasons:
1. That is a nice car, and I think a van, once actually parked out front of his place, may let him down. He'll miss that car a lot. I think the jump from a cute black civic to a van will be chilling.
2. Ebay? Really? I'm not sure about selling nice cars on ebay. And I'm about to tell you, my enraptured audience, why in 250 words or less.
Many autos being sold on ebay are sold by "Used Kars on the Korner" types of establishments. Naive people may feel an assurance of quality because of this and be more likely to purchase the car basically sight-unseen. These establishments can do a lot of the bankwork toward working out payments, lightening that paperwork burden on the customer, which is appealing. An exchange between two individuals means either the buyer has all the cash in hand, or the buyer appeals to the bank for the loan.
So let's leave Kars on the Korner and focus on individual sellers. Buyers who are interested in the car but will only consider it after seeing it in person (in other words, people who live within a few hours' drive) are basically, through bidding on ebay, engaging in the same dickering process that the buyer and seller could engage in face to face. This initially seems kind of nice; no ugly bargaining, no frustrating encounters.
But from what I've seen on ebay, bidders nickel-and-dime their way up to pitifully low offers and in many cases never meet the owner's lowest acceptable price. Todd's posted his lowest acceptable price, but I don't think that the general ebay user (and I do not mean that as an insult, as I frequent ebay myself) will yield higher dollar amounts than an old-fashioned face-to-face deal; in fact, I doubt that the offers would be even comparable. I mean, let's face it: that Civic is not as irresistable as an Erin Bear Beanie Baby.
I am very interested in all this, as anyone who knows me knows that I, uh, buy cars as a hobby. Todd, I wish you luck, but I am really regarding this as more of a social science experiment than anything else... And I suspect you are, too.
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