I’ll say this from my chumpcar experience and dealing with a lot of 400-800 cars. When you’re dealing with cars in this price range people are often poor and a real pain in the ass to work with. If you’re expecting the same experience as buying/selling a $30k car it’s not going to happen most times.
So it’s not the type of car, it’s the price. I’d say your strategy was wrong. You were holding out for a top dollar sale to make maybe 200-300 over people scrambling to take it away from you. It was bound to be miserable.
No Ouch…I am sure you liked the car, but an $850 dollar car cant be that nice.
What sucks is that in such a low profit situation, you negotiated away a significant percentage of your price. If it was a 10k car and you gave up the same percentage you would have never accepted the deal.
It wasn’t really "nice"as it sat.
It was torn/stripped down, a rolling shell with a motor and trans intact, all original car with a solid body and without rot holes you could throw a cat through.
Within the Crx community, it was a great starting base as most are rotted to hell, beaten on and riced out.
Plan was for a ground up stock/restomod, but with life comes different priorities.
I wasn’t going to make any more by letting it sit more.
If anything I would’ve charged more not less. I would’ve also sent him home empty handed even if he tried with $849.99, no mercy for idiots that like to waste ones time like that.
He drove from far away, which can cause ETA delays. He could have communicated a bit better, but I don’t see it being egregious.
He is better at sales than you. You had that motherfucker hook line and sinker, and he still got the best of you. That’s on you. You tell him to piss off and I bet you anything he pulls out the rest of the cash before making that drive home. I get that you wanted away from the car ASAP for whatever reason, but I wouldn’t do anything but pat that buyer on the back for working the deal better than you.
unfortunately not every buyer/seller is a good buyer/seller
as a buyer i always comfirm eta and update the seller quite a bit
as a seller i always confirm eta and make sure i get updates from the buyer on times (you should have text/called him just to confirm)
negotiating is an art, it seems he was the winner there… ive had multiple people try to do that in person and if they have a valid argument i will adjust my price accordingly. if they dont then i stick to my guns (and they always buy if they drive that far)
Yeah, he totally punked you off. There’s literally nothing you can do about it at this point, so don’t worry and just move on. I would have told him to kick rocks and let him leave. He likely would have come up with the agreed upon amount. Lesson learned, no big deal.
I have had similiar situations, and basically told all of them to eat shit…one particular event I remember invovled this guy with a Civic I was selling…we spoke on the phone, and I made it incredibly clear that my price was firm, and I would not be moving on it (that morning alone, I had 5 people come and see it, as it was priced very aggressive for a quick sale)…when he came to look at it, he said he wanted it, but brought 100 less thinking I would take it…I basically told him too bad…so he said he would go get the other 100 and come back later in the afternoon…when he called me back a couple hours later, I had already sold it…I enjoyed that moment very much…
1.I understand delays, but it’s 2016. There is no reason to leave me hanging for an hour. In the handful of times I’ve driven to Buffalo and back for cars and parts, I’ve never been late, but also contacted the seller to let them know I was such a time away.
2. I disagree to a point with your second statement. We already had a deal in place, negotiation was over. You don’t negotiate before seeing the car if you don’t feel comfortable. It’s a principle thing with me and I would understand it if the car was significantly different than shown and described, but it wasn’t.
But it is what it is, I was between a rock and a mountain to get rid of the car. Oh well.
That’s where I’m at now, over it and selling off the rest of my stuff. It is what it is and the car was going to be the hardest thing to move, and now it’s gone.
I just won’t be doing business with him in the future.
You sold that for $600? Shit, I knew I should have called on the CL ad earlier, I haven’t been on here in years, so I didn’t see the ad here until a few minutes ago. By the time I decided I wasn’t afraid of “had rust, but has been mitigated” to at least drive out and look it was gone.
The more I think about it, the more it is a case by case basis.
For example. You have item X for sale for many months and reduce the price based on no interest, and then you finally get 1 interested party and they show up in the same circumstances and say they want $100 or something off, I would move the item because they are the only ones interested in a lengthy period of time and I would rather have a “reasonable” amount of $ in my hand than an item I have zero use for.