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Posted by David Sherman [24.32.202.83] on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 23:09:38 :
In Reply to: 1965 power wagon on ebay ? posted by Steve Simon [64.12.116.13] on Monday, January 11, 2010 at 20:13:27 :
The trouble is that you don't know the guy. Ebay says all over the place that your bid is a contract. What happens when you "win" it, look at it, decide you don't want it, and he not only file a non-paying winner report with ebay but sues you for breach of contract. You have a legal commitment to buy it, and you have his word that if you don't like it you don't have to. Which one it the judge going to go by?
I would at least want to talk to the guy on the phone and see if he sounded like a jerk or not. That'd be something at least.
He may not want to entertain tire kickers, but the fact is that even a serious buyer like you isn't going to bid as high sight unseen as you would if you looked it over and knew it was good. Part of the reason dealers sell trucks for more than private parties do is that the dealers DO entertain tire kickers and they ARE available at a convenient time for the buyer to look at it.
The way I see it, for $20K+, the difference between the high bids when he lets people look it over and the high bids when he doesn't is probably going to be quite a few thousand dollars. Suppose he has to "waste" 10 or 20 hours total dealing with people coming over to look at it, some of whom aren't serious. That seems like a high estimate of time wastage to me, and yet even then he's "earning" a couple hundred dollars an hour for that time.
The guy is not looking at it right. He's looking at his personal annoyance, but not at his personal profit. Of course there IS one other possibility -- he knows the truck has a lot of hidden problems, but it looks good in the pictures and he's hoping that once someone has bought it, they won't change their mind once they see it.