To ebay or not to ebay...

Ouch that looks painful. cyberwraith

"look before you leap" springs to mind......

Alex

found it

milage,

Does the buyer have to recover it from that hump

AWEM

Well this T junction (at the top of a very steep hill) was one of the main ways in to the course, and I'd seen lots of other people go up there. I had actually been up there once before, but because of the SIII's supertanker sized turning circle when I got over the peak and turned left I 'turned' into the enbankment, so I had to reverse a bit, forward a bit, reverse a bit in order to get onto the road that made the 'top' peice of the 'T'. 2nd time round I thought I'd skip the faffing about so I tried to cut left accross the corner at the top - but as you an see the corner had a dip behind it...

and in case you're wondering the only way to get off was to be pulled backwards down the very steep hill - eeek!

My only experience of selling cars on ebay (I've done lots of non-car stuff) was pretty rotten. I tried to sell an old E-reg Audi 90 Quattro with a reserve of 500 quid to sell it fast, at the time they were selling for between 800 and 1000 quid.

I got scammers sending me the usual mail, and the others were just people sending useful messages like "I HAD ONE OF THOSE CAR'S IT WAS JUS LIKE YOU'RES" or people saying "You've put a lot of pictures up but didn't take a picture of , what's wrong with it?".

I sold it to a friend of a friend in the end for over 1000 quid after spending some extra cash on it for some repairs, I made a profit of about 700 quid I think.

I've done both in the past. eBay is a good way of getting your message out to a lot of people in a short amount of time. At the same time, there are lots of online 4x4 forums worth using, and also of course the magazines.

The mags tend to work well if you're after an ambitious price, but it takes so long to get the advert in press.

If you're selling online be careful of the variety of scams that are out there. Don't sell to anybody who you have any doubts about. Don't assume that a banker's draft is a 100% reliable form of payment (they are sometimes stolen and can be revoked up to several weeks after they've cleared in your account). If the buyer tries to set up any kind of odd deal (the classic being getting somebody to send you a cheque for more than the vehicle's worth, and then asking you to forward them the balance) then run very quickly in the opposite direction.

A good test is to imagine your buyer has just totally fleeced you; are you thinking "I *knew* there was something a bit odd about that!"

Good luck, David

So is there a reliable way of payment without asking for cash? How about Bank Transfer?

anon4186 composed the following;:

We sold our S3 for £986, when we reckoned it was worth about £600 tops.

Make it plain that people are allowed and indeed encouraged to come and view it before auction end, we had three people come and look, but the winning bidder didn't. We had a low start and lowish reserve £100 start £450 reserve and it hit reserve the first day. Then nothing for six days, then on the last day about eight different bidders pushed it up.

When the guy who won it came to pick it up he wanted to haggle and kick tyres etc etc .. But I wouldn't have it, and pointed out what an auction and his bids meant. Besides, he'd driven in another S3 from London to Nottingham with a twin axle trailer on tow, so I guessed he was serious about it anyway .. ;) In the end he was happy and left good feedback.

If someone offers a deal that looks 'too good to be true' then it is ... ;)

To be honest, I don't know. I'd have though Bank Transfer was reliable, but best check with your bank.

When I sold my Disco I checked with Lloyds Bank to find out what was safe. They assured me that a banker's draft was irrevocable and entirely safe. Which is absolute rubbish. When I pointed out they were talking rubbish, they didn't know what to say - they were just repeating back some page of a training manual somewhere, and the fact that the truth conflicted with what they were saying caused them total confusion.

If the bank doesn't know better, who does?

In news: snipped-for-privacy@no-dns-yet-212-23-3-119.zen.co.uk, David French blithered:

Someone who has been burned!!!

I should have added that at the time the police classed this as theft by deception and not fraud, unless you are privvy to law and know different I asssume this is the offence remains the same.

Alan M

All I know is I've heard cases of it happen locally, and insurance companies have flatly refused to pay out. Perhaps the terms and conditions are different these days, or insurance companies have had enough of the scams and are refusing to pay out using a clause in the polity, rather than taking a more lenient view and coughing up

Alex