An Idea

[Shvegel]

After my recent posting regarding an eBay listing for a car with a supposed 56,000 original miles I had a thought.  Maybe we should start dissecting and commenting on some of these eBay finds in a constructive manner and then archive them either as a sticky or as a separate section entirely.   Sort of a spotters guide to looking at a car online.  I know we already have an eBay and Vendor section but I think we could be a little more direct with a "Shopping for cars online" section or something like that.

After reading about so many horror stories of cars that were miss-represented on eBay and purchased without an inspection I really think we could do a prospective buyer a great service by becoming the place to go to learn before you buy.

[wwheeler]

That is an out of the box idea for this site and could be very helpful. The trick is to keep it constructive w/o inserting personal opinions. A sticky at the beginning could help with that and I think a separate section would be best. Maybe in the tech area? As an example on that 56K car, I mentioned the painted black lower panels as being as caution area for rust. Many pagoda newbies may/will not be aware of well known trouble spots that the experts here can quickly point out. Then you get into original versus modified. Again, no personal opinions, just simply point out that it is not what came from the factory.

There are books out there that attempt this and so it must be a "marketable" concept. The reason I like this site over others is because it has a very technical slant and this idea would further reinforce that.

[GGR]

Hmmm.... What happens when a member advertises his car for sale? The rest of the group will dissect and comment in a constructive manner?

[Benz Dr.]

Hmmm.... What happens when a member advertises his car for sale? The rest of the group will dissect and comment in a constructive manner?

Probably not. This whole thing started as a sort of contest to see who could spot ( only by a couple of pictures ) how many things were wrong on cars for sale. In one hand it was intended to educate everyone about what a correct car should look like, and to some degree it did that, and on the other hand it ended up beating up those who were trying to sell their car/s. Whether intentional or not, it did that, and it's one of the last things that needs to be addressed when it comes to how we run our club.

The real question is; how helpful are we? Are we protecting our members or screwing up someone's car sale? I could easily say both but then how many here were actually going to buy the car in question that got cut to ribbons and did our helpful appraisal also help the seller? And further to that, if you were trying to sell a car, be it private or as a business, and it got chopped up here, how would you feel about that? And lastly, how would your car fare under the 113 microscope?

It's the law of unintended consequences hard at work here and no good deed goes unpunished. 

[wwheeler]

Yea, maybe one of concepts that sounds good on paper but in reality, hard to pull off. I think most people here would have the best intentions, but some may steer off course and then it gets ugly.

   

[Benz Dr.]

Yea, maybe one of concepts that sounds good on paper but in reality, hard to pull off. I think most people here would have the best intentions, but some may steer off course and then it gets ugly.

 I know that. I don't think that most would deliberately smear someone's car but then most people don't trust used car sales people and there are a lot of scams on the internet.