I'm Fed Up With People Who Make Zero Effort To Sell Their Cars
It’s inevitable: following Christmas dinner every year, when I’m vegetating on the sofa in a stuffing-induced stupor, I’ll end up browsing the used car classifieds. For me, it’s just as much a tradition as the bad cracker jokes and brussel sprouts. Actually, scratch that last one, sprouts are the work of the devil.
Anyway, during 2017’s Christmas Day classifieds binge, I stumbled upon an incredible advert for an early Porsche Boxster. It had the full spec list. A detailed run-through of all the less-good bits. The dates and mileages for every single service the car’s ever had. The make and model of the tyres it’s currently wearing. Even the kind of oil it had at the last service.
It made me want to call the seller immediately to arrange a test drive. It made the car stand out against all the other low-priced Boxsters out there. And it also made me mad.
Why? Because used car adverts like this are a rarity: few sellers will go far beyond listing some of the spec, the mileage and some very vague description of the condition and service history. It’s shockingly common to see car adverts that are only a handful of words long, and if you venture in the dark world of Facebook ‘For Sale’ pages, it won’t take you long to find someone flogging a car without even saying what model it is or what kind of fuel it uses.
Most bizarre is when a car has been subjected to drastic modifications, but with no detail given by the seller as to what exactly has been done. What parts have been fitted? Who did the work?
It’s perhaps the most irksome when you see dealers only providing a short description of a car, followed by a load of copy/pasted text about how great said dealership is. It is literally their job to sell cars, and yet many suck at it.
Aside from your house, your car is likely to be the most expensive thing you’ll ever sell. So why can’t people put more effort into the adverts? The standard of English doesn’t even matter that much, so long as key details are there like comprehensive service information, when it last had new tyres and what they were, a description of the condition that goes beyond a single word like ‘good’ - you get the idea.
It’s not hard, and it’s not that time consuming, and yet I know that within seconds of firing up the classifieds, I’m going to get annoyed by crap adverts again. Anyone else feel this way?
Growing up on a diet of World Rally Championship highlights and lengthy Gran Turismo 2 sessions, a life in cars was as good as inevitable for Matt.
Comments
The most annoying thing is when the car is selected as a manual but it says that it’s auto in the title. Why not just make it so when you put it up for sale it’s selected as an auto? Also when cars are sold and instead of taking the ad down the owner puts sold in the title.
I hate that too. I see it a lot when i look at e60 m5’s.
Here is my favourite on car ads
“Too many mods to list”
Only took a pod filter and an exhaust tip.
My favorites:
“Lots of performance material” / “Makes loads of power from early on” / “Tuned by a pro” (aka his friend’s cousin) — has no dyno sheets, no service history, and not even invoices for parts to prove anything. No under the hood picture in sight either. I see so many of those it makes me sick.
Wait Matt, are you Orthodox?
Yeah I feel ya. Pisses me off when it says “manual” but it’s not even a paddle shift
WHAT GETS ME IS WHEN PEOPLE HAVE CAPS LOCK ON ALL THE TIME IN ORDER TO MAKE THEIR POST STAND OUT. WHEN IT FACT, ALL IT DOES ANNOY ANYONE WHO TRIES TO READ A MASSIVE WALL OF BLOCK TEXT.
When gets me even more is when people completely fail at their grammar, making it even harder to read still….
I’m currently looking into buying my first car. A Vauxhall Astra 1.8 VVT SRI (Yes I know not the most amazing vehicle) however on multiple occasions of finding a car that looks decent on its advert I’ve gone to view the car and found crash damage, rust, s#itty mods, bald tyres, missing parts and general rubbish. I wish I could just find an honest advertisement. Never mind a detailed one
You hate sprouts? I’m not sure we can be friends anymore. To be fair most people overcook them.
Your typical ad here:
Selling a car. Runs. Contact me.
I’ve always loved “always adult driven”, because adults never drive a car like they stole it. Then there’s the ones with pics taken 20 ft away with a potato, the wrong model name, “milage not listed”, then a high asking price with o.b.o
Totally get it but while it continues it makes it easier for those of us who actually care to sell cars and much easier for us to identify sellers who might actually have taken care of theirs. Careful lady owner? To me that means it’s been serviced at quick fit by some teenage lackey.