Sunday, March 19, 2006

Car going cheap

Now that my old Honda has been listed for auction on TradeMe for exactly three and a half days, I find myself needing to constantly check to see how much interest it's generating.

A mere hour after the listing went up I got an offer to buy it right away for six hundred bucks. Unfortunately, TradeMe's rules didn't allow me to accept it in those particular circumstances.

So here I am, going online every few hours to see whether there's been any advance on the first (and so far only) bid. The auction doesn't end until the end of the month, so I shouldn't worry. But I do. I'm worrying that the dozens of people who've seen the listing are just sitting around not bidding, just because the contact phone number is hidden in the middle of a huge list of questions and answers about rust and WOFs.

We thought that a low reserve would get prospective buyers' bidding juices flowing. Instead, it might mean that I'm practically giving the car away.

And you know how I hate to get a bad deal.

3 comments:

Frally said...

Although I find general items very easy to buy and sell on Trade Me, unfortunately cars seem to be another story. We've just gone through the process of selling 2 cars (Don't ask why we had 2 cars to sell, our house looked like a freaking caryard for ages) and it took FOREVER to get them gone. I find people searching for cars on Trade Me are REALLY STINGEY. Be prepared to either cut your price or wait forever. We ended up cutting the price becase we wanted them gone.
Mind you, that's only my experience - you could get lucky. Hope I didn't put you off too much.

Violet said...

frally: I was looking around at all the different catgories and it was interesting that people will pay 40 bucks or more for a second-hand baby sleeping bag but won't shell out 350 bucks for a car that works perfectly well. And 350 bucks already is cut-price!

Violet said...

juliabohemian: no I didn't, but I'm not surprised; real estate is bought and sold on TradeMe too.