Dealing with idiot car buyers: A primer.

The following e-mail conversation is in no way uniquei but is meant to be instructive all the same. You needn’t delegate selling your old car to the dealer – who will surely gives you several thousand less than you could obtain privately regardless of how he fudges the numbers on the offer sheetii – and armed with this example you’ll be better prepared to deal with the idiot car buyers who want nothing more than to waste your time and steal your money. Without further ado :

Hello! The following is a reply to your “LOW KM – 2005 Smart Fortwo Coupe (2 door)” Ad on Kijiji:

Nabel: Still available and what’s the best price you can do now on a quick sale, can possibly take it tomorrow
Pete: What you see is what you get.iii

Nabel: Is it auto or standard
Pete: Both.iv

Nabel: What’s the best price you can do on a quick sale
Pete: What you see is what you get.v

Nabel: I’ll give you 1500vi
Pete: Throw in your two daughters and we’ll have a deal.vii

Nabel: You are a real looser arn’t youviii
Pete: No, I just don’t negotiate with tire-kicking scum who want the “best price” without seeing the vehicle and overvalue their useless daughters without thinking about the costs associated with keeping them.ix And ftr, “loser” only has one “o”.x

Nabel: I don’t have daughters, if I’d did I would have already called you too meet up and make you my bitch, you would not know its me, till you were already my bitch .
Pete: Lol ok. Great plan.xi You must have a lot of bitches already. I wonder where I’d fit in the hierarchy.xii

That’s one way to do it, at least. The other is to ignore all but the most “legitimate” looking responses and leave the obvious scammers to wallow in the empty echoes of their own vapid attempts. But then again, how would you know what’s legitimate and what isn’t if you’ve never done it before ? And even if you had a sixth sense for it, developed in another time and another place, why not have a little fun with them ?

Not like these idiot car buyers are in your WoT.

___ ___ ___

  1. I’ve had several such similar conversations… this morning.
  2. It’s entirely normal for dealers to use manufacturer incentives to boost the apparent value of a trade-in. Why ? Because you’re a special little trainflake and YOUR used piece of junk is worth more to you than it is to the marketplace and you’re very sensitive to this fact, moreso than you are to the price you’re paying for your new car, so the dealer massages the numbers accordingly. That, and the fact that the dealer is taking a risk that your old car sits on his lot, costing him money all the while, for as much as a year before he can move it. He takes this risk just so that you can satisfy your impulse for something NEW without going through the hassle of dealing with idiot car buyers all by your lonesome. What a nice guy, eh ?
  3. There’s an ad. There’s a price. You want to make an offer ? Make an offer. As the seller, don’t degrade yourself (ie. don’t lower your price) just for the asking. Better yet, never give an inch to “best price, my friend” fuckers from Middle and Far Eastern countries – they’re the worst for this. They’ll walk in thinking that their shit don’t stink and that their dollars are worth more than the next guy’s because they touched them. They think they can bring all their homegrown “tricks” here and no one will see it coming. They’ll waste A LOT of your time if you don’t tell them to fuck off right from the get-go.

    Remember : regardless of what country they’re from and what religion they practise, these fuckers are terrorists. How so ? They make you scared of selling your car privately. The only way to deal with these idiots is to beat them back like the Africans they are.

    Hell, if I owned a dealership, I’d hire these dicks by the dozens to spam and scam every last private seller into either selling for well under market price or into trading-in their car in the dealership “safe space.”  

  4. It’s a semi-automatic, which means that it has a clutch but no clutch pedal. So it’ll downshift for you and you just take care of the up-shifting, throttle, and braking. If Nabel was trying to buy anything more than a deal (instead of, y’know, a fucking car) he would know that this was the only transmission available on the smart fortwo. Much maligned as it is, everyone who’s ever uttered so much as a breath on the topic has made a commentary on it, so a 4-second google search would’ve sufficed. But did this fuckwad do that ? No, he wasted MY time. The gall of these immigrants.
  5. Not an inch, you hear me.
  6. Finally, the counter-offer comes. Less than half-the asking price, obviously.
  7. Since this piece of shit thinks he knows how to negotiate better than I do, might as well raise the stakes to see who drowns first. Worst case scenario, he says no and is “offended.” Best case scenario, the harim groweth. Because, yes, even being a married father, I’m in the harim business. To quote the wholly lawgs :

    mircea_popescu: Looky : if you own real estate you’re in the real estate biz. Just like if you’re married, you’re in the pimp biz. You may suck at it something fierce, but that dun matter. There isn’t a “special” situation where you’re a pimp but that’s ok because you’re not really a pimp.
    asciilifeform: Ok in that sense yes. And if I buy a car I am in car biz ? A new pocket knife – in cutlery biz ?

    thestringpuller: How is marriage the pimp biz?
    mircea_popescu: Got a woman in the house ? She can run with your monyz ? How NOT.

    phf: Probably a controversial point because never interacted with those other pimps.
    mircea_popescu: Yeah well, ignorance of the law is no defense.

    phf: The one that i knew wasn’t really running it movie back of hand style (or I guess it wasn’t like this special thing, “where’s my money bitch”). Money brought was income and “he takes care of me” etc.
    mircea_popescu: It’s a domestic arrangement, what. Really, in some cultures it’s the default domestic arrangement.

    phf: In fact it took me a while to grok what’s going on.
    mircea_popescu: asciilifeform If you buy a car you are in the car biz, yes. Which is why car salesmen rape you so badly.

    asciilifeform: I thought ‘in biz’ were, roughly, if you intended to make money reselling.
    mircea_popescu: Your intention don’t matter jack shit.

    asciilifeform: Or – if I buy icecream – I am in icecream biz ?
    mircea_popescu: What, and you’re in the army if you intend to kill people ?

    asciilifeform: I cross the road, I am in paving biz ? This is a defensible POV but not quite what anybody expects.
    mircea_popescu: What anybody expects also dun enter into it. Yes, sanity is very intolerant of consumerism ethos and “division of labour” understood without any understanding.

    Specialisation is for insects and all that.

  8. Ok, so he picked offended. Great! I save oodles of time “negotiating” and so does he. Now he can go back to grammar school and I can go back to the business of brokering. Everybody wins!
  9. Really, what’s a daughter cost to keep ? Hundreds of thousands ? And you won’t pay someone $1700 to clear you of any future obligations ? They really don’t teach math in Calcutta eh. And here I was thinking the Canadian system was the shits. Turns out, it’s not unique in this regard.
  10. Or maybe I’m so big that I’ll make his daughters looser ? Unless they’re the biggest peacock sluts on the planet, this is entirely probable.
  11. So we arrange a date and time for him to view the car and… I never know it’s him ? WTF kind of logic is that ??! Even if he just sends the two girlies and the cash, who’s going to drive the car away ? Someone has to sign the bill of sale. Plus, what’s so hard about borrowing a couple of brown girls and pretending like they’re his ? Not like I’d know the difference. Or care. Plus plus, if he could’ve, he would’ve, and no way someone who is sufficiently capable of pulling it off is insufficiently capable of thinking it through a bit. Y’know, at least enough to actually make sense. Then again, maybe I just don’t understand how the world works.
  12. Alpha cuck perhaps ?

2 thoughts on “Dealing with idiot car buyers: A primer.

  1. Pete D. says:

    Updated. The unproductive tete-a-tete continueth. For the lulz!

  2. […] any values of you en masse. So if you think for a second that you can delegate the use of force, or anything else for that matter, it’s only a matter of time before you end up on the wrong side of the […]

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