My 280SEL 4.5 is for sale on eBay now...

[lee polowczuk]

you are probably smart for keeping the car now..... i may be knocking on your door somewhere down the line..

[nhdoc]

The funny thing is I have to thanks this twerp bidder after all.

It was having him as the leverage to negotiate with the owners of the storage facility that got me another year at only $80 a month which is what I had been paying for each 10X20 unit for the past year. Even a garage around here rents for at least $100 per month and most are in crappy neighborhoods.

I got a letter from them last month telling me they had to raise my rate to $125 (published rate is $145) but when they found out I was vacating the 2 units I rent because of it and thought someone was coming to buy one of my cars they offered to let me stay at the old rate after all.

If I hadn't gone today (and been forced to wait for this loser) I would not have had the upper hand in the negotiations...so, I take it as an omen, I was meant to keep it another year (at least)!

[kpb]

hey marty, congrats on the "failed" sale. just keep drivin' it -- sitting and looking pretty just don't cut it!

[Tomguy]

Look at most peoples' signatures when it said they owned a 4.5. Most of them say that they regretted selling it. You surely would have as well.

If you do sell it, sell it to someone you know/trust.

[nhdoc]

Originally Posted by kpb

hey marty, congrats on the "failed" sale. just keep drivin' it -- sitting and looking pretty just don't cut it!

I do drive it, in fact I drive all of my cars (weather permitting) so I don't mind keeping them. The storage place is between my home and office so I just stop by and swap cars whenever I want...I land up putting a couple thousand miles a year on each of my "collectables" and have fun doing it. I figure it is my one vice...I don't drink, smoke, gamble or go to team sporting events, so $80 per month per car is my one "splurge" to keep them safe and covered when I don't drive them.

[Hugin]

Originally Posted by nhdoc

Well, the idiot who bought my car is apparently not bright enough to understand how email or even the telephone works. After setting an appointment to meet me at 11:00 today and after I waited an hour for him at the storage facility guess what? He didn't show!

Then, later in the day he replied to an email saying he didn't have my phone number to call me to let me know he couldn't make it even though I emailed it to him twice and he has caller ID on his phone (I know because he knew who I was when I called him).

I knew there was trouble when he started hemming and hawing over the phone about issues that he had plenty of time to raise while the auction was in progress but waited until it was over with him as the high bidder to deal with. I told him there was no negotiating and that I had already regretted listing the car and offering it with such a reasonable reserve, so if he didn't want it for his winning bid then I would just keep it, no problem at all...even after that he wastes my morning not showing up, he could have just told me then he had bidder's remorse.

So, here's the flip side of the ebay horror stories; an honest seller with a beautiful car and some moron who bids and then doesn't feel obliged to even tell me he's not coming to keep his appointment.

Fine, the car is no longer for sale since I was able to negotiate another year of storage for it at a reasonable price while I waited for this putz to show. I'll simply keep it since I would never be able to replace it for $6K.

So, will you negative feedback him then?

[nhdoc]

I just left him negative feedback: "DEADBEAT never came to look at the car, wasted my time waiting for him - AVOID!", but of course that means he'll retaliate and leave me one. Every time I leave a trading partner a DESERVED neg I get one in return...so after 10 years on ebay I have earned no negative feedback but received negatives from 9 (almost all sellers) who were just so bad I felt I had to expose them. eBay's biggest weakness is that it allows deadbeats like this guy to spoil my feedback when I did nothing wrong. So, basically, eBay negative feedback tends to be VERY under-reported.

For this guy I will also report him to ebay as a non-paying bidder. At least they'll know he's done this and if he does it 3 times they suspend him, in theory.

[Tomguy]

eBay needs to make it so that if someone leaves you negative feedback, the person cannot reply with their own negative feedback. Retaliatory negative feedback is retarded and why I never leave it.

[Arthur Dalton]

<>

I agree...........
Very BAD system for us guys with 100% feedback profiles ..
I just went through the same crap last week with a guy and I don't want the retaliation, so I eat it...

Ebay makes it so difficult for the victims, that we just drop it ...
Too Bad , cuz they have a large audience and I have gotten some nice stuff that would have been near impossible without the exposure.

Life........

[oxymoron]

If you wait to leave your negative feedback for 89 days and 23 hours, you can leave it and they cannot. They can respond with some comment that you don't deserve, but it's not a mark against your feedback.

I did this with some punk who sold me an Alpine amp and started hemming and hawing and becoming difficult to reach by e-mail. I could feel it coming on.

After weeks ( he was coincidentally moving the week I bought the amp and it was misplaced in the moving boxes RIGHT!) he finally sent me a tracking number, saying he had shipped the amp. I checked and he not shipped it at all.

About 3 days later he tells me he was robbed and they took the amp. Horse doo doo.

I filed and got a partial refund because he had a balance insufficient to make a complete refund via paypal.

Start to finish it was about 3 months, contrary to his written response to my neg feedback to him. I got no neg. feedback and even got the last word in on the written comments.

I was sorely tempted to leave that feedback immediately, but waiting paid off.

[lee polowczuk]

Believe it or not , i have had 3 good experiences buy cars from people on Ebay over the years..... in 2/3 i waited for the bid to expire and get down to serious discussions about condition with the owner.

that said.... both parties have to have passion about what they are buying or selling...you get a good feel that way.... if the seller is just buying metal, rubber and plastic.... i would stay away.... if the buyer is doing the same... forget it..

not that anyone needs my advice.

[nhdoc]

At this point I have stopped caring about the feedback others leave. I almost never sell anything there anymore, mostly just buy and sellers don't look at your feedback if you pay them, which I always do. The negative hurts him much more than it does me, I'm sure once he sees it he will flame me back with some lies about how the car was junk even though he never came to see it...he already tried to tell me that the 5 prior negatives he had for being a deadbeat were from when his account was hijacked...yeah right, that's why they were all left about a year a part.

Like I told him, it's his loss...the car was worth more than the price he bid, and if he would have been a decent guy I would have thrown in the trunk full of parts worth at least $500 for free as a gift...I even had a really nice radiator and a brand new heater blower motor not to mention a hydropneumatic compensator that was in there, in addition to a freshly factory serviced complete Becker Mexico cassette deck too.

[Tristar1959]

Yo, Lee -
While you're waiting for him to put his 4.5 back on the block, for the interim, there's a nice 280SE/c 3.5 coupe up for sale in your town, if ya got 'bout 15K burning hole in your pocket - after all, if the kid and mom can each have one, why not dad? (So why's my daughter driving an immaculate 280CE while my 250C is still a project...)
See: http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=4644432896&rd=1&sspagename=STRK%3AMEWA%3AIT&rd=1
And if you buy it and are a purist, maybe Marty will sell you that hydropneumatic compensator and you can retrofit for that spring type currently in the 3.5...(Actually, I got the spring type in my 250SE/c and it sat up better afterward, but I couldn't really notice any difference in the ride quality)
Stan

[Tomguy]

I see he left his (lying?) retaliatory negative feedback. Is what he said true? He never even came to see the car so how would he know?

[nhdoc]

Originally Posted by Tomguy

I see he left his (lying?) retaliatory negative feedback. Is what he said true? He never even came to see the car so how would he know?

Of course he's left lying retaliatory feedback. Not only did he not ever come to look at it but he made an appointment to come last Monday and never called or emailed to say he wasn't coming and left me waiting for him at the storage place for an hour until I finally gave up and left.

I did tell him on the phone that when I was cleaning out the trunk in anticipation of the sale I had noticed that the left well bottom had what looked like a piece of steel cut out and a replacement welded into it, about 4" X 8" on the bottom that I had never seen before, even when I had the car on the lift. It's very well done and not an area I ever scrutinized other than to make sure it was solid and in good shape. It's sealed from the bottom with undercoating so the repair, if it was one, could easily be missed. You can only see it by closely looking from the trunk side...as I said, it's really nothing of concern and on a 33 year old car it is possible that even in Florida that the well could have rusted due to a leaky trunk gasket (which is perfect now).

It's possible that the well had been repaired when the car was painted (in 1991) because there was some mention of a small repair on the reciept but I could not make it out. It's a common area of rust-out on these as everyone here knows but if repaired it was done right and since it's lasted all this time without any trouble it would likely last the rest of the car's life too. His big concern was that the car was not a bondo queen which I assured him it was NOT.

I never saw any other evidence of any repairs or rust and there is NO ACTIVE RUST. I told him that if he came to look at it (which is under an hour from him) and there was anything about the car at all that he objected to he could elect not to buy it and there would be no hard feelings at all.

He's now offered to try and have the feedback withdrawn but I have refused. I left the feedback because the guy is an idiot and liar, and I will not be blackmailed into withdrawing feedback. He should have had the courtesy to say he wasn't even going to look at it if he had any concerns at all...like I said he's just being a jerk and finding excuses to not follow through after having bidder's remorse. He has 5 other negs from being a deadbeat, so this is a pattern with him. Who knows how many others he's stiffed who didn't leave a negative?

Probably nobody else would have even disclosed noticing the repair and I am sure he probably would not have seen it either since I never saw it until last week, so he's using it as an excuse to be a deadbeat...I knew from the first time I had contact with him that he was trouble. He's one of these guys who asks a ton of questions AFTER the auction's over and he's already won the item instead of before he bid...