Do people just lie when they write car ads, or...

[CBR.worm]

I am looking for a $5,000 car for a relative. You would not believe how many cars I am looking at that say they have just had the timing belt replaced - on cars that don't have belts! Do people just make stuff up?

One guy has a 1 owner, no accident vehicle. I ran the carfax - it has had airbags deployed twice as well as two other accidents. And it lived in the BX, but was bought in florida and is being sold in florida. Listed as a florida car with low florida miles. I guess they mean only a few of the miles are in florida.

When I list something for sale, I list every defect and price reasonably. I have never had a bad experience selling, or an unsellable car.

 

[eljefino]

And this is before you see the car in person!

Beware the clean carfax/ plausible title history though, your inspection work has just begun.

 

[dishdude]

Could you imagine used car shopping before pictures and the internet? Driving around town looking at cars advertised in 3 line ads in the newspaper or Pennysaver?

 

[Benito]

Originally Posted By: CBR.worm
Do people just make stuff up?


See my thread about the wedding DJ. People pretend their entire career is something it wasn't and even put up a Linked In profile to legitimize it!

 

[silverrat]

Yes they lie and play dumb.

"Tank only costs $40 to fill!"
"One tank of gas lasts me two weeks!"

Um ok what does that mean to me?

 

[supton]

At one point I wanted a D150, complete with a slant six. Found one with an automatic. "It gets about 30mpg". Umm, ok.

 

[splinter]

Originally Posted By: CBR.worm
I am looking for a $5,000 car for a relative...

It's almost always prudent to avoid triangulation in family matters. This may be one of those instances.

 

[goodtimes]

If it's a CA licensed car, smog test records are online. Search CA smog test. I checked one car for sale, and it wasn't the same car matching the license plates.
I got rear ended at a stop light by someone talking on a cell phone. Trunk was smashed all the way to the back window. Totaled, frame bent, but about 4 months later it was on craigslist for a lot of money saying just minor body damage was done, from a dealer.

 

[Lyman]

I just got done shopping as I bought my Jeep. It's downright crazy what some people will pull. One guy I called said "Oh by the way the windshield and back window are now broken out" He said someone had just smashed them. What!? The one I ended up buying had records from new including the window sticker.

 

[jeepman3071]

People will say anything to make a few extra bucks.

 

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted By: CBR.worm
Do people just make stuff up?


Yes, duh.

 

[zzyzzx]

Originally Posted By: dishdude
Could you imagine used car shopping before pictures and the internet? Driving around town looking at cars advertised in 3 line ads in the newspaper or Pennysaver?


I've seen plenty of craigslist ads with no pictures, no mileage, and/or no year.

 

[901Memphis]

Yes people are dishonest when it comes to selling cars, this includes Craigslist and dealers alike... your best bet is to find a BITOG member close to you who will sell one of their extra cars!

 

[Patman]

One thing that really bothers me is when someone lists their car as being fully loaded, when it's clearly missing some options. Perfect example is a 2015 Corvette for sale in the Auto Trader right now by a private seller here in Ontario. Claims it's fully loaded but yet it's missing the carbon fiber dash, it's missing the red (or yellow) brake caliper option, it only has the transparent roof (there is an option to include two roofs, either transparent and body color or transparent and carbon fiber), and it doesn't have magnetic selective ride control on it. So it's clearly missing about $5000 worth of options!

 

[dishdude]

At one time, fully loaded meant FM, power windows and power locks!

 

[Nick1994]

Craigslist can be absolutely ridiculous. People will sell a car for what it's worth IF it ran, but it doesn't. They say "needs a fuel filter, about $10"

Then why the heck don't you throw one in!?

"A/C works, just needs to be charged" God people are stupid.

 

[WiskyBadger]

I won't even look at Craigslist for something I want to drive everyday. A project car yea maybe. I would say in my area anyway atleast 75 percent of what's on there is complete junk. If you put something on it for sale all you get is people trying to trade you junk. I.E. I had a truck for sale and people were offering me guns, plus random car parts, atv parts, and a little bit of money. It's like why would I want all your random [censored] that your to lazy to get rid of or sell yourself? Guys were offering me older trucks that were rusty and had 200k miles for straight up trades like I was naive enough to do that. Rant over

 

[Wolf359]

Originally Posted By: Patman
One thing that really bothers me is when someone lists their car as being fully loaded, when it's clearly missing some options. Perfect example is a 2015 Corvette for sale in the Auto Trader right now by a private seller here in Ontario. Claims it's fully loaded but yet it's missing the carbon fiber dash, it's missing the red (or yellow) brake caliper option, it only has the transparent roof (there is an option to include two roofs, either transparent and body color or transparent and carbon fiber), and it doesn't have magnetic selective ride control on it. So it's clearly missing about $5000 worth of options!


That's pretty annoying for me too. I also hate it when the list all the standard options like power windows and locks or even the sunroof. On certain model cars, they all came standard with a sunroof so there's no point listing something that isn't even an option. Most people are sorta clueless if their car is really loaded. They're always advertised as fully loaded, but technically if it's missing one or two options, then it's not really fully loaded. And some options can't be had with other options so sometimes it's impossible to have a car with all the options.

The other annoying part is when people claim that the car has a rare combination, but there's so many combinations that a car manufacturer could have 10's of thousands of cars and not have two the same. Rare doesn't make it worth more than book.

I think one way out is to run the car though a VIN decoder. Lots of manufacturers have them out there. Only annoying thing is that private party usually don't like to post the VIN but pretty much all the dealers do.

Oh and I would also run a car through autocheck. That can show accidents that carfax doesn't.

Here's a cheap site, carfax for $7, autoecheck for $2:

http://downloadvin.com/index.html

 

[Bob5150]

"Perfect interior, sunroof, leather, good tires, new brakes, a great car for cheap!



Just needs a motor."


I see variations of this one a lot.

 

[CBR.worm]

It's amazing the stuff I am seeing. I guess part of the problem is that I am in a price bracket that is lower than I am used to.