Question and thoughts about selling on Craigslist

[72step]

I've had my truck on Craigslist for the last month with very minimal response. I've sold other smaller/cheaper things on CL with no probs. Is CL just not a good place to actually sell a restored vehicle? Perhaps the economy is still that bad? And of course my asking price could be too high, but man usually you always get the tire kicker phone calls and low ball offers and I've gotten nothing. One guy that sounded interested to never hear from again. Thanks for any insight.

[jsbgump]

Craigslist is hit and miss at best. With the economy trying to turn around its hard to sell vehilces of any type in my opinion.

[shifty]

Originally Posted by jsbgump

Craigslist is hit and miss at best. With the economy trying to turn around its hard to sell vehilces of any type in my opinion.

Pretty much what jsb said. I use eBay. Gave up on Craigslist a long time ago. Sold two cars now on eBay, one with a large profit (92-95 Honda Civic hatchback), the other at my "buy it now" price. The listing fee and other fees suck, but if you take that into consideration when setting your minimum buy price, it can turn out in your favor.

[72step]

Thing is about ebay is I've heard that there's lots of idiots out there who will bid and not pay or bid and be one of those out of country scam artists. At that point you have to pay the selling fee ($125) even if it doesn't actually sell. Is that very common?

[72freak]

Economy!!!!......there are also a LOT of time wasters, tire kickers and looky lous on there. Really study youre price and you just have to realize thats not a lot that is selling at the moment!

[shifty]

Originally Posted by 72step

Thing is about ebay is I've heard that there's lots of idiots out there who will bid and not pay or bid and be one of those out of country scam artists. At that point you have to pay the selling fee ($125) even if it doesn't actually sell. Is that very common?

Depends on how you handle your auction.

I specifically note at the top of AND in the terms of my auction that bidders that have low feedback OR have zero feedback need to contact me before bidding, or I'll dump their bid. And believe me, I've dumped people's bids when they didn't pay attention to that or just ignored it. I've had a lot of 0-feedback bidders created in days prior do that crap to me.

I state in the auction that buyer must pick up the vehicle, I WILL NOT make shipping arrangements, and if they choose to make arrangements, more power to them. I offer to carry the vehicle to my work, which is 1/2 block from the train station, 7 train stops from the airport, and 2 blocks off of I-75, which is really convenient to fly in, take the train to my office, hop in the car, then drive home after signing all the paperwork. I even pick the guy who bought my GTI last year from the Greyhound station, he took a bus for $40 from Tallahassee to Atlanta, I picked him up, we squared up on cash, we signed paperwork, then he drove to Birmingham to pick up his son, then drove back to Tallahassee.

I put clearly in the terms of the auction also that a x$ non-refundable deposit is required upon winning the auction to cover my ass on the listing fee, and my time, and that the buyer has x# of days to come pick up the vehicle (usually 2 weeks) before I start charging a storage fee of x$ per day, so I don't end up in a situation of an unclaimed vehicle - or, if it does remain unclaimed, after winning the auction, I can potentially "legally" take re-possession of the vehicle when the storage fee exceeds the amount of the auction and re-sell it to someone else.

Surely, somewhere on the internet, someone must have written a HOWTO guide on ways to protect yourself on eBay when selling large-dollar items. I just didn't find time to look it up. My main concerns were: foreign bidders, shill-bidders (people who bid and never pay), having a buyer pay and pick up promptly. So I did everything I thought was legal, and encouraged the buyer to pay via PayPal so we BOTH have recourse if someone feels screwed. True - it's more fees, but I figure that into the required deposit amount also.

[mclairmo]

Bad economy. However, I think Ebay is a little better since it reaches every state. Some guys are willing to fly or take a road trip to get their dream truck.

[cdowns]

i've had virtually no serious interest in bigger ticket items on craigs i had a bike listed for 18500 in 3months posting all over the place the only interest was one guy that offered me 7500 sight unseen // i just took the bike for a ride this morning

[68gmsee]

Economy is the main reason... A lot of us are holding on to our money cause we don't know what's going to happen in the future. And the ones that look on Craigs list are looking for that good low priced bargain that they can afford.

One thing that a lot of people selling old trucks or cars fail to consider is that the more you put into them, the less people out there that can afford them.

[big mike71]

Spend 25 bones and become a site supporter and you can list it on here for as long as you want with only truck guys looking at it.

[Skirkpat]

Craigslist sucks it, The only people there are the ones that want a bargain. That said if you are trying to get rid of something it is great, you could "give away" dog poo on there, but if you plan on getting fairmarket value it sucks it, as mentioned above. Pay up and list it here, no one has money right now, but at least we will get to see some pics of it

[BossHogg69]

Originally Posted by 72step

I've sold other smaller/cheaper things on CL with no probs.

Key words there - I sell little stuff on there all the time, so does my wife. Not much luck with big ticket items though. Seems like CL draws more of the 'garage sale' type crowd, IMO. Not necessarily a bad thing, but like others have stated, just a little different than the eGay crowd. With that being said, some of the things I've had on eGay lately haven't sold either.

[mr48chev]

Most of the guys gave you some pretty good and real answers.
I'd say the economy probably has more to do with it than anything else and a lot of guys are having problems getting hold of the cash that wasn't all that hard to get their hands on three years ago.
A lot of guys don't know how to properly search Craigslist for stuff that is out of their home area and you miss a lot of the market that way.

Ebay is a good way to advertise the rig for a reasonable price to a world wide market. Almost everyone who is searching Ebay for that model of truck will see the add. That is a lot of coverage for less than a three day print add in my local daily paper. A three day print add for a car here with no photo is around 75.00 and maybe 5,000 people will actually even see it with something like 50,000 thousand circulation.

One other source that reaches a huge market and isn't all that expensive is www.hotrodhotline.com About the same as a feature add on ebay. Guys in a buying mood who check that are looking for quality fixed up rigs.

Still, no matter what you use to advertise the truck it comes down to a quality and accurate description and quality photographs.

I've seen way too many Craigslist, Ebay and Little Nickle adds that were extremely poorly written with either bad grammar, bad spelling, terrible descriptions or displaying an attitude that just turns buyers off. I've seen photos that were so poor of quality that they didn't show the rig so that you could tell what it actually looked at.
Six years ago I bought my sailboat (21 ft sloop) off ebay. It was in Seattle in a boat yard and the owner lived in Madison, Wi and was paying 65 a month storage. The description was terrible, something like 1975 Ocean racer sailboat. Has 4.5 Mercury motor and mast and boom, No sails. The photos were taken with what was probably a cell phone with about .5 meg. The starting bid was something like 25.00 I thought, what the hell, I'll bid 250.00 on it and if I get it and it's junk I'll salvage enough to get my money back. Someone tried to snipe me with a 200.00 bid and I paid 202.50 for the boat and paypal'ed the money to the seller as soon as I saw I had won. When I got the title and registration I found that he had paid 1695.00 for it the year before. We spent 8 nights and 9 days of vacation on that boat on Puget sound earlier this month.

[72step]

Thanks for the insight guys. Everything you guys said makes perfect sense. I will likely join here and try and list it here. At least for 25 bucks I'll know I'm making a pretty hard attempt and if it doesn't sell it wasn't meant to sell. I hear yall about the economy. 3-5 years ago I could've easily gotten 3k-5k more than I'm asking without breaking a sweat. The economy and the plain old classic car market is at a low spot right now. Thanks......

[prostreetC-10]

everyone is right on. I LOVE them both. I usually buy off craigslist and then re-sell on eBay. Bottom line is that CL has been scaring people lately because of all of the scams. People feel a lot more safe on ebay and usually look there if they are going to spend big $$$. Craigslist is more garage sale type people which means they are going to tell you that you are selling crap so they can get a better deal. It's real simple: use common sense just like we are forced to in other areas of life and you will be okay. Biggest problem with eBay lately is the damn sellers fees being so high. Craigslist is free and you get what you pay for!!!! lol

[JON67]

I don't know. I have always had good luck with craigslist. I guess the people who think it's only for "garage sale" people, probably think their stuff is worth more than it actually is.

I sold a car on craigslist in 20 minutes once. it was a 99 Kia (this was in 06) I padded my price for negotiation, and the guy didnt even try to negotiate. got my full list price.

Especially in this economy nobody is going to pay more than 3-5k for a 40 year old truck no matter how restored it is. except maybe a collector. They had one of our trucks on Mecum not to long ago, and if I recall it didn't sell.

Edited to add: I just read thru this and it sounds abrasive. I wasn't meaning to sound that way. and I am not saying this is the case in the OP's case. This is just my experience up here in the PNW.

[72step]

JON67: You don't sound abrasive. I actually sold a boat last year on CL and got more than I was asking $9k because 3 people showed up at my house at once. I thought they were going to flake and all three showed up and started a price fight. The bottom line is craigslist is hit and miss bigtime. Much like an iffy day at fishing. Another problem is our trucks aren't exactly rare. Collectibilty is okay but there's so many out there. If my truck was a Camaro, Chevelle, or Early Impala it would be gone. The fact that it's a stepside hurts it, but it is a shortbed so that helps along with a bada$$ engine and tranny. The problem with my truck on CL is I've only gotten like 2 inquiries and that's it! I'll see about listing it here. Look for a bada$$ yellow stepper.

[prostreetC-10]

Originally Posted by JON67

I just read thru this and it sounds abrasive.

I was super offended and needed to start the healing process but after reading the last part of your post, I feel better!

It's funny that type and text can come off different when you read it back to yourself after writing it. I don't think it sounded abrasive but I also can't pass up an opportunity to be a little smart-alliky!

[Hoods69BadBowTie]

Ya I gotta agree and say the economy is the main reason that stuffs not selling as well. People want to hold onto the money that they got because of the uncertain future. I have had pretty good on CL! I sold 1 truck and made some money and the rest has been stuff like motors and parts and tools. Gone a little low with them but still made money on all of my stuff. I haven't dealt much with Evilbay my lil bro is the one that does that and knows his way around it. Good luck with the truck bud!

[GMCjunkie]

I didnt have much faith in CL, but I put my 05 Toyota on there, I got retards, and commercial people calling wanting to sell it for me for a price.. then the ones who never called back. I think I had it on there for about 2 months, kept updating it every week, finally got the attention of the right person. Toyota is gone

[glock35ipsc]

I've had very good luck with CL. Within the last year, I've sold several fairly big ticket items; 5th wheel RV, snowmobiles, enclosed trailer, tractor, and a motorcycle.

The guy that bought the snowmobiles tried to play the "this is all the cash I have" game when he showed back up to pick them up $500 short, after we had already agreed on the price. The look on his face was priceless when I said "Well, come back when you have the full $xxxx and I'll help ya load them up."

[fastwillie 696969]

no problems here with cl