Haggling doesn’t make you a time waster or a chancer. You’re buying a bike, for the lowest price possible, not trying to make a friend. As a seller you have your line in the sand, and the buyer has theirs. Negotiate to the best of your / their ability and have a deal or don’t. As a buyer I find that sellers with unrealistic expectations are tedious, and as a seller I find lazy buyers irritating. But I enjoy the process of negotiation and understand that right until the payment is exchanged, we are still negotiating. I agree with your points about categorisation, as insurance companies write off vehicles as uneconomical repairs for silly things based on costing methods that are not very environmentally or financially sensible. There’s a world of difference between a bike having a scratch on frame paint and being twisted out of shape, you could call one cosmetic and the other a safety factor. That whole “insurance write off” world needs an overhaul.
Yes but I don’t think the situation is better / safer / more environmentally sound. It seems (as always) that the insurance racket is the beneficiary of the update.
If I were in your shoes, there's a very good chance that my driveway would soon have a good spec A4 tdi Quattro parked on it.
nobody said it was? Neither is mine. the industry issued some new classifications but it doesn't change a lot really, c is now s and d is now n. insurance companies are quite wise to those that would profit from purchasing their own salvage too, so they will set higher values for it on the basis places like copart would achieve those figures for them in auction. They make quite a bit from it. So they undervalue your vehicle, and charge more for the salvage. reasonable haggling is fine, stupidity gets invited to leave or look for another vehicle. If you have no intention of paying anywhere near the buyers price it's not haggling, it's piss taking, especially when something has been knocked off in advance for a quick sale. I have no issue ever telling somebody "thankyou for your time and good luck in your search" yet I have on occasion taken offers too, I'm not unreasonable, some buyers come across so much better. If you've found a nice 8k Evo SE then I can't see why you're waiting. It's unusually low priced so I'd take advantage of it personally, if you're serious.
21 posts in and you still dont get the point of this thread. if you cant meaningfully contribute to the thread please dont.
Those lines are subjective I guess as everyone has their own perspective about what's OK in a negotiation. It does seem like people need to chill out though, I was practically thrown out of a bloke's drive last year for pointing out that the bike he had described as "mint" was misleading. His words were that "it's a 15 year old bike, it is mint for the age". I'm sure that the seller in question felt that I was being unrealistic whereas I thought that the description of the bike I'd travelled 150 miles to see was grossly inaccurate - not to mention that belts and desmo services were overdue and the fairings were part OE and part Chinese. I failed to see the mintiness, and consequently his £5k 748 was worth to me no more than £2.5 - £3k because of the work and additional money I'd need to put into it. Is telling someone that their bike is worth 50%-60% of their asking price stupid when it's factually correct? That guy wasted a day of my time and 300 miles worth of diesel through his inability to describe his bike even closely accurately (he didn't have the service book to hand when we spoke on the phone, allegedly)...
This. Bang on. whats amazes me is the spread between buyers and sellers expectations. its much wider for bikes than for cars i think. there are still early vintage 848s out there for over 6.5k!!!
and incidentally, i love the 'no silly offers please' or 'only serious enquiries.' both mean completely different things depending what side of the trade you're on.
I traded a 2010 evo with ohlins forks and damper with 12k miles on it in 2013 for 6500. I use that as a gauge. And wouldn’t pay more than 5k for a pre evo, 6 for a mint evo and 7 for the latest model. But I’m not buying lol
The general rule of thumb is that they're dear when I'm buying and cheap when I'm selling... it's a sad paradigm.
im where youre at but i am buying but sellers dont believe me... yet. ive had a few call backs offering reductions of a few hundred but with xmas approaching my leverage increases so ill get what i want at a sensible price
Your problem, and I’ve been there a few times, is you will continually chase the deal and never buy. ‘There’s always a better one out there, cheaper’ The tyre kicking turns out better than yet buying. Although if I go see something, I’ve very rarely not bought it
If I am in the car then I'm likely buying... the exception earlier in the year was a halfway decent 851 for £4,500 but I couldn't get out of my own way; this needed doing, that wasn't right... it was a cheap bike at the right money but I for some reason wanted it to be £4,000 and I missed out. Did the same thing with an early '92 FireBlade a couple years back. You've sometimes just got to jump in. Que sera. If you want an 848 and find one that you really like within 500 quid of your ideal price, buy it. You'll forget the 500 quid faster than you'll forget the bike you miss out on. But conversely there's no such thing as an unrepeatable deal. There's always another deal to be struck.
I agree with you. Plus if its spring (and you are fair weather wuss like me), waiting simply means you are missing riding time. How many good weather weekends are there?
So if you go on holiday, attend a wedding, have a family get together, you could be down to just eight. You can't miss even more to save £500!
unless it's shit weather the weekends of the holiday, wedding and get together then you still have the common or garden industry standard union rules 11.
