I’ve got to admit I do love eBay Motors, but there’s just one aspect of it that always annoys me.
Last week I both bought and sold a car on eBay. I got fed up with my Vauxhall Omega and decided to chop it in for a Jaguar. Not a particularly expensive purchase, but I’ve been on the look out for one ever since I bought the Omega in an emergency last February.
Buying was easy, I found the Jaguar at the , near High Wycombe. A quick run over on Friday to check the motor out and with a promise that they’d fix the window electrics and put a year’s MOT on the car and I paid up the deposit. A few days later on Tuesday last week the car was ready and having cadged a lift off a friend I was able to drive the car home and have happily been running around in it ever since.
That left me with the Omega to get rid of. Again I turned to eBay and with a few photo’s I listed it and had it sold the same week. I’d have expected it to be difficult to shift a 3 litre lump of an estate but the buyers were delighted with their new purchase and drove the car away on Friday.
As I said I do love eBay Motors – it short circuits the tiresome route of putting an ad in the local paper or autotrader, waiting for the pointless phone calls from tyre kickers who have no intention of buying. I’ve never had anyone commit to buy a car and then back out because I missed a small blemish to the paintwork or any of the other tired old excuses I had way back in the past when selling cars off-line.
The thing that disappoints me with eBay Motors is that I rarely get to receive or give feedback – eBay don’t have a facility for leaving feedback when you buy or sell with classified ads. I’d happily praise Kars Ltd, they were honest about the state of the car they sold me. It was ready for collection with it’s new MOT when they told me it would be. They popped down to the Post Office to tax the car for me, as I knew I wouldn’t get time that day. They were a delight to deal with and I’d like to leave them positive feedback but I can’t. That’s a shame.
4 Responses
Feedback is probably more important as the value of the purchase increases. After all Feedback on a £20 purchase is important but its probably not so dramatic or life(or certainly wealth) threatening if it goes wrong than the purchase of a car at possibly £2,000 or £5,000 or even £10,000.
If you find a hard working and honest Motor Trader who has looked after you surely the Feedback system should be there to allow you to share that experience with others. After all they may be looking for a New(or more likely Secondhand) Car and there is one listed by the same Motor Trader. But there are probably others listed by other Motor Traders. So how are the potential purchasers without Feedback going to know anything about the Trader.
Years ago when a Car Buyer was looking for a Car they would often limit themselves to the local garage. The garage that is possibly going to maintain the new purchase. But today garages tend to specialise more. Some may still do everything. But many are just Car Dealers either selling just New, or New and Secondhan or even just Secondhand. Some garages may just maintain and do not sell cars at all.
So the Feedback system is vital to give potential buyers some knowledge of the Car Dealer. The only thing is that ebay so abuses the Feedback System that already exists that there could be a very serious arguement against extending it to Cars.