In My Humble Opinion

Mike gets mad about messers.

 Come closer, I want to confide in you, and you look to be the sort of person I can trust. You see, I have a little problem that few people understand. And that problem is, you’re asking? Oh, I’m sorry – it’s the bloody general public. Now, I am quite a lucky chap insofar as my car just plods on and costs me not a copper coin outside of normal wear, tear and fuelling costs. Despite having been the incumbent for well over one hundred cars, it’s been my first Volvo – sourced from

CM subscriber and family friend, Neil Rapsey. All the toys are there – the wood, leather, cruise, electric pretty much everything to aid you pass the miles – all with a Romanesque level of unstoppable reliability. So, what’s with the universal despising of your fellow mankind, you may be wondering.

Well that’s a simple one, I’ve recently had it up for sale.

Is there anything as annoying, stressful or painstakingly tedious of trying to sell a secondhand car to the general public? I sold new cars for a good few years and that was bad enough, but on a professional level, I’ve always given used car sales the swerve. You ask Steven Ward about it – champagne eyes with lemonade pockets we call it. They have barely two bob to rub together, yet still have brand-new car levels of expectancy when it comes to condition and quality. If you can summarise in a nutshell; the cheaper the car becomes the more aggro you get. In the past I have sold new everything from a 1.0 Corsa for under £7K to luxury coaches worth well over £250,000 and rarely had any buyer trouble like you find with a banger for £595 with a fortnight’s worth of MOT.

The advert was carefully worded with all the right patter like where it can be viewed, the MOT, the outlined spec, mileage, condition and cost. I avoid the cringeworthy alarm bell ringing bullshit statements such as: first to see will buy, any trial, one careful Parish Vicar owner and of course, my own favourite – very reluctant sale. To digress for a moment, that last point reminds me of a Saab 9-5 I went to view some years ago in Sunderland when we resided oop t’north. The advert looked half reasonable, but when I phoned for further probing, I got the vendor’s wife who knew little about the car and seemed to be repeating herself. I took a punt and drove the 30 minutes whereby it quickly became apparent he was a wannabe driveway trader – but it got funnier…

I asked to use the loo while I was there and, being a nosey sod, I noted beside the phone in the hall an A4 sheet of paper worded for a novice to read without letting slip it was a trade seller just in case the actual vendor wasn’t there to answer the phone – clever I thought. Whenever you ring to enquire about a car, the best way to open is by asking; I’m ringing about the car – a trader will have to come back with “which one?” There is a cunning way you can get around that I’ll not go into here, but the vendor spent most of his time telling me how wonderful the car was and how much he was going to miss it – despite owing it for less than three months. The car was a dog, the vendor a crook – we left and drove back home to Darlington.

Despite wording my Volvo pitch to encourage a real time conversation, I was bombarded with text messages, messages via Facebook and all the time-wasting rubbish you sadly must endure in the world of cheap car sales. One guy sent me about eight or ten messages in short succession that drove me to near insanity and a final reply from myself asking him to address any further query by calling the number on the advert. The messages kept coming and they became shirtier as I ignored them and didn’t reply. Another dunderhead rang me – he was £200 adrift and would I accept a brace of mountain bikes to cover the lack of readies if he thought the car was good enough – I just put the phone down to that one.

If they won’t come to the phone, the chances are you are wasting your time. Equally so, if their opening gambit is; “What’s the lowest price you’ll take for the car” you’ll be on a hiding to nothing, too. One bloke rang me many years ago when I was selling on my immaculate Rover 620Ti asking that very same question. I retorted with; “As much as I can extract from your wallet once you’ve seen it and driven it.” The man didn’t understand what I meant, so again, the receiver was carefully replaced and I went back to watching Countdown on the telly. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not rude or impatient, it’s just that I have a medical allergy to timewasters and can smell a messer from a country mile.

In the end, and with a few words of guidance from the missus I must add, I’ve decided to hang on to the Volvo if just to keep my sanity for the time being. The Volvo’s aforementioned reliability was starting off a bout of boredom on my part – nothing else to be honest, it’s a darling of a car and I feel a touch guilty now for wanting to get rid. But I do have some words of advice – if you are selling your own car, always invite dialogue, NOT constant messages or emails. Don’t go chasing seemingly interested parties, but let them come to you.

If you are selling a typically average 56-plate Ford Focus 1.6 LX and the person is messaging you from 400 miles away, do you really thing they are a genuine buyer? No… neither do I.

“Another dunderhead rang me, but said that he was £200 adrift and would I accept a brace of mountain bikes to cover the lack of readies if he thought the car was good enough – I just put the phone down to that one”