Well, said g'bye to this good old boy last Saturday. It's our semi-long in the tooth '06 Chevy Tahoe and I got what I wanted for it but it's bittersweet. Had the big sum bitch for going on twelve years and we have so many great family memories in it. I have a lot of memories of it breaking too and times I wanted to drive it onto a frozen Lake Erie and have it sink to the bottom when the ice thawed and broke under it. Especially the countless times the god forsaken "check engine" light came on. I swear, instead of a little engine popping up it should be a dollar sign.
I sold it on my new favorite online shopping and selling site, "Facebook Marketplace". Have you tried this thing yet? Seriously, it's amazing and makes Craigslist look like the creepy garage sale shit show that we've always thought it was. What makes Facebook Marketplace so wonderful is you first have to be a member of Facebook; for some reason that makes everyone on there behave. Well, behave for the most part.
Just like Craigslist, "Marketplace" has it's fair share of rude, illiterate morons. I love listings where the poster will write, "I will not respond to is it available" and "don't low-ball me I know what I have". As if such inquiries from folks browsing was a crime. If you ignore all those inquiries you might miss a person who's seriously interested in what you're selling and could be "the one". Yes, it's annoying to some degree but at least you know your ad is getting engagement. And getting engagement is half the battle if not the "fun" of selling something on Marketplace. Respond back politely.
I've now sold three cars on Marketplace and a slew of household items and I can tell you that you do need to patient because it can take a while; but it's worth it in the end. For instance, when I sold my son's 1996 Chevrolet Camaro a couple of years ago, a Chevrolet dealership offered us $500 for it as a trade-in. I asked $2,500 for it on Marketplace and got $2,300. Not bad. Although, it took over two months to find someone who was looking for such a car. Again, be patient.
The Tahoe actually went fairly quickly. After I had swapped the water pump and wheel bearings, I listed it with a price not three weeks ago I thought fair ($,6000) and posted the ad with plenty of photographs like these (from the actual ad) of the inside and outside even highlighting the surface rust on the lower frame rails above the running boards. You're just wasting your time if you don't disclose as much about what you're selling as possible.
Then I sat back and responded, always politely, to the myriad inquiries about whether it was available or not with a most pleasant, "yes, it is". Even low-ballers got a polite response like, "sorry, it's not worth it to me to let it go for (example) $3,000. I might as well keep it". Which was the truth since.
There was the guy who buys and flips older vehicles sarcastically chiding me over my asking price that he deemed too high for a "truck with rust". His repeated jabs went unanswered and he finally stopped. Best was the kid who asked me if he could pay for it in installments. Sorry, kiddo, I ain't no bank. I didn't say that, of course, but you will get your fair share of nutty questions and you can't blame someone for asking. Perhaps some people would do that.
In the end our family stead went to a wonderful young military guy who thought he'd roped the moon when he saw it and drove it. His father's a mechanic and came with him who told me he was impressed at what great shape it was in for it's age and mileage.
I didn't tell him how many of the repairs I did myself or that the emissions system was just a blink of an eye from going belly up again. Happy trails!
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