Thursday, March 1, 2012

Selling a Royal Enfield motorcycle? Don't even try this guy

He'll consider anything except a Royal Enfield.
Do you want to sell your Royal Enfield motorcycle? Well, don't bother contacting the buyer advertising on CraigsList in Lakewood, Wash.

He is in the market for a "running good bike."

He'll even pay $1,500 for it, "as long as it's NOT a Royal Enfield."

To be fair, he's looking for a motorcycle of 650cc to 800cc and there aren't many "running good" Royal Enfield Interceptors out there in his price range anyway.

The would-be-buyer has a few additional warnings for sellers:

  • "I'm an old CraigsLister and I can smell a troll or a spammer from 10 miles away — don't even start."
  • "Junk, crap and stuff won't even be looked at."
  • "This bike must have a windshield, and saddlebags of some kind."

If you think your non-Royal Enfield motorcycle measures up, and you're willing to take $1,500 for it, by all means, get in touch.

He notes that he'll have the cash for you "around the 1st."

This blog lists Royal Enfields for sale in the United States. I look at a lot of CraigsList ads.

Here's my take: The spammers and tire kickers are going to respond, no matter how you beat them up in your ad. That's the Internet for you. So why bother treating the regular guys who read your ad to a tirade?

There's nothing wrong with being frank. I like this buyer's final sentences a lot, and I wish he had left it to this:

"I'm a serious buyer, I suggest you be a serious seller so we don't waste each other's time. Will reply to emails."

1 comment:

  1. Enjoy the blog, even though the one Royal Enfield I owned failed to make a mechanic out of me. :)

    I have some sympathy for that guy, but I agree the inserted anti-scammer tirades are a turn-off, as well as the vaguely threatening language in some of these ads that makes me feel like the seller is already mad at me, just for looking at his ad, or contemplating WASTING HIS TIME, or not responding immediately because this MUST GO THIS WEEKEND!!!1

    To go on a a tirade of my own, I think CL ads possibly could benefit from being a form based ad. Using the inverted pyramid style of good journalistic writing, start, in this order, with make, model, year, mileage, condition, color/description, extras, damage caused by the "previous owner," and finally, should the reader still be interested, the story of why the bike is for sale.

    There could then be checkboxes below, like, "my loss, your gain," "Wife sez . . . [insert what the wife sed here], "price firm," etc.

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