Wow. I guess I've also been fortunate. I did a couple of "buy it now" transactions on EBay, and in one, I had the car inspected at a dealership of MY choosing. I paid for the pre-sales inspection, with the condition that I would pay the asking price if the pre-sales inspection didn't reveal more than $300 in repairs.

The service advisor said "Wow, that rig is for sale? I would have purchased it. It's in great shape!"

When I went to pick it up with the family, it was absolutely pristine, and we drove it back home. We had a great family road trip.

On another occasion, I purchased a rig off EBay. Before I bought it, I asked the guy who his mechanic was. I got their number off the yellow pages, and called them 2x. Each person I talked to pulled up the records on the car, and told me essentially the same things, what repairs were made, when they were made. They were both very familiar with the car, and said that the seller was having it fixed there ever since the car was out of warrantee. They said "It's in great shape. We could certainly do a pre-sale inspection, but I wouldn't bother. It's a great car. I would buy that car." I went ahead and pushed the BIN button.

When I got it from the car transport company, there were lots and lots of things wrong (at least I found out later they were easy to fix). Turbo not working (waste-gate solenoid was dead, a $35 fix), many many lights burned out (lots of time at the parts store buying weird little bulbs, dead driving lights, etc.), audio electronics missing.

In the case of the audio electronics missing, I called the PO and asked him why the audio amps were shown in the photos on EBay, but were not included in the car. He said "Oh, I never said they were included. I took the audio amp out to use in my new car." I said "The whole point of a picture is to show exactly what is for sale! Taking something off that was shown in the picture is essentially lying!" He got mad and hung up on me. I thought seriously about using the EBay "No scam" guarantee, but I assessed that I could fix all the things that were wrong, and that the rest of the car was in good shape.

Fortunately, after a lot of help from forum members, and a lot of elbow grease and debugging, I got everything working on the car, even though it took a lot of time and cost me several hundred dollars, the car was basically mechanically sound, and it ended up OK.

*Sigh* I wish more people would be ethical about their descriptions, for sure.

PE

__________________
83 240D - 4 speed manual - Manilla Beige
189K miles, Tachometer mod, cool wooden shift knob from PeachParts, CocoMats, Original factory paint, manual windows, manual sunroof. Starting to add AudioWrap to this car too!