10.15 am: A 2000 Volvo V70 SE Auto and every modern convenience known to automotive science is for sale. A great big ‘Volvoid’ estate that’s not only as safe as houses, but as big as one too.
I never realised how fantastically clever I was to call my column First to See will Buy, but that’s exactly what happens these days. The first person to turn up after winning the online auction is legally obliged to buy it provided there’s been no naughty misdescription. But is that how we are supposed to buy our used cars now?
10.30 am: First Bid of £100
Not according to Used Car Expert anyway. There are plenty of faults to be found and values to be assessed and digested. Buying a used car is not something you are supposed to do against the clock and it is certainly not a game. It can be fun, but all this ‘congratulations on your winning bid’ is nonsense, because you haven’t won anything at all, you are buying a car.
10.31am: Second bid £210
Nevertheless I find myself in the curious position of writing my FTSWB column in real time, watching the price go up and up along with my concerns. So I have found a large estate car that fits my family’s short-term transportation requirements. It is the right colour, not my choice, has the correct acreage of leather, climatory controls and self-shifting gearbox. Bingo. But it is not being sold in the conventional manner where I can turn up and have a poke around, follow the excellent haggling guidelines in this magazine and then drive away feeling that I’ve done an honest day’s work. No, I have to bid then buy. I can go and have a look if I want but it’s a three hundred mile round trip. A day of my life will have disappeared and all because Nigel from Ashdon Under Lyme bid a tenner more than me.
10.40 am: Six sudden bids and its £1,550
Actually I am no stranger to buying used cars completely unseen. As a former member of Her Majesty’s Motor Trade, cars would be described to me on the telephone and I’d say, ‘that sounds about right’ turn up and take the car without a quibble. That’s because I was dealing with people I trust and if there was an issue we could sort it all out with a mild scuffle. Easy. Bidding online with people you don’t know just sounds like madness. Indeed I went to see Mr. Ebay a few months back on your behalf and asked whether they were encouraging car buyers to commit to cars they hadn’t seen in the metal or even driven. Well, they trotted out the ‘that’s all part of the fun’ line. But it isn’t fun, this is serious. Miss a fault on a used car and it really will cost you dear. Turn up with your Used Car Expert fault guide and you won’t get caught out and more to the point you’ll know how much to knock off the price. You can’t do that in an auction.
10.55 am: Another bid and its £1,700
Yet this car isn’t being sold by some bloke off his drive, it is a car dealer. The vehicle may have come from a proper trade auction or as a part exchange and this is the twenty first century way of moving it on rather than simply putting an ad in the paper. So I do have a dilemma here about whether I should have a day out and kick the tyres or be better off forgetting I ever saw the advert/auction lot in the first place. The thing is I still need a large Swedish estate car and I can’t find anything remotely similar in the classifieds…
11.00 am: All of a sudden its £3,100
I decide to leave it be and have a look much closer to the deadline.
11.55am: I start tapping in random numbers
No matter what figures I put in it just gets replaced by an even bigger one. There seems to be one other bidder playing this online poker and at £4,400 I lose interest and let someone else pick up the Volvo for £4,500.
So this is the modern way of buying cars then? I’m not really that impressed to be honest and although I once bought an old CD player for a fiver on Ebay that still works, a car seems a bit too ambitious. But a day later something very odd happens and I get the opportunity to buy that Volvo for £4400. No thanks, I joined the fray when the bidding had a 3 at the start. This is now old school car trading with him in his kitchen and a kid screaming the place down as we agree on £3500. And no I haven’t seen it, driven it or found out the worst yet.
Indeed the first to see it will be a bloke I’ve sent with a transporter and he definitely won’t be buying it.