Ah, so that's it. I love seeing the paint jobs on C1s-C3s at corvette shows and at Corvettes at Carlisle.

 

Yep trusting a seller is one thing...trusting ebay is a WHOLE different story. Ebay has a lot of hidden clauses that protects or relieves them from having to do anything if they don't want to. They sugar coat everything to make you feel like they are looking out for your best interest, but in the end Ebay is only looking out for themselves. I would never be trusting enough to buy a car unseen no matter how cheap or expensive it is.

I seen the pics, I can see why he is upset now

 

Alex, Thanks for the pics, Know we all can see why classic is so pissed!!

I would be, ($15,000.00 I don't think so)

the problem with a piece of crab like this guy......He gets away with it,
Some one posted that it would take 5 K and 8 months till it gets to court....If your lucky and the thing is classic can't do a thing to the car untill the case is settled, If it even makes it to court. The best he can hope for is that the bum owns up to his misrepresentation and offers to buy it back or refund some cash. But from my experience once the deal is made and they have the cash there is no motivation for the seller to do anything. Lets face it classic has to prove his case and the seller can say when the car was shipped it was in new condition (his word against classic's) If he sues the seller (because the amount of money)it will go before an arbatration board (hopefully Vette owners). The only thing E-Bay will do is investigate the complaint and maybe side in favor
of classic.........But even at this point all they can do to the seller is not allow him to sell on E-Bay.

You might check with the shipping company.... I used DAS and they inspect the car for body scratches & nicks and make a note of all imperfections.....This may help your case

Classic you can also file a complaint with the Internet Fraud Complaint Center. Might help.

Good luck my friend and let us no the outcome!!
Butch

 

We all agree on that. But getting satisfaction though ebay or the legal system is a tough slog at best...

 

Whoa, ok I admit I thought he was overhyping the damage, but I see now that he absolutely wasn't.

I'm not even sure that's the same damn car.



That is NOT the same hood, no way.



Pictures can hide a lot, but I just don't think it's possible for that sort of reflectivity to come from a hood with the sort of damage in the upper shot.

Ok classiczx, my opinion of your lack of precaution is unchanged, but I think it's pretty obvious to us now that you did NOT get what was pictured or described. You just might have a snowball's chance in hell, but you're in for a hard slog. Like someone already said, get your lawyer involved and fire off a nasty-gram to the seller. Hopefully that'll be enough.

 

That's nothing, in person, the hood looks much worse. For the damage to show up so easily in twilight on a digital camera, you can only imagine what it looks like in person in daylight.

 

IMO there are several red flags about this guy being full of BS.
He's supposedly owned the car since 1986 but thinks the clock has to be wound .
The L48 is a base motor, not an option.
No untouched car with 42K and 30 years old is going to be "better than excellent", whatever that means.
Lastly I wouldn't buy a $10 item from someone with a feedback total of six, let alone a car sight unseen. Use some common sense people.

 

I have to agree that this car is not what was represented. However I also beleive it's a tough legal battle to fight. I hope the buyer understands that buying on e-bay is not like buying from a dealer and the seller will probably be allowed more tolerance of his personal classfied ad compared to a commercial seller. Good luck. I do hope you can receive some type of recourse.

 

20/20 on ABC is running a story about ebay scams right now -

 

Sorry for your plight.

Now, can someone please educate me? Are there any 76's worth $15k? If so, I'm gonna jack up the price of my '74...

 

Flew to Boston to look at an 'almost perfect' '67 Mustang 390 GT. It needed a paint job because the person who sprayed it had water in the air - you know what that does. Traction Masters, as I call them because I'm old school, were not even attached at the front. Had wires holding them up. Had a dent at the windshield center and roof line. After market wide wheels and tires, no power steering, and a QUICK STEERING KIT! Steering wheel could not be turned unless you were moving at least 5 mph. No current licence plate - test drive was only around the block for fear of police. Did have an Edelbrock 2X4 intake with two Holleys, but I could not see how it ran because of no plate. Also, no choke(s) on the carbs, took 10 minutes of nursing the throttle to keep it running until warm.

None of this was evident by looking at the posted pictures, and none of this was revealed during our phone conversations.

Needless to say, me and my Travelers Checks caught the next flight home.

Never send anyone more money than you are prepared to lose. Never buy a car without looking at it.

BTW, them's ain't the stock valve covers!

 

Also, I looked at the bid history and that looks suspect. A zero rated bidder hopping up the price big time in the last few minutes. Maybe a buddy or something just trying to see what they could bump you too. I hope not but with that many bids, why not just throw in the top price you would pay. He chipped at it.

 

I was thinking the same thing when I saw that yesterday, Ebay is really bad about people doing that. You could see if they could look up that 0 feedback bidder account and IP address and see if it comes anywhere near the sellers......you could have a case for that.

Thats illegal to do and you could have won the car for $10,000 instead of $15,000.

I realize ebay has new members everyday..but check out a few auctions ending in less than three hours and see how many 0 feedback bidders have driven the bids up 100% or more. In most cases they just create the account a few days before the auction. It's crazy.

 

I just got someone knocked off of eBay for shill bidding - a guy with three feedbacks, all from the seller in question outbid me on a gauge. The seller left positive feedback for him, then offered it to me as a "second-chance" for my original bid. Both accounts were deleted quickly.

 

Yeah, I'd be pissed too, at myself!

I feel for ya, but there's lots of holes in the guys story.
Did you ever hear of a car sitting on the dealers lot for 10 years???
I can't think of too many car dealerships in my town that have had a car sitting in the showroom for 10 years.
In todays dollars that would be more than 50K wrapped up in a car not earning revenue.

Funny how it had only 3000 miles on the odo in 86.
Try 103000? 10 years old, 10,000 per year, that sounds better.
Clock works when you wind it?
All original, now I aint an expert, but are those valve covers original?
Have you checked the engine numbers?

Any ways, I feel for ya, but the guy didn't come to your house and type in max bid = $15000. I agree it looks like a shill bidder jackup the price on ya.

You overpayed, but you got what you payed for. Everybody trying to sell something is doing their best to make it sound good.

Given all that, I think you can prove he lied.
Overspray should be easy to find.
Engine might be a swap.
You might have some legal recourse, but I think the cost of chasing a refund may exceed the refund.

 

The issue with that is you can easily change IE settings to use a proxy server when registering the bogus account. You'll be sitting in the US, but the IP will show up as somewhere in europe... There are thousands of proxy servers available for free, just check any search engine.

I've been fortunate with my E-bay transactions, but there have been a few auctions I've walked away from due to suspicions of shill bidding. I'm sure it happens much more than we all realize. It's real hard to detect if someone has a few friends willing to bid on their items.

 

Unfortunately this is often the case.

 

A 76 for $15,000? Not likely, unless it was "absolutely PERFECT", "perfect condition", and "BEYOND EXCELLENT". That's how it was described. Those terms are the sellers opinion. A judge or mediator knows there is some wiggle room when describing something, but it only goes so far. It has to be within reason.
The first thing would be trying to find a resolution with the seller before any money is spent on legal fees. I would think you would see a decesion in your favor if it came to a court case. A judge could rule that the car be brought up to the "BEYOND EXCELLENT" condition with the seller footing the bill or the judge may be nice and make the seller refund the buyer.
The car seems to be in good condition but pictures do not tell the full story. I would think it's value is no more than $8k to 11k depending on how much is really wrong with it.

 

Looks like there's fault on both sides to me. The seller obviously embellished the car's description - but may be only guilty of not really knowing how beyond excellent would be interpreted. To him, beyond excellent may mean there's still paint on a car that is 30 years old - a car that was driven. A bit naive, yes... but the buyer is guilty of being naive to the other extreme in expecting a trailer queen or a competition show car based on some digital pictures and description alone.

The buyer simply shouldn't have bid $15,000 on something that he didn't have the ability to do the research on. If the paint's condition was such a priority, checking it out in person should have been done. Even if he couldn't have hopped on a plane and done it himself, he could have hired or asked someone independent in the area to do so on his behalf. Nobody forced him to bid that much; when you buy from ebay you're often buying from some individual - not dealerships that have customer guarantees and refunds. Even though the auction didn't say "as is", it didn't say "satisfaction guaranteed" or refunds available.

Ebay's resolution center isn't going to help much, I've never experienced any kind of meaningful help with them. And he really doesn't have much of an option for legal recourse - it's going to cost him probably as much as he'd get in a settlement.

Bottom line - seller embellishment and buyer remorse. It's an object lesson to us all to clearly define what we want out of an auction before we put a bid down that we can't afford to lose.

 

Yeah that car was misrepresented... big-time....IMO...you can rationalise that the seller was trying to make it sounds as good as possible but you would have to do a lot of rationalizing to get to "Beyond Perfect" on that car....

All that said.. I also have to agree with those that state its a gamble at best to buy a car sight unseen....you do what you can and hope for the best and hope that people are honest...most are I imagine...but there are always a few....

Forget about E-bay doing anything for you...E-bay is about protecting sellers....I am truely of the opinion that E-bay doesnt give a wet slap about buyers....simply because the vast majority of the sale that happen will go off without a hitch...the negative repurcussions to E-bay about jokers like this is going to be minimal.

Sorry to hear about your plight....I think you have a case...but I think you need to ask yourself if spending 8000 or so on leagal costs is going to get you anywhere....