Out of the blue
I have had the party van up for sale for close to 2 months in the auto trader with basically no response. The only call I got was from a guy that asked if I was interested in trading the van for a Harley AND me giving him cash. Well out of the blue I got a call yesterday from a woman that saw the ad. I gave her a bit of a sales pitch on the phone and she sounded interested. She said she would call back to schedule to come out and look at it. I was hopeful to hear back from her but certainly didn’t count on it. Well then last night around 7, I got another call from her asking if she could come out and see it. “Of course!” I excitedly told her. I went out and cleaned it out and fired it up for a little bit in anticipation of her arrival.
She showed up around around 8:30 with her boyfriend/husband, I didn’t ask the relation. They have four kids so they need a lot of room. I felt a bit bad about them seeing it in the dark as you can’t tell much about the exterior in the dark. I did tell her the one side had some scrapes and dents from when the prior owner misjudged the proximity of the pole at the drive-thru. I started it up, lit it up inside, turned on the gadgets and showed them it all worked. I was up front about what I have done and what warts it has, none of which they seemed to care about. I strongly encouraged them to take it out and drive it but she didn’t want to because her kids were in the car. The guy turned the steering wheel back and forth a few times, stepped on the brake pedal, commented on how quiet the motor sounded and said he trusts it. Um ok, well that’s fine I guess. I would never buy something I didn’t drive, not that it hasn’t prevented me from getting some clunkers over the years…
So they both liked it, both were excited about it so she asks me about price. She saw the ad said O.B.O. and wanted to know what my best offer was. Again I was honest, I said the only offer was the Harley barter deal where I would be shelling out cash. She laughed and asked if I would consider 3k cash? After an intentional brief pause and some exterior consternation, I said that would be fine. At this point, 3k was a grand slam for me since I was considering just turning the van in to a charity or letting the Toyota dealer steal it towards the Camry hybrid transaction. It’s funny how expectations change. Originally I started at 4495 as a price. Considering I spent 3500 for the van and put at least 2500 into repairs, I am taking a major bath on this, yet I am happy. 🙂
So they said we would do the deal today, probably after work. They are supposed to call me to set it up. I took no cash from them as a deposit so who knows, it isn’t a done deal till it is out of my driveway so I am not going to get too excited until that happens. The sale of it will definitely put the purchase of the Camry hybrid back into the realm of possibilities although I still plan to try to work the dealer to get the best deal we can. (which to this point hasn’t been very good) I have to admit I have had visions of how cool it would be to be cruising to work in the Camry everyday, playing with the gadgets, using my Treo via the bluetooth interface and having the doors open just by the car knowing I was approaching.