Wednesday, November 16, 2011

1998 JEEP For Sale on Yahoo: Buyer Beware

JUST FOR THE RECORD ... AHEM ...  When my son sent me an email with the subject line: "HOLY CRAP DAD! THIS JEEP IS ONLY $3500 AND HAS ONLY 60,000 MILES !!!" ...
The first thing out of my mouth was, "Son, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

Then, we talked and I too drank the kool-aid.
It was grape as I recall.

The boy ( he's really a young man now) has been suffering from a severe case of JEEP Fever for a long time and none of my half-hearted lessons on the impractical nature of the JEEP Wrangler have reduced his temperature. That kind of advice from me ... a registered JEEP Wrangler fanatic ... doesn't carry much weight.

He found the JEEP ad on Yahoo.
Some things just stunk about this deal:
  1. The mileage was waaaay low for a 13 year old JEEP ... but, down here we see snowbirds all the time with RV's towing a little JEEP Wrangler on their way to Sarasota or some other "waiting to die" retirement location.  Those JEEPs barely get used.
  2. It was too cherry for 13 years.  I baby my Wrangler, but dang ... no way the paint job is as good as this blue one.
  3. It was an out of state deal.
  4. It didn't sell in the week or so that Junior went back and forth investigating it. A JEEP like that, with a price like that would have sold the very first hour of the first day down here.
  5. The seller would use Google Checkout and that sounded good, but he would also ship it at his cost for a 7 day check it out period. That sure is generous. Ridiculously generous.

To make a long story short, we couldn't quite talk ourselves out of pursuing this further. Lucky for us Western Union actually saved the day.
This deal set off all kinds of Internet fraud warnings at their office.

Result.
No deal.

So, if you are shopping for a used JEEP Wrangler, and you see this advertisement ... just keep cruising.
It stinks to high heaven.

Don't you love it when you get an expensive life lesson for FREE!

Repeat after me: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably  is.

9 comments:

Bill said...

FC, My daughter tried to buy a truck in Texas through Craig's list. I stopped her when it came to the Western Union check and the free shipping. They also had an e-bay motors logo that was false. One check with the e-bay website and the fraud warnings were all over the place. I told her you cannot buy a vehicle that you cannot test drive. Thanks for sharing.
Billy

Anonymous said...

Love a good learning experience that doesn't actually hurt.

Thunder said...

Yes a good lesson, but too bad for Jr's Jeep jones! ;-)

Pablo said...

Grape Kool-aid? Or maybe LEMON?

Anonymous said...

Pablo, you are too funny! And, amen to Robin Andrea. Good post to share, FC.
KC momadness

cinbad122 said...

Come PF! You usually have such a good head on top of that neck. I can't believe Jr got you to do something like that! Boo to you! But lucky indeed.

Hollywood Jeep said...

Love a good learning experience that doesn't actually hurt.

Kia Hollywood said...

Very Nice for a 13 year old JEEP

Miami Mitsubishi Dealer said...

Really Very Nice used jeep and blog. Thanks for sharing.