items wanted

[Taka Mizutani]

Disclosing accident damage isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's phrased
correctly.

Being honest about stuff like that means that you don't have any problems
with the sale
if someone does find damage and calls you on it.

When I was selling our A4, a lister did see the car, tried to be Mr. F1
racer with the car
(which was more than annoying) and then grilled me on whether it had
front-end damage,
which it did not (bumper has to be removed for timing belt job, though and
mechanics are
not always adept at aligning bumpers I guess). I disclosed that the car had
been in a
parking lot type incident where the rear bumper was replaced and repainted.

Long story short, A-hole lister's relative did not buy the car (he missed
out) and I sold it
to someone else who was more than tickled pink to pick up a quite nice A4
with lots of
nice aftermarket goodies on it, done well.

Kind of like the time I had a potential trade-in appraised (when I was
working for the local
Audi stealer) and the guy got mad that his car was appraised really low- I
pointed out to
him that the entire driver's side of his car had been repainted, none of the
panel gaps were
even on that side of the car and it was quite clear that the car had a lot
of poor body work
done- paint was wavy, etc. He insisted that his car was pristine until I
pointed out all of
these things and then he suddenly changed his story. Not good for a sale,
but I couldn't have
given him $10k for a 100k A4 1.8tq in that condition and then sell the new
car at invoice.

Taka


On 1/8/07, Dan DiBiase <d_dibiase at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>
> Re: Carfax and the totalled Honda - very irritating. When I sold my '96
> Jetta to buy the A4, I ran a Carfax on it and noticed that the accident I
> had with the car when it was 2 years old didn't even show up! The car wasn't
> totalled but repairs were over $12k - all sheetmetal and a few engine
> accessories and airbags of course ($5k for just those); no unibody damage.
> But I still disclosed it to all parties that looked at the car. maybe I'm
> stupid but I couldn't sleep at night if I didn't.
>
>