Grumpy old Stinger Seller

[Nasscar]

"Wannabe test pilots can forget about contacting me; no one will test drive this car until your payment is safe and sound in my bank account. (Its only insured for me driving it). If you want to test drive one of these powerhouses, go and see a Kia dealer; and get a quote on a new one whilst you're there ."

If I were in Australia, that would be a deal-breaker right there. Who in their right mind would buy a used car without test driving it unless it's a garage queen like a ZL-1 Corvette (only two made) or Vector W2 (only 20 made)?

"No test drives" usually translates to "I really fraked up this car big time" -- like 99.9999% of the time.

You took a huge risk buying that thing... I'm glad it worked out for you.

I disagree. You can tell just by looking at the car to see whether it has been looked after or not. It only had 15000kms on the odometer and was only a couple of years old. I would also advertise 'No test pilots' if I was selling a car. This stops all the tyre kickers who really don't have the cash to buy who just want to thrash a high performance vehicle. I did it once with a Ducati motorcycle. The guy came and said he wasn't buying it without test riding it. He left but came back a week later and bought it. If the product is good, it will sell.

 

[IzzataKia?]

"Wannabe test pilots can forget about contacting me; no one will test drive this car until your payment is safe and sound in my bank account. (Its only insured for me driving it). If you want to test drive one of these powerhouses, go and see a Kia dealer; and get a quote on a new one whilst you're there ."

If I were in Australia, that would be a deal-breaker right there. Who in their right mind would buy a used car without test driving it unless it's a garage queen like a ZL-1 Corvette (only two made) or Vector W2 (only 20 made)?

"No test drives" usually translates to "I really fraked up this car big time" -- like 99.9999% of the time.

You took a huge risk buying that thing... I'm glad it worked out for you.

Maybe that's why it was a good price...? Not sure if you read this whole thread but I did get it thoroughly mechanically inspected and test driven before I bought it so I think any obvious thrashing of the car would have been picked up, and if not what is a test drive going to tell me that it won't tell an independent mechanic? As far as I can tell the tyres are the original Michelins and they have around 7 mm of tread on them so unless he fried the first set then replaced them I'd say near-new tyres on a 14500km vehicle are consistent with reasonably sedate driving. So with 6.5 years warranty remaining it didnt seem that big a risk.

Turns out the trip up on the truck was probably a larger risk

 

[IzzataKia?]

That behavior is very strange. I have never heard of "preconditioning" a contract like that. Sounds like you got lucky, since nothing happened to match their "expectations". Heh!

Yeah the guy at the depot said they are trying to stamp it out but who knows. The company is a specialist car transporter too. They do Lambos, Ferraris and other big name brands regularly. Their FB page is is chock full of pics etc. Its not like I picked some fly-by-nighters or anything. Thats what made it all the more surprising.

I am going to leave a review to say what happened. its really not acceptable behaviour.

For anyone interested the company name starts with C and ends with A and has less than 5 letters.

 

[ShannonC]

For anyone interested the company name starts with C and ends with A and has less than 5 letters.

So that would be Charlie Echo Victor Alpha

 

[IzzataKia?]

So that would be Charlie Echo Victor Alpha