Most of us who visit Jerrys Deere Barn on a regular basis are involved in the repair & restoration of vintage garden & farm machinery. And because we are working most of the time if not always, with obsolete equipment & parts, we have to beat the bushes high & low to find scarce original parts that are no longer available from dealers or distributors. And most of the time the best we can come up with in our search are the used but hopefully still serviceable parts being taken off discarded & abandoned machines.
These are the parts that we see put into popular auction sites, or specialized classified ad sites, or other media. Now that the internet has become so much a part of just about everyone's life, we all seem to do our searching and buying of parts & just about anything else we need these days, through the internet. And even if you do not actually make a purchase from your computer, your most likely going on line to do the research for the items you are going to pick up at the store. In the last century, the Yellow Page phone directories had a slogan "Let Your Fingers Do The Walking". I think these days we let those very same fingers do the ordering from our computers.
I have seen and read a lot of negative comments about auction sites, and the businesses & individuals that place their merchandise for sale on these sites. There is no question that on these sites you are going to find the good, the great & the bad trying to sell to you. And on the flip side of this you have the buyers. Having sold items occasionally on auction sites, I've personally experienced what dishonest buyers can do to an honest seller.
If you have decided that you must buy using one of the auction sites or other classified listing services, the burden is on you, the buyer & not the seller. Keep in mind that the seller is making an offering of his merchandise. The seller can only post the item, set a firm price or a starting price & then sit back & see what happens. A really experienced, savvy seller will spend more time & energy on appealing to your emotions & as little time & description as necessary on the item itself. But why would you expect anything else from the seller. After all he or she is doing nothing different from what you are exposed to every day. You go to the supermarket to shop for food. The next time you're there take a good look around. Take a look at the Deli counter, or the Bakery. Next check out the meat & fish dept. Then take a walk up & down all the isles. What do you see. Sure, you see all the products offered for sale. But in every one of those depts. you see all kinds of signs & words & photos of food, drinks, sweets & everything else. You will see words like "WoW", "Look", "On Sale", "Hurry". Well none of these words tells you anything about the quality of what you are buying. It doesn't tell you the amount of carbs, calories, fat, or any consumer information.
The seller leaves the decision making up to you. You must decide if the calories, the carbs & the fat content is within YOUR boundaries of good health. The manufacturer of the product & the store who sells it, is not there to act as an approval agent. And that's the way it should be in my opinion. So how do you deal with this on an auction site or a classified ad site? First research the item you need. That is to say, learn everything about that item that you can. Does the item have a serial number or part number associated with it. What can go wrong with the part & how much wear can be on the part & still be serviceable. Is the part available from other sources, such as a known dealer or manufacturer. And if I could buy this part from the dealer, what would it cost.
This is not everything you could be asking about a given part. Your research & questions must be relevant to the item you are purchasing. Once you have completed all your research, it's time to pay close attention to the description that the seller has put into the listing. Usually you will find the answers to the more obvious questions you might have, right in the sellers description. The more specific crucial questions that you have will probably not be covered in the seller's listing. This may be because the seller has something to hide or is not willing to voluntraily disclose. It can also be that the seller is not fully knowledgeable in the item & has made an honest attempt at describing it.
You need to ask the seller questions. The best way to do this is to send your questions to the seller in an orderly way. Each question you want an answer to should be sent with a number in front of the question. Listing your questions in a numbered sequence will help seller's understand you. It will also make answering your questions easier for the seller. Do not try to ask for different information within the same question. This will only ad confusion. Every point of information you want, must be asked for in a seperate question. Structure you question in a way that is easy to understand. Your asking a question here, not giving a lesson. And when the information comes back to you, you will also be able to sort out the answers without too much trouble.
Also this method of questioning will allow you to re ask any question that the seller may have not answered in your original request. And keep in mind that some sellers who want to hide material facts from you will NOT answer your question or questions at all, or try to give you some double speak answer. An honest seller who does not know how to answer your question will tell you straight away that they do not understand the question or that they just don't know. Will having your questions answered safeguard you against a bad deal. Possibly, but it will get you closer to a good deal. No questions can fully guard you against a dishonest seller. They do however help narrow down the chance of doing business with a dishonest seller. As with any transaction big or small, that old saying still applies, "Buyer Beware".
So what about the Auction Sites Themselves?
There are a lot of auction sites on the internet. They all provide similar services for both buyers & sellers. My personal opinion of them is that they are nothing more than global flea markets.If you look long & hard enough you will find everything from the most commonly available items that can be had at your local shops to some of the hardest items to find like fifty year old tractor parts. I must confess that I have spent hours on these auction sites looking for nothing at all & have found it! That is to say I've run searches for items so obscure or low end & came across a listing for it! So having said that, I only go to the auction sites when I've exhausted all other possible ways of tracking down the item I need.
Even though I consider myself a knowledgable shopper and most certainly follow the advice I have given you, I have been BURNED by fraudulent & dishonest sellers on auction sites. Fortunately, because I kept very good correspondence & records, the sellers were quick to refund me my money & make the issue go away. Scaming sellers who make a mainstream living on these auction sites would rather refund when they feel that you have enough proof & it could get them shut down & thrown off the auction site. But remember, I've been lucky in this & you might not be as fortunate.
I have never found the auction sites themselves to be fraudulent. I think they try to do what they can to prevent fraud. After all these auction sites are serious businesses with the bigger well known ones having tens of millions of dollars at stake. The complaint that I have both as a buyer & sometimes as a seller are all the endless nickel & dime fees & what at times appears to be their self serving restrictions & regulations which are generally a pathway that leads the buyer & seller alike to more fees.
Buyers constantly complain about the prices that sellers charge for shipping an item. Without question there are many sellers that use the shipping of an item as another ad-on or profit center to the purchase price. These sellers are just predatory sellers feeding on your emotions that are compelling you to get that item at any cost. And keep in mind that if a seller is grossly over charging on shipping & so called Handling fees, what do you think he is doing on the selling price?
Buyers who feel that the shipping charge is excessive should take the item weight, the shipping method & the starting & destination zip codes & contact the shipping agency directly for an estimate. Only by doing this you will know for sure what the charge should be.
Most auction sites will let a seller mark up shipping by allowing the seller to charge a handling fee. And don't forget, that the more money a seller can successfully charge, the more money the auction site makes in service fees & final value fees from the seller as well. The overhead burden that is placed on the unsuspecting buyer just keeps growing & growing inside the final purchase price. So without breaking it down, you don't know what the real charge is. The buyer should always expect that the seller is not only covering the cost of shipping but is also making a profit here too. The question becomes what is reasonable & fair, and when is it a ripoff.
The auction sites themselves are constantly presenting the seller with ad-on's to increase their profit margins. Usually for an additional "Small Fee" the seller can ad a second title to your item, or you can pay an extra fee to select a background on which to display your items description. Or why not buy our extra long listing time for an additional small fee. And so it goes, on & on. And in the end they hope that you will have selected so many extras to help you sell your item that a simple listing that would have cost you fifty cents has been worked up to five dollars & fifty cents.
Keep in mind that auction sites are a business. They are not doing anything dishonest. They are simply offering you more choices. Do you want to fly first class or coach? Sellers who make their living on auction sites need to cover there selling expense in the same way the local store on main street needs to cover expense. It all comes out of the buyers pockets. So a good part of the starting price or fixed price in an auction is formulated by the seller to cover all of the selling expense so at the end of the auction, the seller has managed to deposit into his account the cash amount he originally wanted after all sales expense deducted & sometimes a lot more.
There is no question that the auction sites have an affect on seller prices. Especially with those sellers who for reasons I will never understand, ad to their listing all that fancy fluffy up sell stuff to their advertising. I guess I will never understand how adding illustrations of flowers & grass, or little cartoon drawings helps to sell a tractor transmission, a grease gun or anything else. Just exactly what it's suppose to do to ad to the value of the item is beyond my understanding & there is no argument that anyone can present to me that would change my mind about it. It's just plain unnecessary in this type of selling effort, and it adds expense to the buyer unnecessarily. The only winner is the auction site's bottom line.
The auction sites would have you believe that everything that is listed on their site is sold. That really is not the case at all. Many items on auction sites are left unsold. When this happens, it generally translates into extra income for the auction site. The seller gets to try again & maybe again after that. Or if the seller has an online store with the auction site, the item could be listed into the sellers store for another round of money making for the auction site. Both sellers & buyers become nothing more than the cash cows of the auction sites. And these sites are always changing the playing rules for buyers & sellers alike. While they claim these are necessary changes to meet the current operating conditions or to safeguard both buyers & sellers, there's one thing for sure. Both buyers & sellers usually end up with more restrictions & higher & higher costs.
So are the auction sites the evil places that some people make them out to be. Anyone who buys or sells on auction sites must answer that question for themselves. But they are a Mecca that attracts every kind of seller & buyer you can imagine. And the best safeguard you have in the marketplace is yourself. Buyers must do their research, ask questions & pay attention to what is said, and a lot more attention to what is not said about an item. Dishonest sellers sooner or later are put out of business by their own greed.
Speaking for myself, auction sites are the very last places I look to source parts. Buying a beat up thirty year old part to replace a thirty year old part is not exactly the thing I'm looking to do. It greatly affects the outcome & integrity of the project I am working on. You cannot claim to have "Restored" a tractor if you have used worn out old parts. A new coat of paint, on old parts is not a "Restoration. And if you simply want an old part, to get something up & running & don't really care about restoration, then this may be all you need. But before you hit the send button, I would check my parts dealer, the local tractor repair shop, my newspaper & other Non auction classified ad sites. You may discover just as I have, that the auction sites have a place in your parts search, but they are not the only place to source parts from & certainly not the least expensive.
