In a message dated 3/28/07 4:50:03 AM, Grant writes:
>
> Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2007 22:30:32 -0400
> From: Grant McLean <grant.mclean@sympatico.ca>
>
> Wowie Zowie!!
> Glad it's too big for me, or I'd have cried myself to sleep for a month.
> My favorite part of the seller's listing is:
> "I am not sure of the exact year of manufacture and I cannot find
> a serial number (unless it is 1.S1 as seen in photo #7)"
>
> Yup, that "1" there would be a clue to something...
>
> Grant McLean
> Toronto, Canada
>
>
Indeed.
A few of us have been having an interesting off-list conversation about this auction... If the seller had not put a "Buy it Now" on the bike, there might have been a few individuals (myself for sure) who would have written him and told him what he had. Just out of consideration.
In this discussion, the question was posed that if the seller had posted the bike on the CR list instead of eBay, would he have had dozens of emails telling him either not to sell it, or that his price was too low ... or would those folks have been outnumbered by those reaching for their checkbooks? Most of us agreed that the former would occur, since this list has been, by and large, all about fellowship and fairness and educating each other.
But eBay's a whole 'nother deal... maybe I'm wrong, but I think that most folks are very quick to write a seller when he has described something incorrectly in a way that places the object in a better light, but not as likely to write when he has described an item in a way that would tend to undervalue it and thereby benefit the astute bidder.
When it comes to Masis, I tend to write the seller in either case, to correct any glaring inconsistency whether it might be of benefit to the bidder OR the seller. But in this case, the seller made that impossible because I was dead certain that by the time he read my email the bike would be gone, gone, gone.
So when you don't have a friendly group of pals to help you out as he probably would have had if he had posted the bike on the list, the only alternative is a few minutes of what many would term "due diligence," which in this case could mean as little as typing a few words in Google and exploring the results. Most sellers are willing to do this, at least with Masis, since I've gotten dozens of emails from folks who have stumbled across my web site and either want more info on a Masi they're selling or want permission to post my link in their eBay description. Some might suggest that there might be too much info on my site for the mere passerby (and I'll freely admit that the site was not created for them, but for the more rabid Masiphile), but I still don't see how it would take more than about five or ten minutes of skimming to discover both the year of his bike and the significance of a "1S1" serial number (either on the USA Registry page or my article on US serial numbers).
So if you combine a lack of basic research with his "Buy It Now" which might have discouraged others besides myself from dropping him a cautionary email, it's probably safe to say that the seller deserved to get exactly the amount of money he asked for and not the amount that the bike was really worth.
Bob Hovey
Columbus, GA
http://bhovey.com/
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