an ebay story on my coach. it was listed for a fairly high price a couple of times before i saw it in spring of 2007 and didnt sell. i am an experienced ebayer as well. i have bought high dollar items on ebay.
but, i didnt want to compete as they lowered the reserve price. so i talked to the person selling the coach and told him that i was very interested, but would only come look at it and deal if i liked it IF he delisted it on ebay, they don't deserve anything when the buyer and seller make a deal. he agreed to take it off ebay and i drove the 450 miles to his place to look at it the next weekend. we settled on a price and i went back and picked it up the next weekend, drove home, loaded it up the next day and left for a 2 week 6k mile trip where i really learned about it and the few little things that didnt work right...(the leveling system, sound familiar?, and a squeaky steering wheel which we rebuilt at a friends house while on the trip, and the hot water heater started leaking on the last few hundred miles home).
btw, i paid about 30k less than the original ebay reserve price and at the time got a really good deal for the coach, way below what others were selling for then.
so, i know ebay brings buyers out, but sometimes it is just a medium to find buyers to talk to that are serious, as was the case in my situation.
btw, i almost bought 3 other wanderlodges before the newell. in every case i had someone inspect them for me before going to look at them. I would NEVER buy a rig like ours without looking at it with my own two eyes. i went and looked at a coach recently for a friend on this forum and it was really thrashed and i took pictures till my camera battery died. the pictures looked TONS better than real life and i wasnt even trying to do so. so good in fact the person commented that it didnt look that bad.
i put earnest money down on a 95 wanderlodge with a series 60 and the pictures looked fantastic. the description was great. the 250 bucks i paid a professional inspector (i was too far to drive) was well worth it. when he got there, he called me and said if i didnt want to have it inspected he wouldnt charge me anything. it was that different than the pictures and description. it had been smoked in, the tranny was leaking fluid and the engine was filthy with grease. not good signs....lots of other things too and i paid him the 250 bucks gladly. i did get my money back thankfully, but it still would have been cheaper than following through with it.
my lessons are that nothing takes the place of having a third party look at it and then looking at it yourself. my version of what is nice and what condition a coach is in is very likely different than yours and most definitely different than the person selling it.
we have a great network of experienced newellee's here that will gladly look at coaches near us for each other, but it still is just the first step. ya gotta see it for yourself to see if it fits you. if you feel right in it and does it make you feel the way you want to behind the wheel. all of you that own one know exactly what i mean. i love all the newells, some of them i wouldnt want for myself.
i like the newer ones a bunch and would rather have a series 60. having said that, if i had found clarke's coach before him (an 82), i would have bought it in a heartbeat. but as I learn my mind changes.
it is more than condition, it is condition and an emotional connection.
i talked to the owner of the 94 on ebay and it sounds nice. he seemed to be a real straightup guy who knows coaches extremely well. i suspect that will be a nice coach for someone. if you are interested in it, call and talk to him. he is in the northeast so it would be quite a roadtrip to go see it for alot of us, but it is great up there this time of year....
if my coach passes hands ever, the person who gets it will be able to find things wrong with it. that is after i have repaired basically every system in the coach.
sorry to say that is the nature of the beast.
as wally would say.....thats my 2 cents worth and i am sticking to it.
tom
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