. . . I don't know, not exactly shady, but questionable. Case in point, this ad from the eastern ct site. It offers a Dawes Lightning aluminum road bike for the reasonable price of $500, presumably to be picked up in Wallingford. The ad promises the bike is "brand new" except for the fifty-ish miles that the owner has already put on it. OK, not a bad deal. Because if I wanted a brand new bike like that, I'd have to pay more, right? And if I wanted clip-on aero bars (which the craigslist seller doesn't offer but are maybe nice, if you're into that sort of thing), that would kick the price up more still, right? And then I'd have to get the bike shipped from the dealer, which could cost even more, right? Well, actually, no. I could get the exact same bike new, in a variety of sizes, with clip-on aero bars, for $495.99 with free shipping. (That's $4.01 less, if you're keeping score at home.) So the question is this: Is the craigslist seller dissatisfied with the bike he purchased from Bikesdirect.com and simply trying to recoup his money, or is he, in fact, a brilliant middleman, posting similar ads all around the nation, marking the price up just a little bit each time, not even bothering to order the bike from Bikesdirect until he has a craigslist buyer lined up, then reaping benefits through shear volume of business? Or does he charge $4.01 in labor to remove clip-on aero bars?
Here's the bike in question, as offered by BikesDirect.com.
And here is the rest of it.
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Man, sometimes craigslist is so . . .
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4 comments:
I like that the bikesdirect copy tells us that we can race and buy groceries with the bike.
They used to have copy selling their Windsor "The Hour" track bike, the title of which alludes to the format of track racing where riders try to cover the greatest distance during one hour. The tag line by BikesDirect referred to the famed rider Eddy Merckx and said, "Can you beat Eddy's time?" What's funny about that is that, well, no, you can't beat his time. Because everyone rides for an hour.
Well, the first thing you have to realize about CList is their two kinds of pricing strategies:
1. The unwary seller put's the item up for what he/she thinks it's worth to them sell it, although, they may get more for it, they are just trying to get it out of the garage and earn a little scratch for the effort.
2. The Superwin. The seller knows what it's worth and knows that sometimes you might get some rube on the CList willing to pay the offered price. So, you put it up for the max value and see what you get.
One caveat to the Superwin is time. You have to pounce on the first, best offer you get.
For example, I want to build a MonsterX rig, not because it's Cross season, but I like to try new things and build crazy bikes from time to time, e.g. check this hottie out:
Dump Goose. Thus I was getting the urge to move onto something new.
So I put the Bianchi up on the NYC CList, because Fairfield County is contained within that region, and I got a hit within an hour of posting the ad on Thursday night with an offer $450. Timing was everything - if I was in the city I would have $450 in my pocket but he couldn't come out to the country to pick it up until next weekend. Which resulted in him finding another rig.
So, by doing your homework, you are not a rube!
The other thing I find interesting is that some sellers think that you don't haggle on CList. If they don't want haggling, then they should go to eBay.
Id put money down that the poster bought the bike, found out it was the wrong size, and realized he could get his money back for it on CL. To be honest i'm surprised he hasn't jacked up the price more.
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