I broke and (to use the Americanism) "parted out" a bike about 10 years ago and to this day it has to be one the worst motorcycle-related experiences of my life, and that includes several non-recovered thefts and riding from Chippenham to London during the early hours of the morning in -1º conditions resulting in early stage hypothermia which caused me to fall off and fracture my left tibia. About 30% of the buyers seemed to think it was "try before you buy" and out of those quite a few would deliberately damage the part to claim their money back or fit the part I sent but then claim a refund using pics of the broken parts they'd removed. A fair proportion of the other 70% had totally unrealistic expectations, eg: asking for a 12 month warranty and such nonsense say a front wheel that sold for £50. I now know why scrappies are so curmudgeonly and own savage dogs. Never again.
During one of my half-hearted and lockdown-interrupted attempts to sell my 911 over the past couple of years I've met some right knobbers. The worst one was some crazy but quite wealthy* dude who split his time between homes in London, Cyprus and Colorado making me an offer which was below asking, which I told him was a bit low, but I would see how much other interest I got. In the meantime we continued to chat about cars, bikes and life in general over WhatsApp for a week or two, only for him to suddenly switch on me when we got down to brass tacks and I told him my bottom line was £**k. Despite clear written evidence in the messages we exchanged that I had never accepted his offer and at all times I had told him it was too low, he started bombarding me with abusive messages and voice notes and also threatening me with Police and legal action if I didn't sell him my car. I blocked him on WhatsApp so he started sending texts and when I blocked him there, he started sending nasty messages via eBay. Much lolz, but also really odd, but then there's also that theory that a lot of very successful people are sociopaths who think everyone else has to bend to their will and don't react well when someone tells them "No"..... * tbh, his apparent wealth did beg the question why he was interested in my 20 year old base model 996 with 115,000 miles and no record of the IMS being changed, but he seemed to like having dozens of "good" cars rather than one or two amazing cars.
I have to admit, I’m thinking triggers broom? that piston barrel must resemble my ex wife’s axe wound ?!?
There used to be a really good Ducati breaker on eBay called BikeEnders He threw the towel in for all the above reasons. A real loss
My foray into the world of dirt bike buying at Xmas demonstrated that is true of all 2 stroke off roaders. I’m still dealing with the consequences now, and an item on this weekend’s to do list is fitting the DT175 OE exhaust and carb I found recently on eBay after months of searching for, buying and returning mis-described parts. Then next weekend’s jobs involve getting the DT125 checked over by my mechanic after I had to more or less strip it down and rebuild it in order to rectify some truly terrifying bodges.
My best mate saw his son's dirt bike on ebay (the thick cvnts didn't even remove the stickers). So he put in a daft bid and 'won' it. An interesting conversation ensued in the blokes garage when he arrived to reclaim his son's bike....
eBay own gumtree and over the years it has changed and will continue to change, you can now get feedback of sellers, prices have risen to advertise, and more things are now charged to advertise. Advertising your business is £11.99 now from around £5 ish not long ago
I’ve heard of this stuff happening in Mx world a lot. a few mates that race Mx reckon they’ve been followed home a few times
Oh man, it's ridiculous. I'd love a 250 two stroke for messing about on but because I travel a lot, I don't want to potentially draw scrotes to where I live.
There’s hardly anywhere to actually ride them these days as well. Down in Kent there’s only a handful of tracks left now.
I could go back decades and tell you tale of woe upon tale of woe to do with DT bikes and the scumbags that are often involved with them. You just need to look at all the illiterate dodgy chancers selling them (and the modern equivalents, KTM etc.) on Gumtree - Dundee seems to be a particular hot-spot for them in this part of the country. I reckoned that eBay were deliberately running Gumtree in to the ground in order to force people to use eBay and hence have to pay for selling. Just the sort of thing they would do in "business".
People in the motorbike world don’t help themselves sometimes especially when putting motorbike related stickers on cars and vans, might look good but you advertising you probably have a bike
There are a couple of spots round where I live but I have to wear 10kg pretendy gold neck chain to blend in. And flick the vee's and shout 'fuck off' a lot.
