selling a car is a bitch

We are trying to sell our car. We posted it on Craig's List and two parties came to look at it and test drive it. The first wasn't that interested -- he really needed a four-door to cart his 3-year old around. The second test drove it, said they were interested and asked me to bring it to their mechanic -- a half hour drive away. Luckily, my mother was visiting and she stayed home with baby Doodle while I hung out at a Starbucks for an hour while their mechanic inspected our car. The mechanic wrote up a "report" and claimed the car was worth $600 less than we were willing to let it go at. It didn't occur to me that the mechanic was going to suggest a price to the buyers, but I'm naive. We agreed to a price $400 less than our "won't take less than" price, which I thought was generous. And I had driven it out to their mechanic legitimizing a lower price with which to negotiate. So we agreed on a price.

I suggested meeting at a notary public's office between Philly and their house, granted it is a little closer to our house than theirs. They suggested meeting at a notary public in their town, across the street from their mechanic. They have two teenage kids, one of whom would get the car they're buying from us. We have an almost 2-year old who would have to come with us to do the transfer because someone has to drive Mr. Doodlebug home.

This morning I got a call from the woman who asked if we'd be willing to say we're selling the car to them for $1000 so they don't have to pay the tax to the state. She apologized for springing the issue on us and I told her I felt a little uncomfortable with it and that I'd call her back.

Mr. D and I discussed it and decided we weren't willing to lie to the state to save these people some money. We called them back and said that we were not willing to do that. The woman asked if we'd be willing to say they are only paying $3000. No, we said. It's the principle, not whether they'd say they paid $1 or $5000. They called us back and asked if we would accept $200 less than the price we all agreed to. Mr. D hung up and we decided we weren't going to lose $200 because they didn't want to pay the state the tax that is legally owed.

While all this is going on, we called our neighbor who had expressed interest in the car after we already had a conversation going with these people. She said she was very interested and if the deal fell through she would want to buy the car, and do the right thing by paying the sales tax.

We told the original potential buyers the car is theirs for the price we agreed to, but no lower and that we have another buyer who we have put on hold because we thought we already had a deal. We're still waiting to hear back from them -- it's been about two hours. I actually hope they don't take the offer so we can sell it to our neighbor who we'd rather have own the car anyway.