Invasion of the cybermen (and women)

One traders personal view on the new invasion of the cybermen (and women)…
Is it just me, or do internet customers live on another planet? up until a year or so ago I never advertised on the net, I had quite happily used the local and national press to advertise my stock with great success, a good advert contained all the customer needed to know, pictures, description, specification, oh, and the price of course.

That was it, the advert came out, people phoned, people turned up,(usually) people bought (mostly) but all that was long ago, now you need high resolution pictures and lots of them as well, ten seems to be about the norm, showing extreme close ups of the wheels and tyres including engine photos and keyhole exploration of the chassis rail (I exaggerate but you get my point). Video footage is now deemed acceptable as well in some ambitious adverts, as we get to be shown around the car more often than not accompanied by shaky camera shots and dodgy vocal descriptions! Nothing is left to chance, every bit of information (however useless) is proffered, every miniscule stone chip, scratch, wheel scuff, service stamp, and dog hair is there for all to see and scrutinise, and if after that visual assault you still need more there is always the description.

This ranges from just a few words that tell you absolutely nothing you really need to know, to the full “War and Peace” version with every owner and their life history displayed for all to see, lots of it such as ABS or PAS repeated twice, just in case you missed the fact that a 2006 Jaguar or Audi or Vauxhall really does come with power steering nowadays, amazing!

You would think all of this information would be enough for most people wouldn’t you? And I am the first to admit that I do most of the above myself when advertising my stock, but more often than not nowadays it simply isn’t! No matter how much info you give, no matter how nice the vehicle is, or for that matter how cheap it is, cyber lookers always want more, more info, more photos, more discount and more time to think about it! All of this wouldn’t be so bad if they actually turned up to look occasionally and even better if they actually bought something, but more often than not they don’t! Far easier to sit at home in the far flung corners of the British Isles firing off pointless question after question than to actually make the journey to see the vehicle in the first place.

So Mrs Blakely of Southampton, No I won’t meet you half way down the M3 so you can “just have a quick look as it’s a long way to drive” and No again Mr Munns, I can’t give you a “ball park figure” for your 2006 Peugeot as you “need to know what it’s worth so that you can sell it first” and Mrs Porter, dear Mrs Porter, what on earth makes you think I could accept your offer of £3,000 for a £5,000 vehicle, and you thought I was the rude one? And finally Mr Tucker, why oh why would I want to swap my low mileage 2006 Renault for your 136,000 mile Audi? After the third (polite) rebuff I would have thought you got the message? And so it goes on, day after day, night after night.

I’m losing faith in the “Internet Revolution” its power to inform and educate is real, it’s one of the greatest innovations of our time, it’s a window into the whole world and it’s not going to go away, but right now I wish some of the people using it would!

Happy surfing.