Selling a Car

 I went the Craigslist route.  Good choice.  Easy to list your vehicle, which I did.  Easy to update during the process.  Easy to control the responses, whether you choose to list your phone number or just have them respond to the listing.  Oddly enough I only had one response, but that was the guy who eventually bought the car.  He called me and I gave him more information about the car.  He asked for my best price and I told him and hung up.  Two days later he called and said that he and his wife were driving down from Portland ( about a two hour drive) to drive the car.  I told him ok but the car price had not changed.

    Two hours later he showed up and I showed the two of them the van.  I could not tell if they were excited or not.  After I took down his name, address, and drivers license number I let them take a test drive.  They were gone quite a while and when they came back said that they wanted the car but at a lower price.  I had decided ahead of time that if the car did not sell at decent price I was going to keep it for a while longer and try again later.  So I was not in a dickering mood.  I stuck firm on the price I had quoted on the phone.  The negotiation broke down and the two of them went back to their car and I want into the back yard to cut some limbs.  A few minutes later, his wife called my name and came around and handed me an envelope with the correct amount of cash in it.  The van is gone.  

     The next day I went to the bank and put the cash into our checking account.  The teller, who told me she had only been there two weeks and had to check if she needed approval to accept cash.  I just smiled.   It was OK.

  Good bye, Venture