Ads and things

Just going on a grump here.

I love the R90S listed in the market place which is just a /6 with an S fairing. Oh by the way, he is asking R90S price and has NO details there than "It runs great".

I love the guy on Ebay with an R80GS Dakar with 18K miles asking $69000 US dollars.

For the first guy, just maybe papa left him a bike and told him it was an R90S, now he wants to sell it and having looked up R90S prices, set the price. However, he did not take the time to verify if the bike was in fact a real R90S. I could go on for a lot longer here but I won't. There is plenty of information available online as to bike model identification, models and so on. All it takes is a minimum of effort to do the research.

As for the $69000 GS, The guy could make more money selling what he is smoking, Or maybe he just wants more money. I know, what someone asks is not always what they get. But please, let's be reasonable here, again, there is the internet. It takes five minutes to find the price ranges of R80GS bikes from pristine to trash. I have NEVER seen one listed for this price. Hey, if the guy does in fact get a buyer, I have a Rare 78 RS Belgian Police bike I will let go for $100000. It has low miles, only a few hundred in this configuration.

Ok, my airhead (mine airhead) rant for the day. St.

Caveat emptor might apply. My take on the Dakar bike...maybe his significant other said to sell the bike. This is his "I don't want to sell it" price...or maybe it's a way of saying "I tried to sell it but no one wanted to buy it, so I guess I have to keep it" position.

$69,000? Or did he mistakenly add one too many placeholders? $6,900?

Motodan said:

$69,000? Or did he mistakenly add one too many placeholders? $6,900?

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That would be my guess....

Joe

Motodan said:

$69,000? Or did he mistakenly add one too many placeholders? $6,900?

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Then divide by 2. Some people do not have a clue what value really is. But it is theirs so it has to be a fortune.

Buyer Beware

I fully agree with buyer beware.

But I kinda think someone who advertises in a BMW magazine a bike that is not in fact the bike listed for the price of the bike it is not, is carrying things a bit on the shady side. I clicked on the little box under the ad to report it, I have not seen the ad taken down nor have I received any reply to my report.

I have described my RS as it is, If I ask $100000 for it, I am kookie, If I asked $10000, sane. The GS in question I really don't believe he simply misplaced a decimal point. $6900 US dollars is a very very good price for a low mileage GS in the shape the pictures are in. According to my AU pen pal, It would be a great price in AU dollars.

I guess, I don't have much going on lately as I have been laid up with bronchitis, LOL nothing better to do Than to grump. St.

Honesty is the best policy. If not - go away.

Honesty is the best policy

I agree 100%

The GS for 3X the reasonable price, on Ebay, I can laugh at. The R90S which is not an R90S is listed in the BMWMOA marketplace. Ebay is not my club, I don't hold anyone to any degree of honesty on Ebay. When I buy there, I do so at my own risk. However The BMWMOA marketplace is my club. I do care what goes on with the BMWMOA.

How many of us have seen threads in the forum of people buying airheads (I don't mean new when they were in production but now as all used) only to find out what they got was either not as advertised (as is the R90S listed now, that is not an R90S) or got major electrical/mechanical issues along with the bike?

Honesty is the best policy! We as members of the BMWMOA (and the few of us airhead owning members). Should make an effort to treat the other guy as we would ourselves.

I am always available to help someone work on, buy, an airhead. If I can't, fix it, or help fix it, I know people who can. First thing in helping others is when I sell something, I am honest about it. I charge a fair price.

OKAY, caveat emptor! Watching People's Court used car episodes is one of my warped sense of humor things to do in my spare time. I have seen enough fools who were too foolish to make use of the resources out there for purchasing. Sometimes this is pure cheapness, as in I didn't want to pay a mechanic to look at it first, or, it is worse, ignorance. Greed factors in on man, I am getting such a good deal I can't pass it up. Poverty sticks it's ugly head in as this car might be the only thing available at what a person can afford. However poverty still doe not excuse not checking things out.

So, motorcycles are not cars. I don't think anyone in the BMWMOA is impoverished, this is a hobby, or a business, riding or working on BMWs. The things above still pertain to sales.

We should respect our fellow club members and for us in the airhead sect, we should as I have said already. Threat others like I would want to be treated.

Ok, I don't know, maybe as I said I have too much time on my hands being sick, so if this is not a topic of interest or I am full of crap, it can end here. St.

STEVENRANKIN said:

But I kinda think someone who advertises in a BMW magazine a bike that is not in fact the bike listed for the price of the bike it is not, is carrying things a bit on the shady side. I clicked on the little box under the ad to report it, I have not seen the ad taken down nor have I received any reply to my report.

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Sometimes when I see a mistake in the Marketplace I contact the seller and point out the error.
Most of the time they reply back to thank me and make the change.

How about giving us links to these ads? Some of us (myself) would not be savvy enough to recognize that the R90S is not in fact what the seller claims. I’d like to see the bike so I can learn and understand how to distinguish them.

Marketplace R90S...bike is a basic R90/6 w/ a fairing.

http://marketplace.bmwmoa.org/Classified/1975-r90s-listing-19030.aspx

-- looks like the owner of the bike/ad has now changed the title of the ad --

On a cheerier note

No, this will not be another rant about the fake R90S or the wildly priced GS.

This is my laugh of the day; people who place ads for things, who cannot use a camera, cannot take the time to clean up the item for sale to make it at least look decent (if it is indeed decent).

Just on my funny pages of Ebay BMW airheads for sale. There is a bike listed there, the guy could not wait for a sunny day to take the pictures. I guess a rain soaked R/7 is supposed to look sexy? Or perhaps it is truth in advertising, my bike sits out in the rain for storage, what you see is what you get.

I won't say much about poor lighting, blurry, and other things.

I must say, I have had minor issues in the past with pictures and the MOA, but they were solved before they got onto the web page. The resources exist to help us camera/computer/phone challenged people to get clear upright pictures on the site.

Ta, have a good day. St.

vark said:

How about giving us links to these ads? Some of us (myself) would not be savvy enough to recognize that the R90S is not in fact what the seller claims. I’d like to see the bike so I can learn and understand how to distinguish them.

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I'm no expert, but here are just a few obvious short comings. Single disk up front, should be dual. Carbs are Bing, should be Delorto. Paint job, the tank is black, should be silver smoke and can't see the fairing which should also be smoke. Engine badge, says R90/6.

It's just an over priced R90/6 with a misleading ad title.

That is not a fake R90S. Other than the wrong title I see zero effort to fake anything. It is the wrong color, has the R90/6 engine badge, Bing carbs, single disk, etc. Either the seller doesn't know what he/she has or the ad title is just a mistake.

Yes - I have seen dishonest ads in the Marketplace and on eBay. I have also seen honest mistakes. A while back there was discussion on this forum about whether a certain final drive would fit a member's bike. I looked at the eBay ad and concluded that either the photo was of the wrong part or the description was of the wrong donor bike. I messaged the seller and he responded, thanked me, and corrected his description to match the item in the photo. And the next day our member bought it and they all lived happily ever after.

p.s. I "reported" the R90S ad as containing an error in the title.

I see the owner has changed the R90S title to R90.

Still a quite proud owner, though.

Kudos

To the fellow who had the R90S Ad, Kudos for changing it. it shows you are in fact an honest man.

I apologize sincerely for being so hard on you in this thread. I am not a nice guy from time to time. St.

Now, if the other fellow will reduce the asking price to $65,000, then all will be right with the world.

People screw up ads all the time. Sometimes it's inadvertent and not intentional. Sometimes the motive is less benign.

My experience is that most of the time the screw-ups are not intentionally misleading but result out of carelessness. Sure, you see prices stated that are wildly unbelievable. A $60,000 R90? Yep, gotta be a mistake, or a joke (unless the tank is 24k gold). I also see bike names or manufacturer's names butchered quite often. Someone owns a Moto Guzzi that he loves but he calls it a "Monor Gozzi" or something like that.

Anyone familiar with these bikes enough to be looking at them should be able to filter through such foibles. More than once, I have messaged a seller about such things. Usually, they reply and thank me for the notice and then make corrections to the ads.

Heck, I am all the time finding misspelled words in national ads of major manufacturers for that matter.

On the other side of the spectrum, I think the most insidious transgressions of outright deceit occurs with high-end collector bikes and cars. I've seen reasonably-looking Guzzi Lemans I bikes that, in fact, were fashioned from lesser pedigree models. I've seen Vincent Black Shadows that were cobbled-together parts that never left the factory as a legitimate motorcycle of the advertised model. I've seen BSA DBD Gold Stars that, in fact, were made up from parts added to other bikes to look like the real thing.

These are high-dollar bikes and the reward/motivation for outright deceit can be high. This is why serious collectors are careful and diligent about knowing their stuff and checking the numbers on the machines they are considering.

Another situation I've encountered is where a seller has a bike that has something questionable about its character that was there when they bought it and it is being offered for sale as is. The seller himself can feign ignorance of anything not-correct with the hope that a zealous buyer will believe what he wants to believe and look over the possible issue. This comes up often with odometer mileage. A seller offers a bike with a mileage readout that is not corroborated by the condition of the bike and he/she simply says "this is the mileage that was on it when I bought it." I've seen bikes with 5000 miles on the clock yet had worn out brakes and caked-on fender debris.

I have friends right now who truly believe they have purchased vintage collector bikes that are in totally original condition. Yet, I can see the paint lines resulting from sloppy masking before the bikes were re-painted in the past.

Caveat Emptor rules the day. Best policy if you are not sure about something is to run it by someone you know is better educated about it than you.


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Price of the R90/6 with S type fairing.

Perhaps he priced it according to how much money he has invested in it. I have one like that, I used to keep up with my investment amount but it got too depressing. Now I look at it like this, What price would I put on my enjoyment of owning, working on and riding the old beast? Another way of looking it; If I paid $11,000 for a new bike, would it be worth more than I have invested in my old one at this point?