Selling the car - again

For the third time in my life I am in charge of getting rid of a vehicle. In 2016 selling my 13-year-old Megane II went on surprisingly smoothly and the buyer did not even try to haggle. Last year I co-ordinated disposal of my father's 8-year-old Megane IV (which he swapped for a brand-new Skoda Scala, fulfilling, to quote him, the last dream in his lifetime). Since his vehicle was fitted with a nefarious 1.2 TCe 130 HP engine, the interest was meagre, but eventually it was purchased by AAA auto at a very decent price. The procedure went quickly (they pay with cash) and soon I could track the car being put up for sale for next nearly 100 days. Not really sure whether the trader earned much on it.

For the past year, Megane III was kept mostly to help my ex-girlfriend hone her driving skills, but with such reason to keep two cars being no longer valid, I am seeking new owner for it. I have big sentiment for this vehicle. It kept me company for more than 8 years, outlived three romantic relationships, visited several countries. So far it has been quite reliable, given its age of almost 14 years and mileage of almost 115,000 kilometres. I fear it might catch up in terms of trouble making, hence I have decided to sell it to a stranger and refuse to trade it to any of my friends (including the ex-girlfriend who had reserved the right of first refusal).

To prepare it for a new owner, it had oil, filters, brake and coolant liquid, battery changed, handbrake repaired and then the car went through MOT (no issues found). PLN 2,000 gone out of my pocket, but a new owner will be likely not to put any money into the car some time after the purchase.

I put up an ad (another PLN 100 spent), but so far the interest is not huge. I have learnt the 1.4 TCe engine, which has not caused any problems since leaving showroom, is a piece of shit, likely to fall apart after 150,000 - 200,000 kilometres, even despite changing oil every year and placid driving until the engine warms up.

I prefer to omit an intermediary, especially since I have handled all preparatory works myself, and find a private individual buyer. Consignment deal is ruled out, since I would be deprived of a car for weeks with no guarantee it is sold. Selling it to a trader is an option to be considered if I received a cash payment up-front.

In 2016 I sold Megane II for PLN 11,000, more than the equivalent of my pre-tax monthly salary then. This year Megane III, a few months older than its precedessor at the time of disposal, will definitely be traded by less than my pre-tax monthly wage. My earnings have moved on, but prices of used cars have gone up by a similar percentage as of factory-new ones.

Oddly enough, despite more advanced age and higher mileage, Megane III is in better technical condition than Megane II. The previous car was already trouble-making, Megane III is probably in the eve of becoming a time bomb. It will not require substantial financial outlays (unless its engine indeed conks out one day), but the hassle of small repairs might be bothersome.

In spite of several good memories connected with the vehicle, I strive to be an emotionless vendor. My pricing strategy is to bring down asking price by PLN 500 every eight days and be open to let a buyer beat down the settlement price by no more than 8%.

Despite my misgivings about its reliability, I sincerely hope it serves somebody well for next years, just like ex-mine Megane II does. It has not changed hands since November 2016 and keeps running until now, despite quite advanced age of 22.

A mastery in OLX

Of note – Politics, Economy, Society turns sixteen tomorrow. This means I have run a blog for a whopping 43% of my lifetime and 83% of my adult life.

But by the time I formally became adult, if I wanted to get rid of some useless stuff, firstly I needed to place free-of-charge ad in yellow pages of local Gazeta Wyborcza, then stuff could be disposed of via Allegro.pl portal, most likely by putting them out to auction. I recall well an event, around May 2011, when a guy came with his father to pick up some tools and they have virtually cleaned up my parents’ garage and paid PLN 1,100 for items we considered useless.

In the meantime, online selling has evolved and in terms of non-clothing stuff has been nearly monopolised by OLX. I began to use it in 2018 to sell for a song pieces of equipment left by the vendor of my newly purchased flat. I raised around PLN 1,000 back then, which had a tiny, yet a contribution to the refurbishment budget.

Since then I occasionally used OLX to find new possessors for stuff I no longer needed and was elated to extend their lives, especially as I was growing fond of the circular economy. A major revolution came some time ago, when OLX launched cheap deliveries via parcel lockers. The only drawback of solution is that you need to keep count of sale transactions finalised over one calendar year, not to exceed 30 sold items (or the equivalent of EUR 2,000), so that OLX does not file a report of your dabbling in trading to a tax office.

I also taught my ex-girlfriend to manage heaps of her (why do women tend to accumulate more than men?) useless belongings via OLX and Vinted, thus all in all over the last two years we sold (with delivery or in-person pick-up) around 100 items. We have not managed to recover a lot of money from it, yet financial aspect is not the crucial one. Fostering the concept of the circular economy and letting somebody buy decent stuff at a bargain price is a paramount idea behind putting stuff out on OLX. To nurture it, I have also become a buyer on OLX and have come by many nearly unused items at dirt cheap prices. On the other side were frequently thoughtless buyers, yet I do not feel guilty of my purchases – those people have not thrown their useless belongings to a rubbish bin and might learn from their mistakes not to make next reckless purchases.

Reduce, resell, repair, recycle, renew, reuse, but do not increase the output of new goods! A propos, if you need to have your small white goods repaired quickly and at decent price, I wholeheartedly recommend Serwis AGD Ryszard Rogal in the district of Ursus. They have revived a seemingly dead vacuum cleaner my parents wanted to dispose of us for a mere PLN 60 and within 2 business days.

The first trade-free Sunday

I pledge this post customarily has been scheduled to come out on Sunday, yet on account of other, more interesting plans for today, I wrote it yesterday and could not report here the full picture of the first regular Sunday when shops are closed.

The lawmakers’ primary rationale for bringing in the ban on trade on (around half of) Sundays was to bring this day back to the family, to make people spend more time together, or, alternatively to devoid them of choice, whether to visit a supermarket or a church. Changing people’s habits through legislative acts looms as a domain of totalitarian or authoritarian governments (though I do know this assertion is debatable).

The main argument of the new law’s proponents is that shops in most countries of the Western EU are closed on Sundays. I saw this while venturing abroad and I still am in two minds about this. In January 2017, while flying in to Madrid on Sunday afternoon, knowing the trade is forbidden there, I deliberately did not any snacks to make a supper, my companion and I just ventured into town thinking we would easily find an eatery. Eventually we roamed for around an hour searching for an open restaurant. Prompting eatery-keepers to close them on Sunday means depriving them of sizeable turnover, something I do not hold with.

Imposing such solutions will not work miracles I believe. A new legal act will not make customers go to church or spend more time will relatives. It will only change their shopping habits (maybe I make a huge mistake by thinking people go to trade outpost to purchase stuff as I do, but many just go there to enjoy the weekend).

Although I am not in favour of the ban, since many years I strived not to shop on Sundays. I always believed Saturday was the part of weekend dedicated to mundane duties which could not be handled over the working week, while Sunday was a day of rest, relax, recharging batteries, indulging in hobbies, touching the nature, long walks, cycling. I have rarely contributed to thriving trade on Sundays, but coercing others not to shop just because I do is a step too far. Another aspect of the issue is the fate of employees who until now were forced to work on Sundays. The best solution here is… (yes, indeed) the imposition of higher wages on Sundays which will induce some to sacrifice their free time; another option is a voluntary participation in Sunday shift, yet such concept appears less practicable since if too few volunteers would sign up, shoppers could face the problem of understaffing.

Needless to say, emergence of a new regulation naturally turns on ingenuity of those affected by it. Petrol stations, also those state-owned, might sell washing machines, shopping galleries might be turned into showrooms. Traders come up with several ways of circumventing the new, the lawmakers will struggle to tackle it and crack down on loopholes allowing exceptions to the prohibitions.

My observations from yesterday: denser traffic and crowds in nearby Auchan and adjacent gallery.

My predictions for today: hundreds of nieogarnięci, who, despite numerous reminders, headed to the shops and run across closed doors, nearly empty roads.