Job Discussion Forums

[I'm With Stupid]

Has anyone else ever noticed the frequency of adverts on Craigslist listing a bike for more than it costs to buy brand new? There's a 2013 Honda Airblade on there at the moment for $2500. Almost brand new but second hand nonetheless. That works out at nearly 53 million VND. And yet a quick look on the Honda website shows that even the most expensive brand new Airblade is less than 40m. And this isn't the first time. Only a month or so ago, someone was advertising a Honda SH for nearly double the list price of a new model. Anyone got any ideas why this might be the case? Are there additional costs on the Honda price that I don't know about or something? It's definitely weird.

[Anh Dep]

If that Air Blade is one made in Thailand, then it will be more expensive.Just checked his advert out and see he is in Binh Tan, not a great place for buying bikes, lots of scammers there.

[mark_in_saigon]

I watch CL rather closely. Notice that we are in VN, but you never see an ad written in the native language. Tells me that this is used mostly by VN trying to sell/rent to the expats. Some expats also advertise their stuff on it as well. Not all items for sale on CL VN are a ripoff, but considering who is selling to whom, a lot are. My deal is classic Hondas, and there is a decent market of them on CL. The 67's are often advertised as being 100 cc. Almost always that is untrue. But it is a great marketing point, so they are listed as 100 cc. You can eventually find a good deal over there, but you have to know your machine and really sort thru the ads. You cannot be in a hurry to pull the trigger.

Rentals are especially ridiculous. Pull up any ad, then do a search for it using the title. You will find an average of over 10 ads for the same property. This means when you search, instead of looking quickly at the 200 properties out there (or whatever it is), you have to look at 2,000 ads for the same 200 properties. Nice. There are about 4 main "agents", kelvin, dan, tony, I forget the other. They have minions sitting around all day creating duplicate ads for phantom properties. Photos are often meaningless, they just pick the best ones and use them for any property they have. Basically, they just want to get your call and then show you what is available at that time, trying to pick your unit from the ads is pretty hopeless.

I use CL in the U.S. for my rental properties, over there, you can easily screw up and get blocked out from being able to advertise. Their system can sense when you cancel an ad and try to put it back up, and so they have this way of knocking you off and even telling you your ad is live when it actually is flagged as a duplicate ad and so never put up. A real pain, you then have to create another account with a different phone number. Human nature is such that with these free ads, people tend to post endlessly and so the site gets bogged down in duplicate ads. CL VN shows you the ultimate results of this, and over here, the CL system for knocking off duplicate posters is not in play. It is really a shame, CL is a great resource, but it is also a monster, it is huge, and they do not have it under control by any means. They really need to monetize it and have some paid help manage it a bit. The free aspect of it is just too tempting for scammers.

You know, CL is one of the biggest reasons the newspaper industry is in huge trouble. Ads were their main profit center, and CL destroyed much of that across the nation (the U.S., CL is an American organization).

I will be posting on my experience with a western guy who works on motorbikes here. He is a lot more expensive to get a rebuild done on an old motorbike because he actually does it properly. He is the only one you can trust to actually stroke as well as bore your engine on the classic Honda. When he says 97 or 108 cc, it actually is. VN mechanics are fine for little stuff, and cosmetic stuff as well. Labor is so cheap. But they really do not understand the more technical aspects of performance modifications, and so they tend to disappoint in that arena.