Ferrari Mailing List: Re: In defense ( Brokers )

[Fellippe Galletta (fellippe.galletta]

On Mon, Oct 17, 2011 at 12:26 PM, Phil Tegtmeier <philville [at] windstream.net> wrote:

In the mid 90's I sold a 308 GTB to a client who became some what of a friend.....at the time I re-call that the price was 27.5 and I told them that in my opinion if they took care of the car and properly maintained it they should never lose any money by owning that car.

Over a period of years the owner self maintained and may ( or may not have done a good job).

About 2 / 3 years ago I received the call that none of us like to hear, from his widow, he had died and she needed to sell the car.

I went to her home, the car was sitting in a garage, and not much of a garage. the wheels were blocked to keep it from rolling down hill out of the garage ( I never had the opportunity to see if there was a problem with the brakes, because the car could not be run.
The owner had taken the carbs off to re - build and then had gotten sick.

I suggested to the widow that we take the car to a shop ( any shop ) and have it put back together. She was adamant that the car not leave the premises.

At the time, I would guess that a really nice  308 GTB ( carb'd ) might have brought into the upper 30's. This car was at best, even forgetting about the carbs and brakes an 85' point ( a nice driver) car.

At the time, I had a buyer who would pay me ( as I re call ) 27, or 27.5 for the car ( as is ) I offered to make the deal work and told her I would do so for a $1000.00 commission.
She let me know very quickly what she thought of my offer, my character and my earlier statements about not losing money, that in fact she had been advised by a close friend to take no less than 32k.

Over a period of a few days we tried to communicate and I may have actually offered to have the customer go directly to her and not take any commission ( I am reluctant to say I definitely made that offer, but I am stupid enough that I probably did)
she refused the offers and told me that she needed the money and that I was being greedy and unfair.

A few days later I had a call from her daughter asking me why I was being "mean" to her mother and why was I trying to take advantage of her.

I decided to stop being mean and no longer tried to reach her.

Several months later she sold the car to a "friend" of mine for $16,000.00 his first call was to me to gloat. And then he sold the car for 25k.

In turn she has told people locally what a bad person I am, go figure.

She got what she deserved....I can't believe people are so dumb to not understand what is going on, what's fair and what's not.

Sorry to hear....no good deed goes unpunished.

FG