A Stinking Good Deal or Just a Stinker?

As you have heard in my previous post, there's a guy in Kelowna who is selling a 2007 GTS 250 for $2800. Sounds like a great deal - maybe even too good to be true. But I have to consider the time of year and maybe the guy just wants to get rid of it. Kelowna is already in winter so nobody there is going to buy one. Offering the scooter at a good price is sure to draw someone like me....

I've emailed back and forth with the guy and he has been fairly prompt with his responses but is certainly not very verbose. He sent some photos and answered my questions.

The latest exchange, this weekend, had me asking for the VIN so I could run it. He complied. It turns out that the scoot was originally from California which I guess wouldn't be a bad thing. I ran the VIN in the stolen car database and a couple other BC databases and found nothing. Then I ran it in the California database - a negative report showed up but with no details.

Agitated, I hummed and hawed and eventually paid the $36 for Carfax, a website that gives you more information on a negative report. Had it been in an accident? Was it stolen?

It turns out that the odometer figure has the potential for not being reliable. The report stated:

A NAM title is issued when the owner discloses to a DMV mileage fraud, a broken odometer or that the actual mileage of this vehicle is unknown.
Mileage reported after this reading is potentially unreliable.


At first I thought, that's it, I won't even bother. But as the day went by, I thought, why not give the guy a chance to respond?

 He responded by saying that when he bought it, the battery was dead and was told it had 5000 miles on it but when he went to the Vespa dealer (in San Diego, I believe) they told him that it actually had 10,500 miles on it.

Now, he's saying that it has 11,000 miles on it which still sounds reasonable. My wife wants to go to Kelowna anyways to visit her sister so I'm thinking, can't hurt to take a look. Maybe it'll look fine and run fine and maybe I'll even get a good deal...

Or maybe I'll get soaked...