I guess this irritating deal is common, I see an ad online for a used dozer thats reasonably close to me and it ends up that its hundreds of miles away...... They think im just going to say sure Ill take it, heres the money and ship it to me.
With the internet nowadays, there are also the infamous "jockeys". Throw an ad up listing some machines, make the sale, bingo. Just had a buddy buy a machine from one of these guys. I found the exact same machine he was looking at on Machinery Trader, for $2000 less. He ended up buying it, and took almost two weeks to get it.
I just bought a carry deck crane that a dealer a couple of kilometres from my place had listed on consignment. Luckily, I was going right past where the machine was so I could check it out (it was about 900km from my house). Now, getting it home should be fun!
I have talked to many buyers and almost all of them prefer to buy equipment locally.
Yep its a real turn off to when they start out by lying about the physical location of the machine often downhill from there
They do that a lot on Craigslist but the solution is to click on "prohibited" to delete their ad. If you buy old tired equipment like I do, it doesn't make any sense to drive 800 miles to look it over just to find out what the seller lied about or omitted. If you're buying a late model, low hour unusual or rare piece of equipment, a long drive may be worth it.