A small step would be if planecheck and similar pages would enforce certain values. No advert without giving date and number of hours for engine, prop, airframe. Damage history yes/no, customs and VAT status. Also not accepting adverts without a price would be good.
By the way, the guy picked up the plane the from pevious owner, admitting he has never flown a Malibu before, and not knowing the avionics, and then sits down in it, and heads straight for an IFR cross country in it.
Don’t get me wrong. I like the guy. He is enthusiastic about flying and aboutGA. Just a bit clueless here and there.
Anyway, yes, the aircraft seem overpriced by 100.000€. Possibly by more given its damage history.
Planecheck doesn’t care. A number of TB20GTs were on there with pics stolen from my website. The sellers could not be bothered to taketheir own pics. PC is not interested.
And probably > 50% of buyers don’t do any sort of prebuy. So it is easy to sell any old dog. I’ve had friends buying planes and tried to be of help, even offering to inspect it with my A&P (in another country, and free of charge!) and in the end the plane is just bought. So nowadays I don’t bother to get involved; when I get one of the many emails asking me for an opinion on some TB I suggest they post it on EuroGA 
To be honest, people who sell planes are no different in the “ethical profile” to people who sell cars
Honesty is a rare commodity in advertizing at the best of times and the dividing line between “white lies” and “fraud” is often curved.
That said, in the aircraft marketplace, people run up against a lot of expertise, both real and imagined. Yet, if you consider how many people buy slimming pills or fake viagra off facebook marketplace it is not really hard to imagine what a nicely done ad can do to someone who sees his “dream” airplane at conditions which are just too good to be true…
Then again, damage history often is reacted to outright hysterical, hence the temptation to lie about it. It is always the question how any damage is repaired. Some airplanes may come out of a damage better than they were before, particularly considering that most of the time there are new engines and props included, which often enough outweigh the rest of the hull value.
Due dilligence, savvy PBI and educating oneself about airplanes and particularly about the brand you consider buying is the answer to that kind of stuff.
I have a Grumman AA5 with a fuel leak. I need to get rid of it, so I am advertising it with a stated defect for £15k less than its market value. It’s easier, to be honest in the long run. I could quick fix it with some PRC… but if it leaks again in 6 months’ time, the buyer will be back to me.
We recently bought an aeroplane and the “radios were in the engineer’s office for safekeeping”. I went to the aircraft on Monday and got handed a box of radios. The Garmin GNC255A and GTX328 were missing. Needless to say, they left the ADF.
Honesty is in short supply.
The reason seller honesty is in a short supply is because most people see a plane, fall in love with it, and buy it
Let’s face it – we’ve all done it with cars
Peter wrote:
we’ve all done it with cars
and even woman
Peter wrote:
The reason seller honesty is in a short supply is because most people see a plane, fall in love with it, and buy it
Those people certainly exist but when I was selling those actually going ahead ended up beeing those with some advanced knowledge. But I was selling PA46 so usually not a beginners plane. The crazy people never had the money in the end etc. Maybe the most common mistake even among the more advanced buyers was not to work through items in deceasing cost order. Who cares about a worn tire (< 1k$) if a PA46 heated winshield is broken (30k$) etc. Too much attention on mechanical things and too little on systems.
With old wood-and-fabric planes wing damage means the glue joints have been exposed for examination. The two incidents I have experience of both showed unsuspected damage when the fabric was removed. A fabric recover has the same result.
