Neil Jaffe

You asked me earlier if I source cars for people, and that’s a very hard thing to do because they’ll put silly criteria in. Not silly to them, but they’ll want something that was made the same year they were or that’s white. And I always say that you should, obviously depending on what you’re looking for, put miles and quality at the top of the list and the other things should be negotiable to you. Obviously, if there’s colors you hate, then you can leave them out, but… So I’ve just found that it’s very, very hard to find a 1989 Porsche 911 coupe with under 15,000 miles in white with a blue interior. You want to tell the guy that, you know, that he needs to — well, I do — tell them they need to broaden their search or they’re never… they’re going to become professional shoppers, someone who’s looking forever for a car. And maybe that’s part of what they’re trying to do, albeit subconsciously, depriving themselves of what they actually think they want but know they don’t really have the place for it yet. Most of our e-mails are in response to cars that are on our website. Yeah, we’re full transparency. I like to describe my cars honestly. The problem is, we deal in a… certainly in America they tend to, and I think it’s just the culture now, where everyone has to overemphasize everything and at least omit, by ambiguity if not by deliberate misdescription, the problems. And I’d rather somebody knew up front what they were dealing with because it makes everything else much easier, and they’re not surprised and disappointed at different stages of getting into the deal. And you may get a tenth of the calls, but those people are going to be happy with what they get, they know what to expect, and it keeps everything just so much easier to deal with.