112 Morty & Harry

Canada
Québec & New Brunswick
Nova Scotia & Newfoundland
Québec & Ontario
Manitoba to the Pacific

91 To Winnipeg
92 Winnipeg
93 Wasagaming
94 On to Yorkton
95 Manitoba Beach
96 Wanuskewin
97 To Edmonton
98 Edmonton
99 To Hinton
100 To Jasper
101 The Rockies
102 Snowy roads
103 To Drumheller
104 Dinosaurs
105 To Banff
106 Banff
107 Banff
108 Lake Louise
109 Farewell Rockies
110 To Vancouver
111 Go Canucks
112 Morty & Harry
113 Where next?
114 Visas and Picasso
115 Downtown
116 Catch up
117 Vancouver Island
118 To Tofino
119 Pacific Rim
120 Surfers and big trees
121 Last Legislature
122 Farewell to Morty
123 Mile zero, again

Canada: British Columbia

Wednesday 23 November 2005

Mysterious Morty in the mist

We left home six months ago today. Its seems strange that we are now in effect on the homeward leg of our trip. We have seen so much on our travels so far and still have so much more to see. I sometimes feel as if my brain is full and that there is no room for new experiences!

Today our plans revolved around Morty and researching how best we can sell and get a decent price. Our adverts on line and in the local second hand RV press have so far yielded no results so we are faced with the prospect of going through a dealer rather than a private sale. While it may work in our favour on the one hand in terms of speed of process, inevitably we will get a lower price through a dealer than privately. Our other option is to store the van for the winter and come back at the start of the season next year but even then we have no guarantee of a successful sale.

We worked up a list of dealers from on line searches and the phone book and then camped out in the lounge at the campsite to make our calls. It was a long, tiring and frustrating day. The stock answer was to quote a price based on the listing in US second hand RV magazines. This is about half the amount we paid and we are sure we can get more than that.

Most dealers do not seem to buy stock off you to then sell on, they work on a “consignment” basis. They will display your RV on their lot, advertise it, keep it clean, show potential buyers around and basically act as a broker on your behalf. They either work on a commission basis or agree a price with you up front that they will secure for you, any excess being profit for them.

We learned a lot during the day and it reinforced our views that we had perhaps been too eager to buy in the first place and had not really considered all the options. Most dealers offered us the list price on a consignment basis, some seemed interested, others not. We ended up with an offer to buy for cash at the listed (half of what we paid) price or to sell on consignment getting the amount at the lower end of our acceptable price scale. The latter dealer is a Roadtrek dealer based on Vancouver Island and sounds very interested but what we do not yet know is how realistic his offer is or whether it is just a ploy to attract us in. We are heading there next week so we will just have to wait and see what happens.

It was one of those necessary but boring sort of days and we were both in need of something interesting to do to round off the day. We hunted around to check cinema times to go and see the latest Harry Potter film and found one that was showing the film on an Imax screen. It was at the Langley Colossus, about twenty kilometres away along the main Trans Canada Highway, ironically very close to most of the dealers we have been speaking to today. The downside of going to Langley was that we had to drive and it was foggy and rush hour when we left.

The film though was well worth seeing and it was all the better for seeing it on an Imax screen. It had us both chuckling away in parts and I was surprised that what to me seemed to be very British humour went down well with a Canadian audience. I am looking forward to the next instalment!

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