Originally Posted by
foxy88
So had an interesting day yesterday.. After reaching Yuxi we went to the Yamaha dealer, where there was a YBR250 waiting out the front for us. It belonged to a customer who had recently bought it there, and he had kindly agreed to come around and let me take it for a test spin. Very nice bike indeed, smooth and powerful. Took off from a set of lights, breezed past all the other bikes and cars and was feeling pretty happy with the power level when I realised I was only in 4th, kicked into fifth and could have almost been sitting still, it was that quiet.
Anyway I came back and took Mrs Foxy for a spin as well, she was also very impressed. Afterwards I spoke to the customer for a while, he's a bit of an enthusiast it seems, has a 1000cc Kawasaki among others and goes out with his bike club fairly often, I took his WeChat ID down for future reference. He certainly came across as a bit of a nouveax-riche type, a tuhao as they call them here. The sales people agreed to switch the light up to a HID 6000K, and change the horn for a larger one. They also said the rear suspension can be easily tightened if need be, is still not enough to solve the softness issue if fully tightened up? Also they were sure, as was the tuhao, that it wasn't an issue to register the bike in Yuxi instead of Kunming, that they'd just require my passport and residence permit, and could get it done in a day.
When we got on to discussing price they said they could do it for 23,800, plus their own 500 fee and the tax I'd have to pay for vehicle registration, which at 10% would come to 2,380. I had a complain that the bike wasn't in red, that there's a later model coming out soon, and so on, and detected possibly some flexibility re the final price, so said I'd have a think about it and come back in a couple of hours.
We went for a wander to the local fresh produce market and bought a lot of very good very cheap fruit, all the while I was trying to think what the lowest possible price I could squeeze out would be. On the way back to the store I suddenly got a message from Mr Tuhao, telling me that he hadn't ridden his bike more than 50km, and could sell it to me for 20,000 if I wanted. This was a rather unexpected turn of events, so I sat down with Mrs Foxy to discuss. I was fairly suspicious about his motives, possible problems with the bike and so on.. After a while of messaging him he gave me a call, turns out he has had the bike for less than a month, and I know he has hardly used it as the odo was at 43 when I test rode it in the morning. He had bought the bike for inner-city commutes, as his Kawasaki is a bit too big for day to day, but had decided that he wanted to sell it and get the GWS250 instead, being twin-cylinder, water-cooled and all. This seemed to add up- after the first phone call I had a good scroll through his WeChat profilr and he does seem to have more money than he knows what to do with, as well as having many mates with very large powerful motos. I figure he bought the bike then got laughed at for not getting the racier GWS250, so wants to swap out, or maybe he just found it boring after getting off his Kawa. After some more discussion and thought Mrs Foxy gave him a call back and asked a lot of questions; turns out he's a policeman, and has guanxi so can help me to sort out the registration in a matter of hours, his receipt was written out at 21,800 by the dealer so he would pay lower tax on the registration, and he finally agreed, after a lot of haggling, to drop the price to 19,000. As much as I wanted to, he said don't worry about a deposit, just come back on Monday and we'll get the registration done together, make the full payment and she's all mine.
So I'll be heading back on Thursday, when I'm free. All in all seems like I got really lucky. His bike was shiny new, although I'll give it the once over before payment of course. I got the impression, as did Mrs Foxy, that he's fairly straight down the line. I miss out on the horn and light upgrade from the dealer, but can sort them out myself, and I don't have to pay their 500 yuan fee, as well as lesser tax, and of course a much lower price for the bike. Seems great, no?
Prince as mentioned it doesn't seem to be an issue where I register the bike, I had that confirmed separately twice, more info on that after Thursday though. Ok that raincoat looks like it'll do the trick, will definitely need something of the sort to keep away the chill factor when we hit the higher altitudes, and it's always snugger when two people can share the same blanket:naughty:
