Finding an expired/deleted craigslist ad

shorttimin

In the course of looking for a replacement motorcycle after selling my current one, I found an ad on Craigslist for a 2004 BMW R1150RT police bike. I wouldn't usually go for these, but this one was advertised as an escort detail bike and only had 19,000 miles. After meeting the guy and test riding it, I decided to buy it. Money exchanged, he was a dealer and I filled out the DMV paperwork at his house.

A week later I take it in because I'm fixing a couple little things that I wanted done at the dealership, and in looking up the bike's VIN, find out that the mileage shown on the odometer and advertised is way off. This bike has at least 80k miles on it. Apparently you can't advance the odometer by hand to line up with the actual mileage, and the previous mileage is just supposed to be noted somewhere on the bike. Well, the guy who sold it to me claimed ignorance, but if I can find the original mileage in 10 minutes at a dealer, I'm having a hard time believing he didn't know. I spoke to an attorney, and he said we could go for breach of contract but it would be really helpful to have the original craiglist ad. It's since been deleted and I'm hoping to find a cached version somewhere but I'm not sure how to do this.

Any help is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

shorttimin

I was usually looking at the ad in chrome, so if there is a way to set chrome to "work offline" mode or something that will pull up the stored version of the page?

TheKoolEagle

I would think your best luck would be to check your history for craiglist views and see if you can pull it up directly. You may have already tried this and it didn't work, you also may be able to contact contact Craigslist with said URL and they may be able to pull up something on it, even if it was removed by the user.

shorttimin

I found the hits in my chrome history, but if I try to pull them up now, it goes to the CL "this page has been deleted" stuff. If I can turn it to "work offline" mode, I'm hoping that I can bring up the cached version.

NakedZergling

How much did you pay for it?

shorttimin

$4700. Seemed like a good deal for such a low mileage bike, most that age are going for 4000 with 60k and above on the odometer.

I also found the original listing address: http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sby/mcy/4131288759.html

I have the email chain through craigslist saved, but if I could get the ad itself, that would be great.

NakedZergling

SO you're saying you over paid by like $700?
Find out how much it will cost you to sue him, and if it's worth your time. This will be a small claims thing, and even if you win, he still may not pay. This might just be a hard lesson learned.

shorttimin

I'm saying that I'm trying to get all the info I can. Once the bike is inspected by a dealer and I find the actual mileage, I may not want this bike anymore. If I can get enough info I may be able to take him to court and force a refund for breach of contract. At least, that was the terminology the lawyer I spoke to used.

Also, as a used police bike, these things are ridden hard and put away wet. There may be all sorts of issues that can be very expensive, especially at a higher mileage.

NakedZergling

My friend won in small claims court, and the other guy simply never paid him. Since it's not a criminal court, even if you win, you may not get paid.

darqness

No idea if this would work, but might be worth a shot: https://archive.org/

Use the Way Back Machine.

Jam Warrior

I already tried :P No luck.

shorttimin

It looks like there isn't a way to get this, so thanks for the help guys. I'll just move forward with what I already have.