“I 100% guarantee it!”

I’ve heard this phrase a lot when buying sites or ordering services and find it quite funny.

Recently came across this several times when reviewing sites for purchase. One site had some suspicious traffic sources, and when asked for explanations the seller claimed that this was “from his friend” and he “100% guarantees” it will maintain and even grow..

Now what really made this hilarious is the fact that this was a person on flippa who clearly just made a new account to sell his site – you can usually identify this when the seller has a good auction description, all well documented with good explanations and proper stats, and it’s clear this is not his first rodeo. Additionally he had a generic username, generic and newly created gmail address (with ‘2014’ at the end no less!) and fake address and phone number in whois.

Most often than not this type of “guarantees” is a sure sign of something to beware. Because anyone who takes their guarantee seriously doesn’t throw it around. Reputable people rarely make guarantees, as they understand that keeping them is hard work and a serious obligation, while the repercussions can be severe to their reputation. They would even be more likely to point out that there are no guarantees.

What really puzzles me is how can some buyers actually take this seriously? How can sellers think that this is going to help convince someone?

“trust me friend, this is 100% guaranteed so dont worry about that”

– I’m not your friend, I don’t know you and I can’t find any info about you, you have no reputation here, no feedback, no closed deals, no personal information, given me no reason to trust you, trying to sell me a site, and you’re telling me that I should just trust you, that “your friend” will continue sending traffic to this site after I buy it..?

Sure, sounds good!

Tip of the day – if you see someone making a guarantee ask yourself: “what incentive would he have to keep it?”