Autotrader: Sell To A Dealer

TCA

Just received an email from Dealer Auction asking me to upload photos, which I'd already done 24 hours earlier via the Autotrader website. Called them up and they said I was missing 3 images.

They said they'd sent a text yesterday and they did, but re-reading it, it's just a message requesting photos, which I'd already done. No specific mention of missing ones and the listing said pending so I ignored it. 

Looking at Autotrader I can see not all photos I uploaded yesterday were there. I tried manually uploading and one second they were there and I had 34, next they weren't and I had 31. It says unlimited images but something isn't right. 

The text message gives a link to the Dealer Auction website which offers a live camera upload only and actually requests a different photo to the guidance given on Autotrader, so if I'm to proceed I'll need to visit my mum's house and the car again.

Dealer Auction confirmed it will now be Thursday for the auction, ending on Monday, which isn't great. If they'd been clearer about the images yesterday I'd have been in today's auction and done on Friday. 

I asked about the valuation and he said the £7.6k figure I'd been given was what would be used. There would be no further revision. This seems odd given they've no idea of condition or service history, but could just mean even at that valuation I'll only end up getting bids around £5k. I have no idea.

Not sure whether to just forget it and take the Motorway offer, which probably will expire before Monday. 

Desmond_Hume

paul_c123 said:

TCA said:

The Motorway offer came in at around £530 over their reserve, from a dealer called Trustline Motors Ltd. Not bad, although Motorway knocked £700 off the initial estimate for partial service history and a few scuffs. So almost back where we started.

Until the car is inspected in the flesh and the amount agreed, it’s almost meaningless. There are many reports of dealers "beating down" private sellers on Motorway. In theory they pay a fee but this is refundable if there are differences between the description and the actual condition once inspected by them.

That’ll be due to a huge number of people who are completely deluded as to the condition of their vehicle. Walk around any car park and just look. Swirled and dull paintwork. Kerbed wheels.  Mismatching tyres of various questionable brands. Throw a few reg plates into one of those car checkers and see MOT results. Advisories galore.  

That’s before we get to things like servicing and preventative maintenance.

chrisw

TCA said:

born_again said:

Autotrader is probably the same as Motorway. Only might include bottom of the range dealers.

I imagine there'll be plenty of dealers fishing in both ponds. It's surprising that there's so little feedback around on the Autotrader "Sell To A Dealer" service.  

The Autotrader sell to a dealer is fairly new. I used sell to Autotrader about 3 years ago but it was slightly different then in the fact that it sold to Manheim auctions directly who then auctioned it themselves. I did get 3 grand more than WBAC offered.

TCA

chrisw said:  

The Autotrader sell to a dealer is fairly new. I used sell to Autotrader about 3 years ago but it was slightly different then in the fact that it sold to Manheim auctions directly who then auctioned it themselves. I did get 3 grand more than WBAC offered.

That's good to know, thanks.  There's 3 grand difference between our WBAC and Autotrader valuations as well.

I asked Motorway yesterday when their offer would expire and was told it would be withdrawn at precisely 11:43pm last night, so I decided just to see it through with Autotrader and see what their auction brings.

Motorway have emailed this morning to say the offer will be withdrawn today. So it's not gone yet but I'm just going to let it expire.           

sheslookinhot

Motorway will give you an other offer.

TCA

sheslookinhot said:

Motorway will give you an other offer.

Looks like it's easy enough to put it back in another Motorway auction.

I phoned Dealer Auction this morning to check everything was good to go. Apparently the car service records were blurry, a common fault of their upload software, so had to email the images. I was also told my mum would need to give her authority for the auction over the phone (never previously mentioned), so we didn't get into today's auction. It'll be tomorrow, concluding on Tuesday. 

I might take part in another Motorway auction so it concludes at the same time and just take the highest offer. 

TCA

The car is now sold, through a re-listing with Motorway.

Autotrader Sell To Dealer was a waste of time. The overinflated Autotrader valuation (non adjusted for service history and damage) proved to be exactly that. Overinflated.

The 2 working days auction ran over last weekend so spanned 4 days. The result was a grand total of zero bids. I spoke to the auction company, Dealer Auction, and the guy said the valuation of the car was around £4,400. Nowhere near the £7,590 Autotrader valued it at. It seems stupid not to revise the initial valuation as Motorway do. 

So I went back to Motorway hoping that I wouldn't regret not accepting the previous offer of £5,334. The good news was that in the space of a week, the initial valuation had risen £550 and after knocking off a bit for damage and lack of service history, the car was listed at a reserve price of £5,284.

The winning bid after 24 hours was £5,701 from some dodgy looking outfit in London. They called the next day to arrange an inspection time, which was scheduled for the following day. So all would be concluded within 48 hours of the auction closing.

I received a text to say they'd be half an hour early but the guy turned up an hour early. He had been dropped off. Thankfully I had just arrived at my elderly mum's house (her car) or she'd have been in a panic.

Little was done by way of body inspection, which was good as I hadn't photographed every single stone chip or micro scratch, just the main scuffs. He took the car for a quick test drive (with me in it) and no apparent issues, although he wasn't saying much. His English wasn't great, so I was struggling to understand him anyway.

Next he plugged in a diagnostic gadget to look for fault codes. Unsurprisingly a DPF code came up. I don't know anything about diesel filters but know that these cars need to be driven regularly and DPFs can be an issue otherwise. This car (a 10-year old Mazda 6 with only 27,000 miles on the clock) has barely done 1,800 per year for the last 5 years and only about 70 miles since January, and that's just been me giving it a run out. So a fault code was of no surprise. Admittedly I didn't push him for exactly what the code was saying.

So the question then was how much they wanted to knock off the price for a DPF clean. The answer was £195. Technically they would've been aware that the car hadn't been serviced in 6.5 years (and no DPF clean then or ever) and that should've been reflected in their offer, but they're of course within their rights to negotiate and I expected it. I decided it was fair enough and given the better valuation compared to the previous week, couldn't be bothered bartering and accepted it. The inspection guy said if a DPF is severely damaged or blocked, replacement may be necessary, which can cost over £1000. He hinted that may not be far away, but who knows. 

So the end price was £5,506, which all said and done, I'm pretty happy with. The money was in mum's bank account instantaneously. Job done.