Selling a car in the current climate....my experience shared

ve

Having recently sold a 2nd car I decided I would share my experience which was very different from what I expected. My first port of call was Carzone, where I had found my current car (now a few years old). A few years ago when I was buying, the classifieds in my local newspapers didn't offer any real value compared to what I could find online. At the time I ended up travelling across the country to make fairly significant savings on my purchase. So when selling I assumed my ability to sell would be based upon the same premise. How wrong I was!

I paid what I consider a substantial figure to Carzone which ended up with my car being featured in several online motor websites. During this time I noticed that my advert was indeed available on Carzone, but was often not available on some of the other specified websites or was published with incorrect information (wrong county, etc). Also I received several spam emails via Carzone from clearly illegitimate buyers with broken English content. I was also phoned every few days by scam (often UK based) finance companies offering to assist with the sale of my car. I was also contacted by other motoring websites offering me "super deals" to advertise on their website "until the car would be sold". All of this and not a single call or email from a legitmate buyer asking to view or test drive the car from weeks of advertising.

Surely I was asking for too much I hear you ask. Well after weeks of no leads I decided to put the ad in one of my local papers and on the date of publication my phone literally rang all day with people interested in viewing the car. The first person that called me, met with me later that day and bought the car for exactly what I was looking for. I couldn't believe it. All I wished is that I hadn't gone with Carzone first, because all I got from them is my contact details harvested by scam artists. Having not sold a car before I didn't expect to receive that sort of thing.

What I've learned from this experience is that people can now find value in their locality so the sales pitch from online options stating that "People are willing to travel for a bargain" is not as true as it once was. I think considering the current climate, bargains can be found everywhere, even locally, so the necessity to travel is not as common as before. At the end of the day I sold a good car for a good price and seriously think that Carzone need to drop their prices and revise how they make available contact information to potential buyers.

This post is not an attack on Carzone or other online motoring website, but an honest and opinion based post reflecting my own personal experience this year. I hope you find it useful

roosterman71

CBG have done the exact same thing to me.

I don't know what carzone customer services are like, but CBG don't give 2 hoots once they get your money.

Barr

Depends on the value of the car , most cheaper stuff sell better in local ads where as higher end stuff probably is better off on the likes of carzone .On the new pricing structure of carzone- absolute ripoff for a badly designed site .

bazz26

Carzone used to have the market cornered when it came to advertising your car online. Their rivals couldn't touch them. Then the autotrader group came along and bought them up, they broke what didn't need fixing such as changing their fee structure and making their search engine very user unfriendly. Now their rivals are taking some of their business because of this.

However carzone are still hugely popular and as such are prone to every scam under the sun. I don't think you can put selling a car down to where you advertise it, it can be just pure luck or right timing that a buyer finds or doesn't find your car whether it be in a local classified or national website.