Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

instamotor.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 215 posts

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#121

Post by toomuchtodo »

ams6110 wrote: post #90
ValG wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these are excellent questions. I'll tackle them 1 by 1 (the is to say, we're still working through some of these items, this is just our current methods). 1. How do we handle negotiations: We talk to you, the seller and work to find a fair market price for the car. We have dealership level tools available for this. We come to an agreement on the minimum price you'd take. From there, we negotiate with the poten…

Be careful, forged cashiers checks are a common scam. As seller to protect yourself you need to e.g. meet the buyer at his bank and get cash or a certified check that the bank prepares at that time. Or use some kind of insured escrow service.

Are there any better financial tools out there for this? Cashier's checks are almost free, but prone to fraud, wire transfers are bullet proof, but expensive.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#122

Post by scott_s »

ValG wrote: post #93
mattsfrey wrote: post #88

Having to enter a phone number to create an account resulted in a closed browser tab. Might want to consider this factor, can guarantee theres plenty more where I come from.

thanks for the note Matt. I think you're right and it's something we've debated before. In the end we decided to leave it in there. The first thing we do when you get started with us is call you to schedule the photo shoot for your car. We come to your place to do this at your convenience, but we need the phone number. We'll re-evaluate this over the weekend. Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it!

Consider that some people may want to create an account as a way to explore the service more, before committing to using it.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#123

Post by ValG »

param wrote: post #97
afhsfsfdsss88 wrote: post #94

Most dealer trade offers are so low because they don't even keep your car on the lot, they sell it at auction...at wholesale prices. That is a lot different than individual sales...which is how this service sells your car. So yeah, you get a better price for your car, but the service still eats a good chunk of the sale price difference between dealer-trade and individual sale. And "all the paperwork" amounts to downl…

People making 100-200k/year would love this service. People below that income range would want to sell privately themselves to make the most money. People above would just dump it at the dealer's and not care.

Thanks for the notes guys. A few things that might not be as obvious:

1. Cars with Loans on them. This actually is a hassle, especially in states where the loan holder owns the title. You literally can't just sign the title over to them. In most cases, the buyer has to pay for the car, the seller uses that payment to pay off the loan and then they get the title to transfer over. There has to be a ton of trust there. Even with a bill of sale, everyone is afraid of getting screwed. 2. The straight craigslist process is not quite that easy, respond to emails, some of them from people not even really interested in the car. You have to go back and forth scheduling viewing and test drives. Roughly 40% of the time, you have to drive out to meet someone. If they no-show? Or low ball you? Or don't want it? Time is wasted at all of these steps. 3. Some people hate negotiating, and don't know what a fair price is. We help. 4. In Cali at least, you need Reg 262 for vehicle transfers. It's a form you can only get directly from the DMV (can't print it online). I went to the SF DMV the other day to pick some up, the line was over 2 hours, just to get a form. Needless to say, I put it off for another day.

I agree, for some people it makes the most sense to just sell it themselves. But it's not always a straight shot.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#125

Post by ValG »

ufmace wrote: post #117

Thoughts: Wish it was more prominent that this is Bay Area only for now. I doubted that it would be in my area, since it sounded like something that required local personnel and nobody seems to do startups in Houston, but you have to scroll to the bottom to see it stated. Some of the text looks terrible on my Windows 7 - Chrome environment. Especially everything in How It Works. The website is all about the sell side…

Excellent points ufmace. The short answer is yes, I believe so. I worked in a car dealership before. The capital costs are massive, between physical locations, inventory, personnel, etc... It's truly astounding.

Part 2 is adding that selling side, and we will do it, but we're not there yet.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#126

Post by AJ007 »

ValG wrote: post #36
chadwickthebold wrote: post #28

One point - take a look at the copy on your pricing slider. 'You Earn' makes it sound like that's all I'm going to get out of this deal. It took me a second to realize it was the difference between the dealership and instamotor.

Hey Chad, Thanks for the note. Yeah you're right. We'll make the update to clarify that. We had it as "saved" before, but that didn't seem to make sense. Still trying to find the right wording, but we'll update it today or over the weekend most likely. Thank you!

I paused when I read that too. In sales copy sometimes that extra friction can grab some attention as long as everyone comes to the correct conclusion after thinking about it.

The big "selling" point to me is: this is really easy -- and it won't cost you anything extra in time or money. In fact, you could end up getting more money for your car and with almost zero effort. Which, I think the copy does a good job of.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#127

Post by ValG »

ams6110 wrote: post #90
ValG wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of these are excellent questions. I'll tackle them 1 by 1 (the is to say, we're still working through some of these items, this is just our current methods). 1. How do we handle negotiations: We talk to you, the seller and work to find a fair market price for the car. We have dealership level tools available for this. We come to an agreement on the minimum price you'd take. From there, we negotiate with the poten…

Be careful, forged cashiers checks are a common scam. As seller to protect yourself you need to e.g. meet the buyer at his bank and get cash or a certified check that the bank prepares at that time. Or use some kind of insured escrow service.

Thanks AMS6110, We actually verify all cashiers checks immediately when received. It's usually pretty easy to google the bank the check is from and call them to verify the authenticity of the check.

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#128

Post by ValG »

orky56 wrote: post #92

This is a great service. Although eBay Motors and Craigslist exist for this opportunity, they are very impersonal and create just as many issues as they try to solve. Here's some feedback on the website and service. Hope it helps! 1. Redundant content: I felt like you repeated the same value proposition in nearly every section of your website. However, each section had one small tidbit that wasn't addressed anywhere…

Orky,

Awesome feedback. We'll eat this up and spit something improved this weekend. We really appreciate it!

Re: Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

#129

Post by ValG »

giarc wrote: post #77

How long have you been running this service? I recall about 3 months ago, a post on HN where someone posted a bunch of idea's they had but didn't have time to execute. This was one of them. Did instamotor flow from that?

Hi giarc,

Actually Sy and I (2 of the 3 co-founders) met on HN after a similar post (like 6 months ago?). It wasn't the one you're talking about, but had a similar theme.

Post reply on HN