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

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

#81

Post by ValG »

exue wrote: post #65
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…

Great, this adds a lot of trust for me! last thing I thought of - how is the communication facilitated? ex: asking questions about the vehicle's history

A couple of ways.

1. 90% of questions asked about a car are standard (e.g. what's the history, what's the mechanical, is it a clean carfax). We can pre-empt this by having the answer ready.

2. For answers we don't have, it's the standard "let me get back to you" and ask the seller.

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

#82

Post by orky56 »

delive wrote: post #80

I was curious on how the test drive scheduling worked. It says "schedule flexible test-drives with remote key access." It sounded a bit unclear to me, and I'm not sure how that works. I think the idea is excellent and would use it when I decide to sell my car.

Had similar confusion. "remote key access" and "keep using your car" don't seem compatible.

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

#84

Post by g3mo »

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?

Do you mind linking that post here?

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

#85

Post by eni9889 »

deegles wrote: post #71

Could you please add a form for "Notify me when InstaMotor is available in my area"? Just with email and city. I almost signed up before I saw it was only available for the Bay area.

Hi deegles,

Thanks for the feedback. We have added this to our todo list. We are still in the process of finalizing the flow of the site.

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

#86

Post by hpagey »

exue wrote: post #26

Great service! A lot of people don't have experience or simply don't want to deal with the Craigslist experience. Putting another option between a private party sale and the dealer is great. Questions that immediately come to mind - how do you handle negotiations, and how do buyers pay? How do you pay the seller afterward? (cash, verifying a cashier's check - other comments point out the common scams etc.) (Or is Ins…

This is great service! I think you can simplify the process further for buyers. Maybe you can schedule group of car viewings on weekend, say in parking lots of local mechanics (autozone, etc etc) . This way buyers won't have to schedule multiple views and sellers will have to part their cars only on weekends (similar to house viewings). Buyers then, if they choose too, can get the cars evaluated by local car mechanics.

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

#87

Post by jarrett »

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!

How about showing all three?

Dealership pays you: $5,000 InstaMotor pays you: $5,500 --------------------------- You get paid an extra: $500

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

#89

Post by vellum »

amalag wrote: post #31
petercooper wrote: post #23

It's a totally different business model to this but http://www.webuyanycar.com/ is a pretty big deal here in the UK. You get a valuation, take your car to them, they buy it. To my surprise it worked pretty well too and I got almost as much for my car as I'd have realistically got waiting for months on a classifieds site or whatever. I imagine the way the British used car market works has a big impact on the idea actu…

http://www.carmax.com/ does that in the US, they have a business model of no haggling and give some gaurantees on the cars they sell.

The downside, in California, is that the DMV still considers you to be the owner even after you sell your car to them. Some woman got a ticket because of this, although it was eventually dropped.

In California, CarMax and other dealers don’t need to register a purchased vehicle in the company name. So even with her release of liability, the DMV considered the former owner to the registered owner of the ticketed vehicle.

http://consumerist.com/2013/04/19/woman-hit-with-traffic-tic...

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

#90

Post by ams6110 »

ValG wrote: post #46
exue wrote: post #26

Great service! A lot of people don't have experience or simply don't want to deal with the Craigslist experience. Putting another option between a private party sale and the dealer is great. Questions that immediately come to mind - how do you handle negotiations, and how do buyers pay? How do you pay the seller afterward? (cash, verifying a cashier's check - other comments point out the common scams etc.) (Or is Ins…

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.

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