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

instamotor.com

21–30 of 215 posts

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

#21
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Yup you sell someone's car 2. Probably, I need to sell my car within the next year and it's a hassle to put the pictures online, etc. 3. You guys handle the test drive. 4. Seems good to me.

Thanks a lot Matt! And let us know when you're selling it. We'll give you the friends and family discount :)

I have a car I need to sell, I'm in the Bay Area. Sadly the car is back in Florida, I need to fly back and take the time to sell it. Major PITA, too bad you don't service South Florida ;)

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

#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 actually working though.

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

#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 Instamotor just a transaction facilitator)? Where is the vehicle listed? Do you handle smog checks as well (for California)? Also, how do you filter out non-serious buyers, especially for performance vehicles? A lot of sellers ask for some sort of proof of payment or cash ready before a test drive. It seems like you're mainly handling high-end cars where the 5% commission will pay off too, how does the model change for say a $5K vehicle?

Finally as a buy I would want to do my own inspection unless the inspection is at a mechanic I already trust - there is way too much conflict of interest having the selling side do an inspection.

Some ways to get it more buyer-friendly would be to offer a CARFAX as well.

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

#30
post #2

Hi Guys, Val here from InstaMotor. We’re trying to be to car dealerships what airbnb is to the hotel industry. We’d love to get some additional feedback on the service. Any feedback provided is super beneficial. We’re specifically looking for some feedback on: 1. When you get to the site, within the first 30 seconds, do you understand what we do. Why or why not? 2. If you do understand what we do, would you ever use…

On the slider which compares selling with Instamotor vs. trading with a dealership, I think you should consider changing "You earn" with "You save." It was confusing to me exactly what it represented.

Also, not sure if it matters too much, but generally framing things as "not-losing" is better than framing something as a gain.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

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