I like the idea but wanted to point out something that confused me. Car value: $100000 Average Dealership Trade-In Offer: $80,000 — $85,000 With Instamotor: $95,000 You Earn: $10,000 The way it says "you earn" I can't help but think that that is the total amount you will get. I would prefer it to say "you earn $95,000. $10,000 more than you would have with a dealership". Or something similar.
we got a lot of comment on how confusing this section is. We'll do another pass at it soon. Thanks for feedback!
"We charge As an engineer, that really bothers me.
Hi Darren -- I agree with you. I will go ahead and fix it. We are still on the fence as to what is the right amount to charge for our service, but less than 5% is the goal.
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 ;)
I'm in the process of buying a used car and wrote a note to my business partner about how I wish a service like this existed. There's often a ton of communication between me and sellers to determine things like: - mileage - automatic / manual transmission - whether car has been in any serious accidents - whether there's any major upcoming maintenance - whether the driver smoked - whether the title is Clean Then I nee…
You know,
I'm looking on craiglist in the Bay Area. It is pretty frustrating, I'll admit.
All those things you describe would be nice but any service like that would inherently restrict you to those seller savvy enough to put all that stuff down. Most people don't seem like and so you'd be only scanning a small subset of available cars. Is having them presented in an orderly fashion worth having few listings - of course not. Yeah, the sellers and buyers are a real mixed lot. But an organized website can't conjure a whole new pool of buyers and sellers into existence.
I hate selling cars. It's troublesome and time consuming, so you I'd gladly pay for the service. The pricing turns me off though. Selling a 50K car, the commission would turn out to 2.5K. That's net. So with 50% income tax rate, I'd have to earn 5K to pay the commission. That's much too steep for me. If there was a cap of say 1K, I'd be a customer in a heartbeat. But 5K gross is certainly worth the inconvenience of s…
50% income tax rate? Wow... have to wonder how much one makes to have to pay that amount of tax! Anyway, the real question is whether you can sell for more than 47.5K after biting the inconvenience and spending time.
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'm seconding the notion that 'earn' is cumbersome copy here.
I think something like "that's an extra x with InstaMotor" or "Make X more than the average" It's hard to restrict it down to just one word -- don't do it if you don't have to. I was very confused by earn at first.
Great idea - good luck guys! Related note for the HN community, while we're on the subject: Unless you have time & money to burn, you really should never never never trade your car into the dealership. It's the worst price you're going to get along the used car supply chain. And even if you think you're getting a good price, it's because you're probably pairing it with buying a car (and paying too much for the car yo…
I just listened to the This American Life episode "129 cars" about a month in a car dealership - SUPER fascinating look at the industry, with a lot of insider information: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/1...
Thanks for posting the link. After listening to this partially on the radio, I searched for it online but couldn't find it since I didn't know what the show was called.
Agreed. Having sold several cars in NYS this is the typical situation with selling a car. - Post on craigslist for a few hundred under KBB and few thousand more than what you're willing to sell for - Get several calls and appointments in the evenings for a solid week - Within two weeks someone offers you $1k less than what you posted on CL for but still $1k more than your lowest point - Collect payment from buyer, gi…
A few notes: 1) Appointments for a week is a lot of time sunk. Easily worth a few hundred bucks to Valley people who think of their lives by the hourly rate. Especially when buyers drag out the process by not showing, having trouble finding a location, or trying to "negotiate" past an agreed-upon price when picking the car up. 2) Very cheap, economical cars (like old Civics/Accords) and very specific enthusiast's car…
It's not even about the hourly rate. E.g. my schedule is such that I am rarely at home before it's dark at the evening on weekdays, and in the morning I have no time to spare. So I have to either reorganize my schedule (major hassle) or deal with a massive amount of buyers on weekend, instead of relaxing or going out somewhere. I'd gladly part with 5% to avoid that, and since I'm bad at haggling, I might even profit from that.