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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

#61

Post by bluthru »

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!

"Increased earnings" ?

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

#62

Post by exue »

ssharp wrote: post #53
joshmlewis wrote: post #45

I've bought and sold a lot of cars the past few years. I have never once considered a dealer trade in offer. I've had relatively easy and good luck with selling my car online through Craigslist and Autotrader which I imagine is what they will probably do to unload the cars. I like the idea of the service but I'm wondering what the difference is between dealer trade in pricing and market pricing. Even if I have to sac…

You can generally post on Craiglist and get offers within a day that beat a trade-in offer. People sit on car listings and offer low-ball prices that are still above how awful dealer trade-in offers are. I don't think selling a car is really that difficult of a process, for me anyway. I don't know what California paperwork is like, but in Ohio, all you need to do is sign your title over in front of a notary. Besides…

In California it's even easier than getting a notary - you just need signatures on the title ("pink slip"), and then both parties can fill an online form for transfer or liability. The buyer then goes and hands over the title to the DMV at some point in the next (10) days, getting a new title in the mail.

For as well me I've had a decent experience on Craigslist - just some due diligence and research on best practices and you're good to go. But it does take some time and patience and dealing with flaky buyers. Just ignore the lowballers and the non-serious. However I'm sure a lot of people would love this type of service, especially in common scenarios where the actual seller is busy so they try to proxy it to a family member who really isn't interested in selling it. Or when they've moved out of state and buyers don't want to deal with that

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

#63

Post by AndrewKemendo »

I like it and would like to use it here in D.C. please.

I would suggest making the sell price in the big red letters instead of the "youll earn" part. That whole section is a little confusing and I thought it was telling me I would only get 2k for my 20k car. I only really care about how much I would be getting for my car, the comparison to the dealership is important but secondary, and oh by the way I will have already probably looked that up on kbb.com.

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

#64

Post by ValG »

primitivesuave wrote: post #55
ValG wrote: 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…

This is a very clean and straightforward website - no BS to wade through, no popups asking for my email, just straightforward here's-how-you-do-it. If I had seen this a couple months ago I would have definitely saved a couple thousand bucks. One thing that's really inspiring about this is that it has the potential to completely change the concept of used car sales. Just like how realtors take you around to go see hou…

primitivesuave - you have excellent insights, any experience in the car sales world? These are a lot of the same items that we've been exploring. I'd love to chat with you offline if you're available. Feel free to email me at val@instamotor.com if you're available or call text me at 510.761.5692

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

#65

Post by exue »

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…

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

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

#66

Post by ValG »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #63

I like it and would like to use it here in D.C. please. I would suggest making the sell price in the big red letters instead of the "youll earn" part. That whole section is a little confusing and I thought it was telling me I would only get 2k for my 20k car. I only really care about how much I would be getting for my car, the comparison to the dealership is important but secondary, and oh by the way I will have alre…

Thanks Andrew. We're trying to expand as quickly as possible, but we have to tackle the Bay Area Market first.

Thanks for the feedback, it looks like a lot of people are confused by that. We'll make changes and update it tonight.

Thanks again guys, really appreciate it!

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

#67

Post by eni9889 »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #63

I like it and would like to use it here in D.C. please. I would suggest making the sell price in the big red letters instead of the "youll earn" part. That whole section is a little confusing and I thought it was telling me I would only get 2k for my 20k car. I only really care about how much I would be getting for my car, the comparison to the dealership is important but secondary, and oh by the way I will have alre…

Hey Andrew,

Thanks for the feedback. We are focusing on the bay area for now but are looking forward to expanding. As far as the wording goes, we've gotten several comments about it and will be changing it soon.

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

#68

Post by lawncheer »

ValG wrote: post #40
amalag wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, CarMax is sort of the model that we looked at. They are the only player in town that had the scale necessary to apply modern business management principals to their business. But they're margins are paper thin. Too much overhead.

Dumb fact: CarMax was developed by the old Circuit City.
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