Selling my car advice

Selling my wife’s Golf of similar value was a hateful process. Tyre kickers, pondlife & wannabe traders. Use motorway, cazoo or wbac. Move on with your life and go for a ride.

What he said.

I used eBay last time. Was pretty easy. You need to spend a bit of time filtering out the time wasters but that can be done online from the sofa. First person who came down paid cash and took it away.

Halfway through selling using Motorway, assuming it goes through OK we'll be 50% up on what WBAC were quoting.

Sold two cars to WBAC. It was quick and easy - but - they will knock at least £1k off the on line offer. £100 for every mark they find, scuff on wheel, chip on edge of doors etc. bodywork condition is the only thing they are interested in.
When they give you the offer reject it, they will then phone their boss and half the amount they are knocking off. They won’t go any further than that.

If you want to get the most money, then selling privately is usually best. But, dear god, dealing with the timewasters and "what's your best price for cash, mate?"... by all means stick it up on the free places, but all my sales have actually come through Autotrader. I usually pay for "hold 'til sold", but then my cars tend to be a bit niche and may take a while to find a (real) buyer. Be extra alert to anyone who messages you within seconds of the ad going live, they are pretty much all full-timer chancers.

That's interesting Rockhopper as they just quoted £625 for my zafira online, so when they see my car I'll end up paying them money with a few small dents and a wire for a bonnet release 🤣🤣

Sold one on eBay, hoped I'd get £350-400, bidding won at £360, next morning the winner changed her mind, without seeing the car, refused to withdraw bid or pay so I had to go through eBay process, relisted a week later, winning bid £450, happy buyer.

Sold one from a For Sale notice in the car window, £600 no problems.

Sold one on Facebook owners group, a couple of timewasters but good sale in the end. Owners group seemed to filter out some of the randoms, I don't think I'd use the open Marketplace.

I’d be interested to see what they actually offer you for the Zafira. I can’t remember the cut off date but their business model assumes that cars less than say fifteen years old are in perfect condition.
If you weight it in for scrap you’ll get £300 these days!

Yeh just looked at a breakers offer, all they asked was does it run, yes, and offer was £300. Motorway offered £1345 as the online unseen valuation.

It's actually not that bad for its age 2010 and 105000miles,and is a good runner, but as a family car it has a few bumps and marks from bike racks, loading stuff etc and a few small bits of rust starting on some panel corners and AC isn't working.

Probably run it until it dies and get a scrap price. We have this discussion every year, but last MOT was only £300 to get through so that's cheap motoring for the next year.

Used motorway with no issues. Just be honest about any issues and you'll get the quoted sum.

Price does fluctuate so go for it when you get an offer you are happy with.

I’ve sold several cars privately over the last few years, no real issues. However, just sold one to WBAC after no real interest from autotrader and they were brill. Great initial valuation, they only knocked £100 off when they saw it, and all sold and sorted in the time it takes to have a coffee. I was very pleasantly surprised by the whole experience 🙂

Used Motorway for selling 2 cars (sold them as buying new twice), fast, easy, much better price than WBAC and the garage trade in price. (Both cases the final bidder/winner was BestCarBuyer)

Had a hateful experience with WBAC and the recently deceased FIL's mint two year old Passat. MrsRNP and MIL took me along as they were appalled at the attitude of the guy. I nearly decked him but no other options at the time and emotions were high.

I hate buying&selling cars and was under the impression WBAC changed all that Arther Daley old school crap of used cars but it wasn't the case.

Also sold deceased FIL's knacked VW camper with blown engine and rot. Clearly described as such on eBay. **** bought it but he was okay on collection. Rang up a week later trying it on saying engine was blown and could he get some money back from recently widowed MIL. He got both barrels worth.

It's one of the reasons I rebuild/service/over maintain our cars so I don't have to deal with ****s.

I need to sell a car with a fairly dodgy automatic gearbox, still runs just occasionally faults into neutral, can sometimes go 100s of miles without it happening. What's the chances WBAC will notice and if they agree a price on the spot can they come back to me later if it breaks after I've sold it to them? I can just pretend it hadn't happened to me and must have happened on their watch to be fair.

What’s the chances WBAC will notice

Somehow my mate sold his old car to them for the online price, the back sear was more mould than seat. He thinks the guy was just about to knock off shift and couldnt be bothered to look at it properly!

For WBAC etc There’s assumptions like assumed no mechanical problems etc. You’ve to ‘add damage’ and other noteworthy things which goes against the assumptions on the valuation.

So I’d say if you didn’t tell them they would probably have a case for recourse.

Based on my experience WBAC won’t drive it. They’ll just start it up briefly and that’s it. They are more interested in the bodywork condition. They are part of the BCA organisation so all their buy ins are sold at auction. Depending on the age of the car when they go to auction they may well so sold with no warranty at all. Some of the more expensive ones might get an hour after sale to report major engine/transmission faults.