Autotrader - never again..

JMI · Oct 2, 2017

Just had the most prolonged and horrific experience selling a car on Auto Trader, I wondered if anyone else had experienced similar?

Calls day and night from penniless losers and dreamers with no financial means, aggressive dealers trying it on with a constant stream of low ball offers, heavy breathing down phone at 2am - the final straw was when I got offered a prostitute to be brought down in return for a price reduction

After a while I realised Auto Trader want to sell adverts, not cars, so they give you a nice inflated valuation to you keep hanging on for the dream offer (bit of a cross over there in the domain world).

In the end I couldn't take it any longer via webuyanycar.com was done in 30mins. Trivia: The car's former owner was Liz Hurley, she lost it shopping once.. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbi...ing-tickets-reports-stolen-shopping-trip.html it had been well looked after (yes I did look all over the car to find anything she and Hugh might have left in it).

jbworldwide · Oct 2, 2017

nightmare selling this way and we buy any car have taken the right approach with their advertising to pick up on this. did you get many scammers as well? you just end up opening yourself to a world of shite and it isn't worth it.

martin-s · Oct 2, 2017

Whenever I've had a high performance car, I've found the owner's club website the best place to find a legit buyer. That said, I would always use Autotrader too. It's normally worth dealing with a few bs phone calls to maximise your sale price

JMI · Oct 2, 2017

Yes, this is the most mental dangerous process..god help any vulnerable people using this service.

You've got random people you know nothing about phoning you up demanding "tell me where you live I'll be down in few hours with carrier bag full of cash!". As soon as I said first you'll be sending a scan of your driving license as Proof of ID they'd hang up or go mental and say I was the scammer!

Skinner · Oct 2, 2017

I had the run around as a buyer. An Autotrader "trusted" seller, rock solid feedback, blah blah, sold me a 1 owner vehicle (which had 2 owners before me), they sold me a total lemon, and auto trader basically shrugged their shoulders and said tough.

The garage has subsequently been mauled by an neg SEO campaign and social media assault and autotrader finally removed their trusted/featured thing, but still allow them to trade. Their google reviews, and every other online review shows like 10 reviews show up on 1 day, all the same writing style, saying similar things, which a few days later google appears to delete for being fake (they come and go), other forums are warning against them. The legit views have taken their ranks to 2/5 or worse from legit reviewers.

Autotrader on the other hand, removed my negative review, and seem to remove all the other negative reviews. I even supplied auto trader with the reports from a main dealer and local indie but they don't careless.

I would avoid like the damn plague!