Thursday, July 28, 2011

selling my car

this is a somewhat boring post, but I thought I'd better do it for a record, plus it might be useful to somebody. I never sold a car before, and was intimidated by the idea. But I had to, I thought black just won't work on Fuerteventura, it'll be like a furnace.



An aside - now I see some black cars around, and I although I don't know if air conditioning manages to cool them down, my main concern, I can see that none of them look clean - fine dust seems to settle on them almost immediately. Light color is a necessity

Needless to say, I procrastinated. As an excuse, if I really need one, I can say that I really did need the car till the last moment. I made some preliminary research and found this website - http://www.wewillbuyyourcar.com . Searching for independent reviews shown that they tend to give a fair market value, not the best perhaps, but I was more concerned with hassle-free process than with getting max value. Another restriction (didn't apply in my case) - car needs to be less than ten years old and have less than 80 000 of mileage.

So. On Friday, exactly one week before we flew out, I went to their website and filled in all the forms to get a quote. As I am not mechanically minded person ("it's big and black and it goes" is my idea of good description), I stopped at a local garage and asked them to look at my tyres beforehand (two were close to legal limit, but not there yet). I listed all problems that I know with the car, got my quote (which was more or less what I expected), accepted the offer online, and somebody called within two hours. He went through my description with me ("what sort of scratch?" - "overoptimistic parking close to a column" - "ah") and we agreed that their driver will come next wednesday (they wanted to come on tuesday, but wednesday was not a problem).

The driver came and went through the car very thoroughly. It seems that I listed everything apart from the fact that a stone chip in the windscreen started a small crack and the whole thing needed replacement. The same person I spoke to called again to re-negotiate the price. The difference seemed fair to me (it is an expensive piece of glass), so I accepted the new price. He said to expect a bank transfer within 20 mins, and that's what happened. Driver was there waiting for the transfer to be completed and took the car away only when I saw the money in my account. The only problem with the whole process, if you can call it that, was non-arrival of confirmation email from their bank, but since I could access my account online, that wasn't so much of an issue. And that's pretty much it :)
Photos with the same model at shutterstock - here

2 comments:

Danille Folson said...

So, your first time to sell car went smooth? Great! You procrastinated, but didn't have a hard time letting it go. I happen to know some people who are very emotionally attached to their rides. Nothing wrong with that though, but in my opinion, if the car no longer meet life's practical demands, then it's just wise to opt for another. Danille Folson @ CarBuyCo.ca

Unknown said...

Wow! You were really lucky to have a smooth first time transaction. Most people deal with really unreasonable prospects, who lowball them when it comes to negotiations about pricing. Congrats!

Ralph S @ Loans for Less