[exue]

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 Instamotor just a transaction facilitator)? Where is the vehicle listed? Do you handle smog checks as well (for California)? <- Those are the most common things I go through the used vehicle process.

Also, how do you filter out non-serious buyers, especially for performance vehicles? A lot of sellers ask for some sort of proof of payment or cash ready before a test drive. It seems like you're mainly handling high-end cars where the 5% commission will pay off too, how does the model change for say a $5K vehicle?

Finally as a buy I would want to do my own inspection unless the inspection is at a mechanic I already trust - there is way too much conflict of interest having the selling side do an inspection.

Some ways to get it more buyer-friendly would be to offer a CARFAX as well.

[yid]

> Also, how do you filter out non-serious buyers, especially for performance vehicles

I cannot emphasize the importance of this. I have a 2005 Lotus Elise that I would love to part with, but I'm really, really nervous about an inexperienced driver blowing the clutch or just coming over for a joyride.

[joshmlewis]

I have had a lot of sports cars and test driven a good number as well. A lot of owners are like you and some wouldn't even let me drive the car, I had to sit in the passengers seat while they did everything. I could ask to do certain things like if they would brake check or accelerate, but that was the limit.

What I would propose is letting people ride with a trust local mechanic with the mechanic driving. That way they can make sure a professional is driving the car, can pick up on any issues, and can be honest with the potential buyer.

[ValG]

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 potential buyer and can take an offer up to the minimum we agreed upon. Anything lower we'd need explicit permission from you.

2. The Buyer makes a cashiers check out directly to the the seller. We deliver it to them.

3. The vehicles are listed everywhere we can, including some of the traditional places like Cars.com and autotrader. For certain cars, we also do very specialized listings (e.g. for Porsches we list or Porsche enthusiast forums, etc...).

4. We handle it all, including smog checks.

5. We get paid at the time of the transaction usually directly with proceeds from the sale.

6. With performance vehicles we are very very diligent about this, currently doing it manually. We represent a few very high value Porsches. We research all of the buyers (again manually, but we'll work on that) to see if they're legitimate and also work to get commitments from them. If we see an 18YO kid that wants to test drive a Porsche, we won't necessarily disallow it, but we'll make sure that he has the financial resources and intent to purchase the vehicle. It's not perfect, we're still working on this, but I can tell you all of our owners have been very very happy with the people test driving so far.

--Edit-- We currently offer CarFax. One thing we have to improve is enumerating the depth of service that we provide.

[ams6110]

Be careful, forged cashiers checks are a common scam.

As seller to protect yourself you need to e.g. meet the buyer at his bank and get cash or a certified check that the bank prepares at that time. Or use some kind of insured escrow service.

[ValG]

Thanks AMS6110, We actually verify all cashiers checks immediately when received. It's usually pretty easy to google the bank the check is from and call them to verify the authenticity of the check.

[toomuchtodo]

Are there any better financial tools out there for this? Cashier's checks are almost free, but prone to fraud, wire transfers are bullet proof, but expensive.

[ryporter]

On point 1, have you considered innovating in the commission structure as well? If we've agreed on a fair market price, then I'd rather structure the commission along the lines of, for example, 25% of (sale price - 80% of fair market price). If you then sell the car for the fair market price, then you'd receive the same 5% commission, but you'd have much more incentive to drive a hard bargain.

[exue]

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

[ValG]

A couple of ways.

1. 90% of questions asked about a car are standard (e.g. what's the history, what's the mechanical, is it a clean carfax). We can pre-empt this by having the answer ready.

2. For answers we don't have, it's the standard "let me get back to you" and ask the seller.

[Sovietaced]

3. That is awesome! Love that you guys understand enthusiast cars.

[hpagey]

This is great service! I think you can simplify the process further for buyers. Maybe you can schedule group of car viewings on weekend, say in parking lots of local mechanics (autozone, etc etc) . This way buyers won't have to schedule multiple views and sellers will have to part their cars only on weekends (similar to house viewings). Buyers then, if they choose too, can get the cars evaluated by local car mechanics.