Online Car Sales

stera · 16-09-2006, 02:41 AM

Doing some research and looking to see if people have bought or sold a car on the net, using carsales.com.au or a similar website?

Also looking to see if the experience was good or bad (from what website)?!

If you have bought or sold a car on the net, is there anything that could be done to improve the wesite layout, ease of use and search process, etc... and if you havent, is there a reason you wouldnt use the net to buy or sell a car?!

Feel free to put down any comments you feel relevant.

Thanks everybody!

coyote · 16-09-2006, 09:10 AM

I have uese Ebay to sell a couple

More success than Trading Post on line, and much cheaper

Got a (cheap, cheap) Magna wagon up on Ebay now and it is getting a few bids

fiery · 16-09-2006, 10:03 AM

Had a Fairmont on carsales for about a month then gave up and sold it for about 2grand less than what I wanted to someone I knew.

cArSiK · 16-09-2006, 10:11 AM

I find carsales brilliant - the pick of the bunch. Sold many cars there at good prices.

try:

www.carsales.com.au
www.drive.com.au
www.carsguide.com.au
www.carpoint.com.au
www.ebay.com.au
www.tradingpost.com.au

thats all i can think of at the moment but as i said , carsales has been the best for me.

Ghia · 16-09-2006, 10:20 AM

Yeah, I sold my old car on CARSALES and it was gone in less than a week and I got a heap of calls in that time.

I also purchased my XR6T on CARSALES and had no dramas at all - gotta have pics though. Selling a car on the 'net without pics is crazy :togo:

bartaxr8 · 16-09-2006, 10:38 AM

Bought my ute off carseles.com.au and sold my bike on bikesales.com.au. Had no dramas either time.

HLC · 16-09-2006, 10:54 AM

we put my mums fairlane (Was my dads at the time) on carsales for fun. just to see what would happen. had a few nibbles i think. cant rememeber. oh well.

kenz · 16-09-2006, 11:01 AM

I bought my first car off carsales. Had no troubles

Fairlane · 16-09-2006, 11:07 AM

Sold my last car on carsales, was awesome $10 ad (5 good colour photos) and it was gone in 2 weeks, I advertised it in the local Newspaper as well, it cost me $90 and it didnt sell it in the end.

I also bought my last car of Drive.com- So I have nothing but praise for internet car ads.

TimXR6 · 16-09-2006, 11:10 AM

Bought my current EF XR6 off carsales. All my previous cars came from the QLD trading post. NSW Trado is ****.

One thing ive noticed about carsales though, asking prices are generally pretty high.

Fordy · 16-09-2006, 11:16 AM

I bought my sprint on carpoint and sold it on carsales, i put it on a friday night, it was sold on saturday. I think $20 for as long as you want is pretty good.

deesun · 16-09-2006, 12:11 PM

I recently bought my son a 98 Laser over the net and I'll give you some of my observations.
1. Trading Post site seemed slower than the rest.
2. Every site can do a little better but it is mostly personal preference.
3. The time you spend trawling the net is the time you would spend walking car dealers but without the pesky salesmen holding you up.
4. On some sites when you use the "search" section and you need to change the perameters of your search you have to go back and the search section will be blank meaning you have to re enter ALL the details again. A bit annoying. Also always start your search in the "advanced" mode for the same reason.
5. Some pictures are substandard but I found dealer ones to be of better quality. And more of them.
6. You will find the same car on 5 different sites but sometimes at a cheaper price. Dealers never know which porky pie they've told on which site.
7. VERY IMPORTANT. If it doesn't show the kilometre reading on the site it will be VERY HIGH. Km reading is one of if not THE most important guide to price.
8. I didn't like the layout,colour and brightness, of the Drive.com.au site but its search was good. Thats a personal preferance though.
9. Carpoint and Carsales were the brightest and lightest.
10. Once you get a "feel" for the price of the car you are searching and you come across another thats cheaper then there is a reason. Find that reason.
11. After looking if you think you have found THE car ring the person/dealer and negotiate over the phone. This gives you time to think and keeps the pressure off and once a price is agreed to then its up to you to make sure the car is as described and to reject it or not when you get there.
12. NSW has the cheapest cars. More of them and better variety.
13. GOOD LUCK.

I live in the country so having access to all those city cars at a press of a button is great. The worst experience I had was locally with a salesman. As I said the net has no salespeople to talk sh1t and waste time.

xr8ted · 16-09-2006, 08:44 PM

Yeah I both sold my old car and bought my newer one off Carsales. I found the whole process to be much more helpful than last time I bought a car using the trading post

TEaaron · 16-09-2006, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bartaxr8

Bought my ute off carseles.com.au and sold my bike on bikesales.com.au. Had no dramas either time.

^ saves me typing the exact same thing.

Kryton · 16-09-2006, 09:41 PM

my car will be going on carsales when it gets a RWC.
hopefully it wont take long to sell.

MITCHAY · 16-09-2006, 09:55 PM

I bought my WRX after seeing it on Carsales.com.au

BPXR6T · 16-09-2006, 11:46 PM

I live in a semi remote locale with not much choice in local cars. I bought my last five cars from carsales. I am in the process of looking for another as we speak. I keep a constant watch on carsales.com.au, carpoint.com.au, and allclassifieds.com.au.

I tried selling a car on carsales a while ago. After three months with the car advertised at a very cheap price I only had one phone call.

MITCHAY · 16-09-2006, 11:54 PM

Online advertising is very good. Sometimes you can get it for free, and the person can look for what they want in a very uncluttered way. You can search on price range, car model, condition (althought does depends on what the advertiser defines as excellent!!), milelage etc. Just heaps easier.

apolloxbgt · 17-09-2006, 12:23 AM

I've sold quite a few cars through ebay and found it to be quite good,I say through because they usually don't make reserve and end up being sold ofter the auction.I find it's a good way to advertise.

rag top · 17-09-2006, 09:58 AM

I use a local website, www.allclassifieds.com.au

alstar5 · 17-09-2006, 10:04 AM

I have just purchased a BA Falcon off an online Auction site www.graysonline.com.au. I haven't seen the car and I'm due to pick it up on Wednesday, will let you know how it goes.

Xrsick · 17-09-2006, 10:30 AM

I have bought my last 3 cars off the net and saved me heaps of fuel and time searching, basically if you know what you want there it's a matter of a search a couple of phone calls and if all sounds well and goes well your in business. Last car i bought was a VT Calais 98,000 kl's leather supercharged leather 17inch vy gts rims immaculate condition for $9500 Thanks to the net i couldn't find one under $13,000 here in victoria and thanks to carsales.com I was off to Sydney were after giving the seller a deposit beforehand and receiving a Statuarty Declaration that the car was as described I was gone to Sydney and back in Melbourne in a ady with exactly what i wanted, mind you it was my son not me lol.I have enjoyed the experience and know others might have not been so lucky.P.s A security search thru Vic roads was also a must!

xr8man83 · 17-09-2006, 11:09 AM

yea i tried to sell a car on carpoin a while ago and i got nothin not even a email or msg i ended up giving up in the end wich was actually lucky cause i realised that i didnt even want to sell the car

stera · 20-09-2006, 12:16 AM

Geez, I didnt anticipate this kind of response, so thanks to all that have taken the time!

I have recently used carsales.com.au and as with the majority of people on this thread had no problems and far more luck than the Trading Post that was 10x more expensive, and agree was extremely slow when its server decided to work!!

A friend of mine has suggested that carsales.com.au could be slightly improved and we were going to look to do something similar.

Therefore, if anybody would like to add anything else about the site/s and anything you would like to see or not like to see, or anything that you feel is neccesary, please let me know via the thread or PM and hopefully we'll can get the ball rolling sooner, rather than later!!

Thankyou to all, once again!

johnc18 · 20-09-2006, 12:55 AM

You've got a lot of good advice here
The only thing I can add is -
If yyou're going to sell a car , take clear , good pictures in good sunlight . They don't have to be works of art , but they should be good photos sshowing the car in it's best light
I've been looking around to buy a car , and some of the sellers have photos of cars in the shade of trees etc , and if they weren't advertising them as a Falcon you wouldn't know what they were
My attitude is prrobably the same as yours if you went out to look at a car and found that the owner hadn't bothered to wash it
" If he can't be bothered to wash it , he probably couldn't be bothered to maintain it properly "
So if I see crappy photos I go on to the next one

LukeyBAXR6 · 20-09-2006, 02:03 AM

When i was looking for my EF i found it through the Trading Post (www.tradingpost.com.au) which wasn't too bad. I don't usually like the Trading Post.. but im kind of glad i looked.

slloyd · 20-09-2006, 02:39 AM

I bought my BA XR6 on CarSales.com.au two weeks ago, good experience and a price I was happy with.

The way I buy cars, what I look for is not the best bargain I can find, but just a reasonable price and the feeling that I did not get ripped off, because buyers remorse really sucks. If you look for an absolute bargain you'll be looking forever, and you might get a lemon if you pay too little. Usually if someone settles for a price substantially below market value it is because they know there is something wrong with it and want to offload it.

The experience really comes down to whether the lister is an A-hole or not.

I am currently selling an EF futura on ebay, and it hit the reserve I listed within 24 hours of listing it.

XITED_6 · 20-09-2006, 03:47 AM

i have my car on carsales, for approx 6 weeks now...
2001 auII xr6 rego: qzr-968...
no serious interest yet...
$20 5 pics...its cheap
the site is well promoted on radio tv etc
hopefully itll work for me, things are slow atm

5L · 20-09-2006, 04:05 AM

i brought my car off of carsales, was searching through and found eb series 2 5 speed manual for sale in SA looked at the price and went and looked at it the next day. the bloke had no phone calls about it and he had put the ad up and forgot about it. upon seeing it for the first time i knew it was sold. i have looked at a few car off the net and only found P.O.S's but this one was decent. i have used it once but probably put my car up for to much and got no attention. id rather use the trading post for selling a car.

Mark s · 20-09-2006, 08:29 AM

We used carsales.com.au when looking for several cars.

Our AU we found after driving all over Sydney and it was just down the road. It had the lowest K's, colour we wanted and they offered us the best trade in on out EB XR8.

We also found our run about Nissan Pintara on Carsales and we were more than happy with the car and price. We will throw it on Carsales/Carpoint in the next month or so.

I have brought 2 bikes on Ebay and sold the first of those bikes around 4 months latter. I sold the bike for exactly the same price as I paid for it.

Only tips I can offer with Ebay is go and look at the car/bike prior to placing a bid. That way you know a lot more about what you are bidding on.