Joel G.

In the past I have used Autotrader several times with positive results. It's been a few years, but I just had my most recent ad expire. This time my Autotrader experience was so bad I will never use this service again. The first issue was after I paid approximately $50 to post my ad, I find out that if my car does sell, I need to pay an additional $200 at the time of the sale.

I got only three prospective buyers that responded to my ad. Even after I stated in the ad that I would only accept cash or bank transfers, two of the prospective buyers said they would pay me with a cashiers check without even seeing the car. The third prospective buyer was only interested in my providing a CARFAX type document from some website I had never hear of. I was trying to sell a 10 year old car for a very low price. I did not want to provide that document the prospective buyer. All the information was in the ad the allowed the prospective to obtain the historical information they wanted on the car.

I was selling an electric car with a limited driving range. Two of the three prospective buyer were so far away that they would have needed to trailer this car back to where they live. My ad was truly intended for local people that would be OK with the car's limited range.

At the time the ad expired, I got three notices from Autotrader all sent at the same time from the same person that said, "Hi this is Larry Malone, I just came across your listing and I am interested in buying it. What is your final price and do you have the full service history? Look forward to your response. Thanks". I could not respond to Larry because Autotrader had already taken down my ad. As you can see from Larry's comment, he was not interested in seeing the car, only wanted to know my final price.

I felt that AutoTrader Private Seller's Exchange only provided me with scammers and not one real possible buyer. Autotrader talks about how they check out prospective buyers. In my experience, it seems like they do zero checking on buyers. Also, Autotrader talks about accepting payment with a cashiers check without the in person sale of a vehicle. Seems like one of the oldest scams where you get paid with a cashiers check only to find out when the buyer and your car are gone, the cashiers check is fake. You are left SOL with no car and no cash.