9 ms·

Show HN: InstaMotor – Taking the pain out of selling your car

• pmorici 13y ago
  How does this compare to CarMax? They typically offer more than a dealer would as well on cars that are in good condition and less than 10 years old.
• duaakshay 13y ago
  I really like the slider with what you earn! Good job
• ValG 13y ago
  Hi Guys, Val here from InstaMotor. We’re trying to be to car dealerships what airbnb is to the hotel industry. We’d love to get some additional feedback on the service. Any feedback provided is super beneficial. We’re specifically looking for some feedback on: 1. When you get to the site, within the first 30 seconds, do you understand what we do. Why or why not? 2. If you do understand what we do, would you ever use a service like this? How much would you be willing to pay for this service? 3. What’s the biggest benefit to the service that you see? 4. Any general feedback on the site the content, the service as a whole would be great. Thanks for the help guys, We always appreciate it!
  • MattStopa 13y ago
    1. Yup you sell someone's car 2. Probably, I need to sell my car within the next year and it's a hassle to put the pictures online, etc. 3. You guys handle the test drive. 4. Seems good to me.
    • _sy_ 13y ago
      Thanks a lot Matt! And let us know when you're selling it. We'll give you the friends and family discount :)
      • kenrikm 13y ago
        I have a car I need to sell, I'm in the Bay Area. Sadly the car is back in Florida, I need to fly back and take the time to sell it. Major PITA, too bad you don't service South Florida ;)
        • dreamer305 13y ago
          What car are you selling?
          • kenrikm 13y ago
            Infiniti G35 Coupe.
  • jsun 13y ago
    Is this a real thing? if you guys are in Chicago you can come by today to take some pictures of my car:) Was thinking about selling it for 3 months already but just takes so much time.
    • ValG 13y ago
      Hey jsun, Haha, yes it is a real thing, unfortunately only in the bay area for now. We've already sold a few cars and wanted to get some additional feedback. We'll push for Chicago soon!
      • MattStopa 13y ago
        That's one thing I didn't realize. It's only in the Bay Area (makes sense).
  • deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  • fishtoaster 13y ago
    1. Yep- you guys handle getting my car sold. Seems pretty straightforward. 2. Yes, definitely. When I moved to SF, I drove here from the east coast. After realizing that I didn't need my car and it was expensive to keep, I looked into getting rid of it. It was a 93 ford taurus, and from what I could tell, not worth too much more than the cost of getting it registered in CA and in shape to sell. I ended up donating it because I just wanted to get rid of it. Having someone sell it for me would definitely have been worth it. 3. Not having to spend the time and effort managing the car sale, finding a buyer, figuring out the price, etc. 4. Looks handy. Your recently sold cars are all much newer and nicer than mine was, though, so I'm curious if your service would have worked for my older vehicle.
    • mbillie1 13y ago
      > I ended up donating it because I just wanted to get rid of it. Having someone sell it for me would definitely have been worth it. I just did the same thing for similar reasons. If there was no hassle for me, I would've sold it. 2 months too late!
  • linux_devil 13y ago
    1. yes 2.Yes 3. hassle free 4.good concept .
  • Nelkins 13y ago
    On the slider which compares selling with Instamotor vs. trading with a dealership, I think you should consider changing "You earn" with "You save." It was confusing to me exactly what it represented. Also, not sure if it matters too much, but generally framing things as "not-losing" is better than framing something as a gain.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion
  • primitivesuave 13y ago
    This is a very clean and straightforward website - no BS to wade through, no popups asking for my email, just straightforward here's-how-you-do-it. If I had seen this a couple months ago I would have definitely saved a couple thousand bucks. One thing that's really inspiring about this is that it has the potential to completely change the concept of used car sales. Just like how realtors take you around to go see houses that are for sale, a car salesman can become a person who takes you around to test drive cars for sale. I might be wrong about your target market, but it seems like it is currently a market of wealthy individuals with high-valued cars to sell but no time to sell them. However, the quickest sales are the ones for lower valued cars - way back when I only had four figures in the bank, my only requirement for my used car was that it not make weird noises. One lucrative direction you could go with this in the future is adding financing options, so someone could lease a used car from you and you could pass a percentage of the monthly car payments on to the car owner. Or, you could buy the car from the owner and lease it out to potential owners. I have no idea what the legal requirements are to be able to do this, but if it works you'd have a pretty stable source of recurring income. Overall it's a great idea, I wish you the best of luck with this!
    • ValG 13y ago
      primitivesuave - you have excellent insights, any experience in the car sales world? These are a lot of the same items that we've been exploring. I'd love to chat with you offline if you're available. Feel free to email me at val@instamotor.com if you're available or call text me at 510.761.5692
  • giarc 13y ago
    Should offer to detail the car as well (for a price), that can drastically increase the sale price. Perhaps you could find some mobile detail guys that you could contract out. Make it the gold package or something.
  • alasdair_ 13y ago
    Ultimately, I want to know how much I could sell my car for before bothering to sign up. Asking for a phone number made me close the page. People use the web because they want to do things on their time and not to have to deal with people calling them. To be honest, the phone number made it seem like one of the millions of lead generation services (e.g. limos.com) where your information is forwarded to a bunch of companies who then all spam you and call you for weeks to come. Email should be enough.
  • invaliddata 13y ago
    1) Just looking at the site, without actually signing up, I can't really figure out what you do. I had to read through the comments here to understand what the service is. 2) I would be willing to pay several hundred to a thousand dollars, depending on what the car is and how difficult it is to sell. 3) Saving time and hassle is the biggest benefit for me. 4) Put more info on the site regarding what the service is, what benefits you provide, without having to sign up.
  • ph0rque 13y ago
    Having just spent several hours and a ~hundred dollars to find out a potential minivan is a lemon, I'd love to utilize something like this from the buyers' side. Do you have plans to address the other side of the market?
  • larrys 13y ago
    My personal feeling is the 5% is to high for luxury or expensive cars. I have one right now that I will be selling (2012 Porsche) and my immediate reaction was a) I still have to prep and detail my car - I don't have to do that if I trade it in and b) 5% is to much. c) I don't want strangers driving my car. d) I don't want to be hassled with selling my car which is why I take the hit at the dealer. If you want to call it that. Remember also that trade in deals are actually negotiable. Like anything else. Also dealers actually typically try to slant a trade in toward giving you more money (so it gives you an incentive to buy thinking you are selling something valuable). You might want to alter your % based on price. And also create a way of separating sellers of higher priced cars from more commodity vehicles.
  • gcb0 13y ago
    "Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time."
• bnzelener 13y ago
  If you can get this working on cars, I would love to see what you can do with residential real estate. 42Floors might beat you there, but they seem pretty focused on commercial.
• johnatwork 13y ago
  Let me know if you guys ever come to Canada.
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    I spent a lot of time in Vancouver, BC; Canada is a wonderful place and I can't wait until we expand there. We'll try to tackle the San Francisco Bay Area first :)
• Gracana 13y ago
  Haha, my car isn't worth enough for you to sell it. :|
  • ValG 13y ago
    Haha, We can still help. email me directly at val@instamotor.com.
    • Gracana 13y ago
      Oh sorry, I'm not in your area so it's a moot point. I think the service sounds great though.
    • danans 13y ago
      What is the minimum value vehicle you can sell?
      • Gracana 13y ago
        I was just going by the slider, which goes down to $5k.
      • gcb0 13y ago
        yeah, being left in the dark is annoying. specially if i have to even register before i know the deal.
• vishaldpatel 13y ago
  This might just work! How much would it cost you to offer a free car-wash coupon that's redeemable at local full-service car washes? I would write blog posts on interesting success stories with different types of cars and seller stories -- often cars are hard to sell for various reasons. Offering to take a professional picture is your ultimate in.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Great idea! We've started soliciting quotes from out beta customers and have a ton of awesome data on car sales that we can use for blog posts. More coming soon!
• dang 13y ago
  This post got nailed–hard–by the voting ring detector, but I'm restoring it because we want to see original work on HN. A "voting ring" is when people get friends to upvote their stuff. This is against the rules. We want stories to be on HN because they're good, not because they were promoted. It's sadly common for a great Show HN post to get demoted because its creators, eager to get it on the front page, tried to game it. I've noticed a pattern, too: usually their gaming technique is pathetic. Perhaps that's because they're creators, not promoters. Unfortunately, it has the side-effect of making it certain that the ring detector will nail their otherwise good post, while we carry on the real cat-and-mouse game with people pushing crap. I've got what I believe will be a sweet solution to this problem, but it awaits time for implementation. Please everybody, don't ring-vote your posts; just take your chances with HN's randomness. If a post is solid and hasn't gotten any attention yet, a couple of reposts is ok. Be careful not to abuse that, though, since we penalize accounts for reposting too much. I'm going to demote this comment as off-topic so it won't get in the way of the real discussion. Send any moderation questions to hn@ycombinator.com.
  • oneiric 13y ago
    How does a voting ring look different than this scenario: I email my friends (that read HN) about finally going "public." Because they are my friends and they've heard about my ideas and work for a while now, they up vote.
• BorisMelnik 13y ago
  Excellent idea - we are all looking at it right now in our office. 1 person said he would definitely use this right now for his used car he is selling. Really well done, very well explained & designed.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Awesome Boris, happy to hear it! I hope we can engage with your co-worker.
• kfd1 13y ago
  Love the idea. This tackles a real pain point for many sellers. Good website. I like! What are the challenges of expanding to different locations?
  • ValG 13y ago
    Markets are pretty different across the US. Car buying/selling is local process. People tend to be willing to go roughly 50 miles to see a car if they're really serious about purchasing it. There are also differences in paperwork and requirements for selling a car, and how the market is made up. For example, from my experience, people in the midwest tend to finance their vehicles much more frequently than people on the west coast. It's not a huge deal, but does add additional wrinkles in the process.
• petercooper 13y ago
  It's a totally different business model to this but http://www.webuyanycar.com/ http://www.webuyanycar.com/ is a pretty big deal here in the UK. You get a valuation, take your car to them, they buy it. To my surprise it worked pretty well too and I got almost as much for my car as I'd have realistically got waiting for months on a classifieds site or whatever. I imagine the way the British used car market works has a big impact on the idea actually working though.
  • amalag 13y ago
    http://www.carmax.com/ http://www.carmax.com/ does that in the US, they have a business model of no haggling and give some gaurantees on the cars they sell.
    • ValG 13y ago
      Yes, CarMax is sort of the model that we looked at. They are the only player in town that had the scale necessary to apply modern business management principals to their business. But they're margins are paper thin. Too much overhead.
      • lawncheer 13y ago
        Dumb fact: CarMax was developed by the old Circuit City.
        • ValG 13y ago
          I'm actually very impressed by it. They found a market that is highly fragmented and tried to consolidate. The interesting thing is that they it took them forever to make a profit (and tons of funding). It's great to see, but in my (biased) opinion, they didn't go far enough.
    • vellum 13y ago
      The downside, in California, is that the DMV still considers you to be the owner even after you sell your car to them. Some woman got a ticket because of this, although it was eventually dropped. In California, CarMax and other dealers don’t need to register a purchased vehicle in the company name. So even with her release of liability, the DMV considered the former owner to the registered owner of the ticketed vehicle. http://consumerist.com/2013/04/19/woman-hit-with-traffic-ticket-for-car-shed-sold-to-carmax-months-earlier/ http://consumerist.com/2013/04/19/woman-hit-with-traffic-tic...
• TulliusCicero 13y ago
  Definitely a cool idea. Where's the buying side, though? Do you guys just list on craigslist?
  • ValG 13y ago
    Not just Craigslist, but we go through a lot of traditional channels (autotrader, cars.com). Selling a car is a marketing game, especially if you want to maximize your outcome. For certain types of cars, we also list them on specific forums (e.g. Porsches would get listed on Porsche enthusiast websites etc...)
• canistr 13y ago
  From the looks of the responses here, looks like you guys should get up a "Notify me when you come to my area" up on your site.
• exue 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    > 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 13y ago
      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 13y ago
    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.
• chenac 13y ago
  Seems like a really cool service! Do you guys have a geographic limit that you are restricting service to?
  • xbonez 13y ago
    At the bottom of the page, it says they are limited to the Bay Area for now.
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    Bay Area only for now. We'd love to expand later on.
• chadwickthebold 13y ago
  One point - take a look at the copy on your pricing slider. 'You Earn' makes it sound like that's all I'm going to get out of this deal. It took me a second to realize it was the difference between the dealership and instamotor.
  • rg81 13y ago
    I did the exact same thing. I typically don't make "me too" replies, but I hope the extra data point is helpful in this case. Great idea, this looks like something I'd be interested in using sometime in the future.
    • securingsincity 13y ago
      Totally piggy backing on this comment. Don't usually make me too comments but this was something that had me scratching my head for a second. Otherwise looks great!
  • ValG 13y ago
    Hey Chad, Thanks for the note. Yeah you're right. We'll make the update to clarify that. We had it as "saved" before, but that didn't seem to make sense. Still trying to find the right wording, but we'll update it today or over the weekend most likely. Thank you!
    • sucramb 13y ago
      Call it "Your extra benefit"
    • mathgeek 13y ago
      Could always slap a "more" after the value.
    • bluthru 13y ago
      "Increased earnings" ?
      • 13y ago
• callmeed 13y ago
  You should really move the "Now Serving The Bay Area" message above the fold. I would have signed-up and used you right away (want to sell my Honda Element).
  • ValG 13y ago
    Hey Callmeed. Thanks for the note. We've actually debated this back and forth a little bit. Right now we (admittedly) have a ton of stuff on the front page, we didn't want to clutter it too much. We'll re-evalute this based on your suggestions and might make some updates today.
    • davegauer 13y ago
      I would like to second the suggestion. More people live outside the Bay Area than you might think. :-) Edit: Great idea, by the way. I would love to use this service here in Phoenix.
  • vxNsr 13y ago
    I usually assume these type of startups aren't targeted at us out-of-towners. Also the background pic of the Golden Gate Bridge also helps...
    • colinyoung 13y ago
      It's not the first startup splash page to have the GGB on it. I don't even notice anymore.
• pwrfid 13y ago
  Super nice website & really cool product. Congrats
  • ValG 13y ago
    Thank you!
• m52go 13y ago
  Kill CarMax. Decentralize it. The sheer number of resources one dealership consumes boggles my mind: all the people, the mechanics, the land, the land, the land, oh, and the other acres of land.
  • ValG 13y ago
    I used to work in a car dealership group. The inefficiencies are terrifying. That's what led to this.
    • m52go 13y ago
      Best of luck!
  • toomuchtodo 13y ago
    Which is somewhat humorous, because the CarMax process is much easier than a traditional dealer. Disclaimer: I have bought/sold over 10 cars with Carmax over the last decade.
• ryan_j_naughton 13y ago
  Your "Get started today" form is failing for me. Instead I am getting this error: Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time. And the div with that error is added each time I submit the form so you can get them to start stacking on each other. <div class="alert ng-isolate-scope alert-danger" ng-class=""alert-" + (type || "warning")" ng-repeat="alert in alerts" type="alert.type" close="closeAlert($index)"> <button ng-show="closeable" type="button" class="close" ng-click="close()">×</button> <div ng-transclude=""><span class="ng-scope ng-binding">Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time.</span></div> </div>
  • ValG 13y ago
    Thanks Ryan, we just caught this too. We're restarting those servers. A little too much traffic for our lead system. We're working to get it back up asap.
    • ValG 13y ago
      Should be back up!
      • vollmond 13y ago
        I'm still seeing this on the car-description part.
        • ValG 13y ago
          Sorry it's been up and down all day. We didn't think we'd see quite this amount of positive response from the community. We really appreciate it and the feedback has been amazing. We'll make a lot of the changes suggested. If anyone wants to submit by can't please email me "val@instamotor.com" and I'll reach out.
• SimpleXYZ 13y ago
  What a great idea. I once scrapped a car for a couple hundred bucks instead of selling it because I didn't want the hassle of selling it.
• joshmlewis 13y ago
  I've bought and sold a lot of cars the past few years. I have never once considered a dealer trade in offer. I've had relatively easy and good luck with selling my car online through Craigslist and Autotrader which I imagine is what they will probably do to unload the cars. I like the idea of the service but I'm wondering what the difference is between dealer trade in pricing and market pricing. Even if I have to sacrifice a couple grand to not have to do the whole process, I'm ok with that but I'd rather know pricing from that point of view. I'm also curious how you plan on doing the legal paperwork as I've done a lot of this too and it's not easy getting setup to handle all the paperwork especially if it's between two parties.
  • ssharp 13y ago
    You can generally post on Craiglist and get offers within a day that beat a trade-in offer. People sit on car listings and offer low-ball prices that are still above how awful dealer trade-in offers are. I don't think selling a car is really that difficult of a process, for me anyway. I don't know what California paperwork is like, but in Ohio, all you need to do is sign your title over in front of a notary. Besides that, it's just a matter of listing it on Craiglist and scheduling times to look at it.
    • exue 13y ago
      In California it's even easier than getting a notary - you just need signatures on the title ("pink slip"), and then both parties can fill an online form for transfer or liability. The buyer then goes and hands over the title to the DMV at some point in the next (10) days, getting a new title in the mail. For as well me I've had a decent experience on Craigslist - just some due diligence and research on best practices and you're good to go. But it does take some time and patience and dealing with flaky buyers. Just ignore the lowballers and the non-serious. However I'm sure a lot of people would love this type of service, especially in common scenarios where the actual seller is busy so they try to proxy it to a family member who really isn't interested in selling it. Or when they've moved out of state and buyers don't want to deal with that
  • ValG 13y ago
• stefap2 13y ago
  Is minimum car price $5000?
• mellery451 13y ago
  where do we go to see what cars you currently have for sale?
  • giarc 13y ago
    I don't think they actually list them on their site, they list on various already established sites (autotrader, cars.com etc).
• AndrewKemendo 13y ago
  I like it and would like to use it here in D.C. please. I would suggest making the sell price in the big red letters instead of the "youll earn" part. That whole section is a little confusing and I thought it was telling me I would only get 2k for my 20k car. I only really care about how much I would be getting for my car, the comparison to the dealership is important but secondary, and oh by the way I will have already probably looked that up on kbb.com.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Thanks Andrew. We're trying to expand as quickly as possible, but we have to tackle the Bay Area Market first. Thanks for the feedback, it looks like a lot of people are confused by that. We'll make changes and update it tonight. Thanks again guys, really appreciate it!
  • eni9889 13y ago
    Hey Andrew, Thanks for the feedback. We are focusing on the bay area for now but are looking forward to expanding. As far as the wording goes, we've gotten several comments about it and will be changing it soon.
• cancelbubble 13y ago
  Will you be dealing with salvage/reconstructed/branded vehicle titles?
• deegles 13y ago
  Could you please add a form for "Notify me when InstaMotor is available in my area"? Just with email and city. I almost signed up before I saw it was only available for the Bay area.
  • eni9889 13y ago
    Hi deegles, Thanks for the feedback. We have added this to our todo list. We are still in the process of finalizing the flow of the site.
• darrenkopp 13y ago
  "We charge <5% of your vehicles sales price" "Simple 5% commission." As an engineer, that really bothers me.
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    Hi Darren -- I agree with you. I will go ahead and fix it. We are still on the fence as to what is the right amount to charge for our service, but less than 5% is the goal.
• giarc 13y ago
  How long have you been running this service? I recall about 3 months ago, a post on HN where someone posted a bunch of idea's they had but didn't have time to execute. This was one of them. Did instamotor flow from that?
  • g3mo 13y ago
    Do you mind linking that post here?
  • ValG 13y ago
    Hi giarc, Actually Sy and I (2 of the 3 co-founders) met on HN after a similar post (like 6 months ago?). It wasn't the one you're talking about, but had a similar theme.
• delive 13y ago
  I was curious on how the test drive scheduling worked. It says "schedule flexible test-drives with remote key access." It sounded a bit unclear to me, and I'm not sure how that works. I think the idea is excellent and would use it when I decide to sell my car.
  • orky56 13y ago
    Had similar confusion. "remote key access" and "keep using your car" don't seem compatible.
• radnam 13y ago
  Do you plan to have a listing page for the cars with a email service which intimates me when a car I am interested in (e.g., brand, price range etc) is now available through you.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Yes, that's on our product road map.
• mattsfrey 13y ago
  Having to enter a phone number to create an account resulted in a closed browser tab. Might want to consider this factor, can guarantee theres plenty more where I come from.
  • ValG 13y ago
    thanks for the note Matt. I think you're right and it's something we've debated before. In the end we decided to leave it in there. The first thing we do when you get started with us is call you to schedule the photo shoot for your car. We come to your place to do this at your convenience, but we need the phone number. We'll re-evaluate this over the weekend. Thanks for the feedback, we really appreciate it!
    • lancewiggs 13y ago
      Almost all our meetings are set up over email, IM or text. And the vast majority of communication is online too. So requiring a phone is a sign that the old way of doing things is not gone, and it will make it harder to get traction, especially from the HN crowd and people with poorer English.
      • robzyb 13y ago
        > So requiring a phone is a sign that the old way of doing things is not gone It isn't gone. You are in the minority. But that being said, maybe there is an argument that the OP needs to cater to the new things.
    • scott_s 13y ago
      Consider that some people may want to create an account as a way to explore the service more, before committing to using it.
    • seany 13y ago
      This is a total non starter for me as well, at least have 100% email as an option. I don't pick up numbers I don't have in my address book, so you would get my voice mail, which would result in me emailing you anyway.
• orky56 13y ago
  This is a great service. Although eBay Motors and Craigslist exist for this opportunity, they are very impersonal and create just as many issues as they try to solve. Here's some feedback on the website and service. Hope it helps! 1. Redundant content: I felt like you repeated the same value proposition in nearly every section of your website. However, each section had one small tidbit that wasn't addressed anywhere else (e.g. only available in bay area). 2. Excessive calls to action: Although it's great that you have placed many calls to action (various buttons, sliders, etc.), it really confuses the user. Having one consistent message and/or placement might improve conversion. Just a hypothesis and one you should definitely A/B test. 3. Poor navigation: The "home" button in the footer navigates the user to an awkward anchor tag on the home page. The About page has a large image that makes it seem like a homepage rather than getting in to the actual content of the page. The Contact page is an overlay modal and may not even be worth creating as a separate page. Perhaps placing it in the footer is sufficient. 4. Commas: In your slider showing the different amounts you can save, you should be sure to a comma as a thousands separator or a decimal point + "k" or "thousand". This will increase impact and hopefully conversion as well. 5. Reposition: Seeing this on "Show HN" and seeing lots of copy/images in the beginning made your site seem like it was a just placeholders. It wasn't until I scrolled to the bottom did I see there were testimonials and cars that were actually sold. This content should be placed further up since it demonstrates some form of validation/social traction. It would be great to have a ticker or some other indicator of cars sold at some point when it gets bigger. Best of luck and feel free to reach out for any clarifications.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Orky, Awesome feedback. We'll eat this up and spit something improved this weekend. We really appreciate it!
• afhsfsfdsss88 13y ago
  Most dealer trade offers are so low because they don't even keep your car on the lot, they sell it at auction...at wholesale prices. That is a lot different than individual sales...which is how this service sells your car. So yeah, you get a better price for your car, but the service still eats a good chunk of the sale price difference between dealer-trade and individual sale. And "all the paperwork" amounts to downloading a bill of sale form and title transfer online with the DMV. It's not rocket science, nor time consuming. Certainly not worth hundreds of dollars.
  • ryanSrich 13y ago
    Agreed. Having sold several cars in NYS this is the typical situation with selling a car. - Post on craigslist for a few hundred under KBB and few thousand more than what you're willing to sell for - Get several calls and appointments in the evenings for a solid week - Within two weeks someone offers you $1k less than what you posted on CL for but still $1k more than your lowest point - Collect payment from buyer, give them the signed title, and a piece of paper saying how much they paid for the car. In this situation there are literally two pieces of paper. The bill of sale that you can write on any old computer paper and the title that came with the car. Signing up for this service may be even more work than just selling the car yourself.
    • bri3d 13y ago
      A few notes: 1) Appointments for a week is a lot of time sunk. Easily worth a few hundred bucks to Valley people who think of their lives by the hourly rate. Especially when buyers drag out the process by not showing, having trouble finding a location, or trying to "negotiate" past an agreed-upon price when picking the car up. 2) Very cheap, economical cars (like old Civics/Accords) and very specific enthusiast's cars are extremely frustrating to sell. With economy cars buyer expectations seem to be higher than is realistic (did you really expect your $2500 car to have flawless paint?) and with enthusiast cars many buyers aren't serious. Tire-kickers, thrill-seekers, and picky people who "just want to try this one out, but really were looking for another color and options package or extra rare year xxxx" abound. 3) Loans and paperwork differ by state, but at least here in Colorado the paperwork is trivial and loans are painful. I've never gone to a bank, paid off the car, and had the title available in a timely manner, which leaves both parties with frustrating hanging obligations even after the sale is made. I lived with someone for a few years who bought and sold several cars a month and I still pay him a few hundred bucks to broker the deal each time I want a car gone - I actually find the sales process quite enjoyable as it involves meeting a lot of people from a lot of backgrounds, but the time sink and general flakiness gets old fast.
• rasz_pl 13y ago
  whatr pain and agony?
• balls187 13y ago
  As soon as you come to Seattle, I will sell my GTi with you (srsly)! Ofc, you'll be awesome, so then the Seattle Government will issue legislation banning your awesome idea because Used Car Dealerships won't be able to compete, and they'll use their Good Ol' Boy network to shut it down.
  • eni9889 13y ago
    We're happy to hear that we can't wait! As far as legislation goes, we expect some pushback but we are ready to fight it head on. Thanks for the comment, we really appreciate it.
• kareemm 13y ago
  I'm in the process of buying a used car and wrote a note to my business partner about how I wish a service like this existed. There's often a ton of communication between me and sellers to determine things like: - mileage - automatic / manual transmission - whether car has been in any serious accidents - whether there's any major upcoming maintenance - whether the driver smoked - whether the title is Clean Then I need to get the VIN and run a CarProof (Canadian equiv. of CarFax). Then, assuming it checks out, schedule a test drive. Then, assuming the drive is good, get a mechanic's inspection done. Then, pay and sign papers. It's a royal pain, compounded by the fact that CL and Autotrader individual sellers seem to be a generally sketchy or uncommunicative lot: no email replies, missed appointments, lying about the title, etc. are all common. Car buying won't be done like it currently is in 10 years from now; glad to see you're doing something to improve the experience.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Thanks Kareemm. We agree, too many things have happened in the tech and communication world for people to still be buying cars the same way they've been buying car. Thanks for the note.
  • joe_the_user 13y ago
    You know, I'm looking on craiglist in the Bay Area. It is pretty frustrating, I'll admit. All those things you describe would be nice but any service like that would inherently restrict you to those seller savvy enough to put all that stuff down. Most people don't seem like and so you'd be only scanning a small subset of available cars. Is having them presented in an orderly fashion worth having few listings - of course not. Yeah, the sellers and buyers are a real mixed lot. But an organized website can't conjure a whole new pool of buyers and sellers into existence.
• deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
• alasdair_ 13y ago
  "How much is your car worth?" on the main page: I have no idea. Isn't that the point of your service, to tell me how much I can get for my car?
• bnzelener 13y ago
  If you can get this working on cars, I would love to see what you can do with residential real estate. 42Floors might beat you there, but they seem pretty focused on commercial.
• ztratar 13y ago
  5% is a lot. I would expect this to be more around 2%.
  • joshfraser 13y ago
    It doesn't make sense for this to be a percentage since the work involved in selling a 30k car is the same as selling a 5k car.
    • ValG 13y ago
      Hey Josh, it's actually not quite as easy to sell more expensive cars. As you move up the price chain, the market of people that can afford the car gets lower and lower. Think of it this way, 90% of the population can afford a $5k, but only 10% of the population can afford a $30k car. (numbers not accurate or scientific, just as an example).
• ufmace 13y ago
  Thoughts: Wish it was more prominent that this is Bay Area only for now. I doubted that it would be in my area, since it sounded like something that required local personnel and nobody seems to do startups in Houston, but you have to scroll to the bottom to see it stated. Some of the text looks terrible on my Windows 7 - Chrome environment. Especially everything in How It Works. The website is all about the sell side, and you say the buy side is ebay, craigslist, autotrader, etc. Why not post the cars in a store on your site too? Last time I checked those sites, they had a terrible UI. In fact, that idea expands the business from a seller's assistant kind of thing to more of an online-focused CarMax. I think that could be really useful to everyone. I'm thinking kind of a cross between AutoTrader and CarMax. On the buyer's side, it could be like the existing online sites, except that the photos and details are collected by your people, so they're consistent and high-quality. Maybe you take the car for a few hours, have a mechanic check it out, wash it, and take high-quality high-res photos in a controlled environment. The buyers can know and trust that you've done all this, and that they're getting a good representation of what they're thinking of buying. The sellers get pretty much what you're already doing, all of the legwork done for them, a better price, and hopefully buyers who know what they're getting, and are vetted as serious buyers before a test-drive is set up. I suppose the main difference between you and Carmax, then, is that you are all online, thus have a much better online presence, and don't need to maintain a car lot. Does that translate into enough of a cost savings to offer a better deal to the customers than the current incumbents, though?
  • ValG 13y ago
    Excellent points ufmace. The short answer is yes, I believe so. I worked in a car dealership before. The capital costs are massive, between physical locations, inventory, personnel, etc... It's truly astounding. Part 2 is adding that selling side, and we will do it, but we're not there yet.
• MortenK 13y ago
  I hate selling cars. It's troublesome and time consuming, so you I'd gladly pay for the service. The pricing turns me off though. Selling a 50K car, the commission would turn out to 2.5K. That's net. So with 50% income tax rate, I'd have to earn 5K to pay the commission. That's much too steep for me. If there was a cap of say 1K, I'd be a customer in a heartbeat. But 5K gross is certainly worth the inconvenience of selling it myself.
  • yblu 13y ago
    50% income tax rate? Wow... have to wonder how much one makes to have to pay that amount of tax! Anyway, the real question is whether you can sell for more than 47.5K after biting the inconvenience and spending time.
• sharemywin 13y ago
  Why wouldn't you need a dealer license for this?
• nlh 13y ago
  Great idea - good luck guys! Related note for the HN community, while we're on the subject: Unless you have time & money to burn, you really should never never never trade your car into the dealership. It's the worst price you're going to get along the used car supply chain. And even if you think you're getting a good price, it's because you're probably pairing it with buying a car (and paying too much for the car you're buying). The worst-case used car dealer supply chain works like this (going backwards): * You buy a used car for $20,000. * The used car dealer bought it from a wholesaler for $19,000 * The wholesaler bought it from a wholesale auction for $18,000 * The dealership who sold it at auction paid $16,000 as a trade-in. (*I saw worst case because not all of these steps happen each time) Note the chain begins with trade-in -- because dealerships know that people who are trading in are pressed for time and want a no-hassle deal. But in doing that, they're giving up $thousands to each step along the chain. So when selling a car - going direct (or using a service like InstaMotor) is always going to net you more $$ than trade-in. And now ya know :)
  • BrownBuffalo 13y ago
    What about BUYING a car in the same fashion? I mean, the shake-up here in the used market sees the same paradigm. Be the broker ... vs. the service fee out. :)
  • sharkweek 13y ago
    I just listened to the This American Life episode "129 cars" about a month in a car dealership - SUPER fascinating look at the industry, with a lot of insider information: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/129-cars http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/513/1...
    • _sy_ 13y ago
      Actuall, that was one of the best episode of This American Life.
    • nlh 13y ago
      Totally. That episode is one of my favorite TALs ever (second to 'Summer Camp', which despite having been done in the 90s is still totally relevant). In fact, I used a lot of the knowledge from '129 cars' to help with a recent purchase of a Jeep (not from that dealership, sadly). I'm going to write up a blog post about the experience - I learned a lot and it should be helpful to others.
• greggman 13y ago
  I thought this was an awesome idea and tried to post it in my facebook feed to show my friends. Unfortunately http://www.instamotor.com/ http://www.instamotor.com/ ends up with the excerpt "Landing Page Template for Bootstrap" and http://www.instamotor.com/#/ http://www.instamotor.com/#/ has no picture. I've found, or it least it seems to me, when there's no picture none of my friends click the link. Apparently you need to add these tags? https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/tutorials/scrumptious/open-graph-object/ https://developers.facebook.com/docs/web/tutorials/scrumptio...
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    Thanks for the heads up! I'm on it and will be pushing an update to in a few minutes. Mind if I ping you then? edit: I updated the header but still no update on Facebook. I'm assuming it must be cached. I will try to create a Facebook page to see if that clears it.
    • greggman 13y ago
      Going to this page and testing seemed to fix the caching https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug/ Still no image though. I think the link is the wrong URL? It's currently http://www.instamotor.com/instamotor_illustration.png http://www.instamotor.com/instamotor_illustration.png
      • _sy_ 13y ago
        Oups! I'm really short on sleep and I accidentally copy-pasted the wrong URL earlier. Thank you for all your help!!
• theflubba 13y ago
  1. Take pic of your white van. 2. Post pic with description and mileage on craigslist. 3. Don't mention what happened in the back of the van in '99. 3. Get a couple emails. 4. Sell it to the highest bidder. Who's too stupid to not figure this out and needs a service? Okay, so they pay you more than the dealership. That's a selling point. But I could find someone on Craigslist and sell it to them for more.
  • jim-greer 13y ago
    Then you're not the target audience for this. The last time I sold a car via Craigslist it probably consumed 8 hours at least. Multiple test drives, etc. Nowadays I'd let the dealer screw me rather than take that time. This seems like a great intermediate path if it's well run.
• everettForth 13y ago
  Just curious, I actually have a car valued at around $20,000 that I want to sell. I posted it on craigslist, and realized that I don't have time to deal with all the crap. Some dealer called me and left a message saying that they would sell my car for me for $200. Are they lying? Are there other hidden fees? Why should I pay InstaMotor $1000 instead of $200 to this other guy? One advantage, I see is that I get to keep and drive my car. Except my car is parked in a lot, and I only have 1 keyfob to get it out.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Thanks for the note everett; I'm not sure about this dealer and their process. But we've looked at a couple local consignment lots and didn't find a deal that made sense. For example, a local lot here in Berkeley charges you ~450 per month to hold on to your vehicle. They do very few of the value adds that we do. We do: CarFax, PreSale Mechanic's Inspection (via YourMechanic), Listing the vehicle so it gets serious exposure (our estimates is that we hit roughly 90%+ of all car buyers), we don't need to take your key, even if you only have 1 we can do test drives without you being there, you always have complete access to the car, etc... Think about it this way, even at $200 per month, the dealer has an incentive to keep you car on his lot as long as possible. With our commission only model, we have an incentive to get your car sold. True store - one of our recent customers had her car listed at said consignment lot for 2 months with no action. She payed ~$900 for nothing, on top of paying her car payment and insurance. 2 months at well over $1k. She came to us and we had it sold in 3 days (3 days is not typical, but we have incentive to get the cars sold quickly). It's a matter of having the incentives lined up correctly.
• cianclarke 13y ago
  Oh hi, I fixed your pricing page http://i.imgur.com/N90HwsK.png http://i.imgur.com/N90HwsK.png
  • ValG 13y ago
    haha I love this. Thanks Cian. This is awesome. Thanks for the effort. I actually really like the approach you took. Can we take this and run with it?
    • cianclarke 13y ago
      Sure, go nuts - I'll even give you the HTML if you like :P Seriously though, fantastic business, and an industry in dire need of disruption - but even as somebody who has gone through the tribulations of selling a car privately recently, it's still too expensive.. Still - hoping you prove me wrong on that!
• dm2 13y ago
  My biggest question is about the test-drive. How do those work? What stops someone from taking a 1 hour test-drive? (and wasting you gas on their errands) If someone gets in an accident during a test-drive who is liable? Do all insurance plans cover this? What does remote-key access mean? "We verify all buyers and schedule flexible test-drives with remote key access." How quickly do you plan on expanding to other states? Your site has a 1px left margin which is making a horizontal scrollbar which is annoying me. @media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 0) html { margin-left: 1px; }
  • argumentum 13y ago
    >> Your site has a 1px left margin which is making a horizontal scrollbar which is annoying me. @media screen and (-webkit-min-device-pixel-ratio: 0) html { margin-left: 1px; } Lol, Only on HN :)
• jlees 13y ago
  I'm your target user right now. I'm desperately trying to sell my car without using Craigslist - I have a loan still, and I'm afraid of risk and scams. Feel free to ping me for a user study if you need. I've tried another service but due to a small dent in the car I couldn't sell it - the car's actually in the shop right now getting that fixed, because using a service to sell is so much better than the alternatives. My current plan is to go back to them when it's repaired.
  • ValG 13y ago
    Emailed you. If you didn't get it, I'm at val@instamotor.com
  • jzwinck 13y ago
    Why did a small dent make the car unsaleable? It seems odd because usually doing work on something before selling it will net you a loss.
• elyrly 13y ago
  InstaMotor does put a valiant effort in changing the mundane process that filled with disagreements from the seller side. The end product will solve minor inconvenience but doesn't look kindly from the OEM's point of view. They will see this as a threat to the dealers and sustaining a flow of walk-ins to market their new models. Its generating a buzz here thats all a post like this can ask for: opinionated tech individuals that look forward to innovating various industries.
• petersouth 13y ago
  In addition, could you make a service where I can go into a new car dealership and buy a car in five minutes with financing. I just bought two brand new cars in the last six months and had to wait around for hours and leave dealerships after calling them up before I even left my house and telling them I want to buy x car at x price at x time of the day and they agree, but when I get there it's a nightmare.
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    hey Peter, sy here from Instamotor. I think Trucar is kind of supposed to do that. Not sure if we'll ever jump into that particular segment.
    • petersouth 13y ago
      Nah, I went in on an advertised special defined price on one and even had a TrueCar listing in hand another time. They made up a bunch of mumbo-jumbo that the cars they had aren't exactly like what they advertise. After I said ok to a price, I still had to wait around for hours with wife and two young children to finalize all the paperwork and get the car prepped. Wanted to stab myself in the eye from frustrationand swore I'd never buy new again. It appears there is still a wide space between the negotiated price and driving away. I think TrueCar is mostly for newer cars, but is it possible they apply the same method to used cars in the future and try to take money off your increased price? Do you think
• Ellipsis753 13y ago
  I like the idea but wanted to point out something that confused me. Car value: $100000 Average Dealership Trade-In Offer: $80,000 — $85,000 With Instamotor: $95,000 You Earn: $10,000 The way it says "you earn" I can't help but think that that is the total amount you will get. I would prefer it to say "you earn $95,000. $10,000 more than you would have with a dealership". Or something similar.
  • _sy_ 13y ago
    we got a lot of comment on how confusing this section is. We'll do another pass at it soon. Thanks for feedback! ps: was everything ok and clear enough?
    • Ellipsis753 13y ago
      Yes. Other than that it seemed pretty great.
• enscr 13y ago
  > Transferring vehicle ownership is confusing; that's why we take care of it. Care to explain. I've found it extremely straight forward.
• carlypso 13y ago
  Hi Guys, Nicholas here. I started Carlypso.com last summer when Chris (my co-founder) and I had helped a number of our classmates sell their used cars after graduation. About 9 months ago, I had the pleasure of dealing with Instamotor founder Sy when he bought his Audi A4 with our help. His feedback over email was really encouraging: "About your idea: 1. I was looking a bit at ways to remotely unlock a car over a network connection. It seems to me that the technology story around that is a bit weak, but not completely infeasible. First, there's automatic (http://www.automatic.com/ http://www.automatic.com/) though i don't know if they'll ever ship a product, but in theory it's really what you guys want. Second, there is a myriad of small stuff like this http://www.text2car.com/ http://www.text2car.com/ 2. I really liked the concept of being able to take the car for a drive, free of any awkward conversation with the owner. It's really pleasant actually, and it gave me the time to think about the purchase and inspect the car. The user psychology is really nailed on that one. That's the way I want to buy every used car from now on." Long story short, Sy and Val liked our service so much that they decided to just copy it. I'm all for competition and welcome Val and Sy into the used car market. It is sorely in need of a better solution, one which will make buyers and sellers happier and eliminate the inefficiencies and scamming of the dealer model. I'm not a big fan of plagiarism but different people are different I guess. If you'd like to stop by our offices, meet our team and see how we're doing, just PM me and we'll hook it up. Chris might even let you drive his 500 hp formula car, which he's been building over the last couple of years! :) Cheers, Nicky and the Carlypso team Nicholas@carlypso.com
  • curiousphil 13y ago
    For what's it worth it's more clear how the service works on your website. Their's is a little cleaner and more modern but I really appreciate the step by step graphical walk through of the process on your site. Looks like the service offering is very similar. Now it's just a matter of who treats their employees/customers better, gets the necessary funding for expansion and has more passion for the space. There are A LOT of cities in the US that could greatly benefit from this service including Boise where I reside. There is a shady used car dealer on every corner and I would far prefer to use one of your services when selling my car and buying cars. I've done my fair share of craigslist deals, some positive some a major hassle... Good luck!
• michaelrbock 13y ago
  Congrats to InstaMotor on the launch; this looks like the kind of experience I would want when selling a car. Best of luck to the team! While we're on the subject of cars and improving the car buying/selling process, I just wanted to say that Edmunds.com has opened up its car data to the world in a sane, RESTful API. Check it out at http://developer.edmunds.com http://developer.edmunds.com and let me know if you have any questions: mbock @ edmunds . com. We also just finished Hackomotive, a $35k hackathon focused on startups improving the car shopping experience. You can see the winners here: http://www.hackomotive.com/ http://www.hackomotive.com/. We'd obviusly love to see InstaMotor apply for next year!