[thirdmainroad]

I have been trying to sell my car on OLX and Quikr - which was a good way to sell previously, but the platforms now favour dealers or their own used car portals.

More information here

https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/india...l-dealers.html (Car Classified Sites, now full of dealers?!)

Here's some tips to reach direct buyers without getting scammed by OLX and Quikr:

The issue - when you post an ad on Quikr and OLX the following things will happen:

Both platforms now definitely favour dealers, and will try to hide your ad

OLX specific

Unless you mention the location as a central location in a city - Say MG road in Bangalore or Nungambakkam in Chennai, and if you mention your location as somewhere a bit away from central areas. your ad wont show in the city - when people search for Bangalore or Chennai but will pop up down the line as "10 or 20 KM away from Chennai / Bangalore"

Tip: Even if you live in a different area, mention your location of the advert as a centrally located old city area.

OLX now has their own used car dealership - https://www.olxautos.in/

It seems to me that they have tie ups with dealers, and what they do is auction your car to them and offer you a price.

As soon as you post an ad on OLX, you'll get a call from OLX and they will ask you to let their team inspect your car, and assure you the best price.

If you accept this, as soon as the inspection is done and you get a quote from OLX Autos, your ad on OLX will disappear even if it is boosted by paying for it.

So do not let them inspect your vehicle or accept this. I had to delete my ad as it stopped showing even though I had paid for a premium package - and had to re upload using a different account

Note- OLX Autos did give me the highest quote for my car (7.4) - higher than spiny (6.83) Cars24 (6.3) or anyone else. If you are short on time, would like to leave the hassle of finding buyers/ re -registration process ets, OLX autos might be the best way to go, but do not settle for what they offer you first. They offered me 6.9, then 7.2 and finally 7.4. They also offer some useful and mostly useless coupons worth 20k if you go through them.

Quikr Specific -

They do not seem to deal with dealers as much as OLX, but will try their best to scam you on buying packages - even if you have already paid for their premium 999 package. You'll get a call from their team, and say you have paid for a wrong package and that your number is not showing or that you have paid for something that is meant for commercial vehicles or that you have selected only for a local area and not the whole city. This is not true. Your ad will show. So flat out refuse to buy any additional ad boost packages. I got scammed into buying a package for 2199 after I had already paid 999 and it was the almost the same package. Was also assured that 999 would be refunded, which did not happen.

I suggest you wait a minimum of 10 days, with at least 1 weekend in between to reach as many people as you can.

[pannags]

I posted an AD on OLX, but it did not show up on searching despite paying a premium to highlight my listing. OLX people have been following up ever since to inspect the car and provide me a quote.

Meanwhile, I think my listing did go visible as I was reached out to by two different individuals who seemed interested in the car. Appears OLX unblocked the AD after waiting for a full week.

A good practice would be to indicate your status as an individual seller in the description, and preference to sell to an individual buyer in the details. While not foolproof, it certainly is a deterrent.

[Bailey]

I went about this differently when I was trying to sell my car a few months back. I actually had no idea of what it could possibly be worth and hence first registered with Spinny, Old Autos and Cars24. I let all of them complete their inspection and come up with a value.

I also went to a couple of offline dealers in my city.

This helped me work out a realistic average of what I could quote and what I should expect.

I then listed on T-BHP Classifieds and OLX. As expected a lot of the response on OLX was from dealers and from Spinny, Cars24, Old Autos and other dealers. I did get a couple of individual enquiries also and finally closed with one of those.

The entire process post listing took about 2 weeks. I was disappointed that I got no response from T-BHP Classifieds.

Went to my regular RTO Agent who filed the application online for RC transfer. The transfer happened in about 2 to 3 weeks and in less than a month the new buyer got the original RC by Speed Post.

[IshaanIan]

I find that the best way to sell anything online is to back up your post with excellent photographs. Black/Silver/Grey cars against lighter colored buildings and white to any colour against greenery that really makes the shade of paint pop regardless of condition/dents/scratches. In this day and age of endless scrolling and swiping don't bother paying money to have your ad on top these days you will find a few people might even have a consumeristic muscle twitch in their thumb that causes them to instantly and instinctively swipe/scroll away from the initial recommendations In my experience good pictures make all the difference because at the end of the day that is what gets clicks and attention

[sumitdongerkery]

I sold my XUV in Oct this year. I always wanted to sell the car to the end user and not to any resellers. I was also keen to ensure that the car is sold to a good buyer instead of any random buyer just because they are willing to pay the price I am quoting.

I started off with a post on carwale.com (had sold my earlier Octy through carwale) but to my utter disappointment dint get a single offer for almost a month and then in parellel posted on teamBHP classifieds and the result was same.

One fine day while i was browsing on facebook, I cam across FB marketplace and decided to post there. I am not exaggerating but i at least got 50+ enquiries in 2 weeks span although 30 odd would be the resellers who were coaxing me to sell it to them. And the first buyer who came to see my car in person paid me the price I was asking for. (with negligible bargain).

I completed the transaction in 1 week and handed over the car. Personally submitted the documents in the RTO and within 4 weeks the RC got transferred to the new buyer.

I was pleasantly surprised with the marketplace response and had never considered it earlier. I will strongly recommend that platform to reach out to prospective end users when you plan to sell your car.

Cheers
Sumit

[yashg]

My experience exactly. I have written about my experience with Spinny, Cars24 etc while selling my car in my new car thread. Spinny and Cars24 are almost useless if you want a reasonable price of your car. I eventually sold to an individual through OLX listing. My recommendation would be to list on Team-BHP classified, respective car model group on Facebook and Facebook marketplace.

[sanjayrozario]

Spinny & Cars24 gave poor quotes as compared to Olx auto. But I didn't take any of their offers. Instead, I put up the ad with clear pics on Olx & FB marketplace - got lots of calls & finally a dealer picked it up for his family member, but gave me a price close to my expectation. FB marketplace is quite effective.

[Dr Alpha]

I think patience is the key here. It’s definitely a sellers market. I sold my Ford Figo 2010 model with 240000 km mileage through OLX an year back for a very good price 3 weeks after posting the add.

This is what helped me in fetching a good price
I had the entire service history of the car with me which I got from the Ford ass where my car was serviced throught it’s 11 years with me and disclosed the repainted panels with before and after pictures voluntarily

Didn’t use any boost or premium packages. First 2 weeks got around 15-20 calls mostly from dealers. I didn’t avoid dealers but firmly offered my expected price range and told not to waste either of our time offering something bellow that and made that clear in the add also.

Got around 8-10 enquiries from direct buyers and finalised the deal with a gentleman for a very good price way above what both the offline and online dealers quoted.

[manojas]

I sold my car via OLX last year to an individual buyer through a normal ad. I didn't pay any money for any booster packages.
One extra thing I did is, I looked up the buyer's profile in LinkeIn and made sure he is a genuine person by cross checking hit profile with his ID.
And also, I made sure the ownership transfer happened in through a person I know.
I got my car inspected by CARS24 but they quoted an abysmally low price which I felt as an insult. You will almost always get a far better price from an individual buyer if you have a bit more time and patience.

[mkaysaw]

THIS. This is exactly where i was going wrong trying to sell my car on OLX. Thank you for highlighting a very pertinent issue.

In fact, i resorted to putting them up on the team-bhp classifieds with not much luck either (i guess owing to a lesser reach than OLX)

I was getting a lot of "intrest" from dealers and middlemen who were constantly trying to lower the price and quite frankly was just a waste of time.

I guess as every one on the thread rightly says, it takes time and patience to find an actual buyer for the car and as thirdmainroad correctly pointed on in the first post, theres always a workaround to the dealer/online middleman nexus.

[ninjatalli]

The answer is simple - patience is key.

I have sold a car, a bike and even a bicycle and all 3 have been different experiences.

The ads were put put up on all sites including TBHP (however I got zero hits from it), however while I had ample time to sell the bike & cycle; I wanted to get over the car sale quickly so for that I also went through the dealers (Cars24, etc.). Both the 2-wheelers I sold to individual buyers after some 2 weeks of wait at a price I was comfortable with. The car I sold at a steep discount (to what I was expecting) to OLX Cash My Car. But I was aware of the situation and don't regret it at all.

A reverse example is my current (pre-owned) SCross 1.6. The owner had shared the ad only across closed groups (like WhatsApp) and wasn't interested to go via the dealer route. I believe he was unable to get any buyers for several weeks. A bhpian shared the ad with me and it took about ~3 days for TDs, documents validation and negotiations to finalize the deal. We agreed upon a price that wasn't too low to his expectations and not too high for me.

Put up your ad on the channels you are comfortable with; and wait patiently till you get a buyer who is really interested. It will happen for sure.

[Ford5]

Olx has a nasty habit of spam calling and not deleting ads when we tell them we're not interested in their quotes. Usually in Bangalore, their quotes are quite low compared to other aggregators.

Inspections get rebooked twice or even thrice and this has been my experience with Olx.

[lemedico]

Off topic, I got fed up of all these commercial websites when I was looking for a hatchback.
In the end I found a direct seller on Facebook marketplace.
Its free and they don't ring or text you because they don't have your number at any stage of the search and buy process.
I am quite happy with the end result, after wasting far too much time on spinny, olx and quickr. Tbhp classifieds had nothing in my geographical location, however I am sure that's at par with FB marketplace

[dextor]

Out of all the available platforms I can say from experience that OLX is the only useful alternative. I have sold 3 cars and 3 bikes since last 7-8 years without any troubles. Key to selling is to write an essay explaining all the plus and negatives of the vehicle along with many photos. My advertisements are atleast 500-700 words and there is really nothing left for buyer to ask.

I have to agree that it is becoming tougher now a days to use OLX mainly because of -
- Scamsters who want to transfer money through UPI
- Dealers who want to do bottom fishing
- Deal hunters who are botheration at all times.
- Olx money making initiatives.

I recently sold my car and it took quite some time. Initially I posted a free adv. and started waiting for people to drop messages. But apart from OLXAuto no one else responded. When a week passed I got the feeling that something is not right. The adv was visible and had all the details. I asked one of my friend to check the posting from his account. It was visible. I asked him to send me a price quote. This was the place where the problem was. OLX was blocking all the responses for this free adv.

I got furious and took all the snapshots of both accounts and called their customer care. They knew the issue but pretended that this might be some temporary issue and I need to wait or buy a paid service. I told them to go public on twitter with images and disconnected the call. Within 5 minutes I started getting notifications and some 20 messages from buyers were there in my Inbox. Now I was getting all the responses.

Once this issue was resolved then the other started. OLXAuto people converted my adv to their own platform adv. and added negative points there like repainted bonnet, multiple scratches, body vibration etc. Now I had to explain the buyers about the truth and I used to invite them to come and see the car. Finally in 3 weeks time, I got the buyer and sold it.

I think facebook classifieds might be the next thing after OLX malpractices.

[crdi]

Originally Posted by Bailey

I was disappointed that I got no response from T-BHP Classifieds

Not sure about your listing. The trend I have seen with tbhp classifieds is that even for mass market vehicles, the asking price is on the higher side and often astronomical. Anyone who is not a haggler, is disappointed with the asking price itself.
While most bhpians would like to strike a deal with another one, the unrealistic asking price and geographical road blocks with the listings are major reasons for low responses for tbhp classifieds, apart from the poor reach of the ads.

I know it would be just a pipe dream. But, I wish all honest tbhp listings were like ' This is the final offer from olx or whatever. If interested with a higher offer please contact within a week or so.'