These days, people who want to sell their car will often attempt to advertise it for sale through various mediums (no, not psychic mediums!) such as in their local newspaper, online, or maybe even via the noticeboard at their place of work. They will usually achieve some degree of success with their advertisements, but you get the odd few people who will attempt to sell a pretty much unsellable car!
I’ve sold a few cars in my time, and I’ve certainly bought a few too. Every now and then I come across a car for sale where I think to myself “is this guy joking, or is this a real advert”! If you need to sell your car, and you are serious about doing so, please don’t try to sell it via the following ways!
The one-liner
One thing I really hate about the way some people that advertise their cars for sale is when the advert is literally just one sentence of text. For example, you might browse through eBay and filter your search for a specific car or type of car. When you click on an advert, you are greeted with literally one sentence of information, and it was posted through the eBay Mobile app!
“Ford Focus, green, long MOT, good runner.” isn’t exactly a great description for a car, is it! Although many people opt to use mobile apps to sell their cars, you still need to tell people a bit about what they are potentially going to buy!
Scrap on wheels
Sometimes if you are after a cheap £500 runabout, the first thing you will do is try to find a car that is in the best possible condition that you can get for your money. Granted, half a grand isn’t a huge amount of money to get you something nearly new or 100% reliable, but you want something that will at least take you to work and back without breaking down.
There are many secondhand cars on the market that unscrupulous sellers will try to pass off as reliable and mechanically sound when, in fact, they are about to fail spectacularly. Please don’t be one of those sellers – if your car is about to die, do it a favour by helping it on its way to scrap heaven rather than palming it off onto an unsuspecting buyer. Some car dealers try to sell what are effectively scrap cars, and many end up getting caught and being prosecuted for doing so.
Losing the focus
This is something that I would probably say at least 30% of car sellers do out there, and that is take photographs of their pride and joy when they’ve got the shakes! If you’ve got a digital camera and you want to take some awesome photos, invest in a cheap £10 camera tripod. If you are using your mobile phone to take photos, invest in a digital camera (you can pick them up for as little as £40 nowadays).
I must admit that if I see an advert with out of focus images, then I usually just move on to other adverts – and I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person that does this!
If you avoid these common issues, you will be able to sell your car fast and with the least amount of hassle!