Trade-Ins: Using the Internet to Sell Your Old Car

Thinking about your options for disposing of your existing car is an important step, especially after you decide to buy a new car. After all, the value of your current car may be in the eye of the beholder, but that value has an effect on your buying power.

Fortunately, the Internet opens a world of options to help you maximize the price you get for your car when you dispose of it. Whether you want to sell, trade, donate, or even junk your car, making sure that you get the best value from your automobile is worthwhile.

In this chapter, we show you how to surf the Internet to find dozens of disposal options — and the right one that meets your budget and your tax needs. We drive you around the Web and make pit stops at some of the most innovative disposal opportunities available — ones that you need to know about to maximize the value of your trade-in.

We also show you where to find the best online classified advertising, tell you why Internet auctions may prove the right way for you to find the right buyer, and explore alternative disposal options, including barter sites that enable you to trade your car for something else and bona fide charity organizations that offer tax receipts for your old clunker.

Determining How Much Your Car Is Worth

REMEMBER
How much is your car worth? Now, that's a good question — and one that you need to answer before you can think of selling or otherwise disposing of your used car online! Of course, the value of a car fluctuates because of several variables, some of them within your control and some that are out of your control, as the following paragraphs explain. All those variables are worth taking into account as you price your car.

For starters, the way you've maintained your car during the time you've owned it is important. Although the caveat "let the buyer beware" is never more true than when buying a used car, keep in mind that the better you've maintained your car, the more it's worth. The same is true of low mileage. A high-mileage car is simply worth less than one with a smaller number on its odometer. Finally, how you drive a car can affect its value. Although auto technicians can do miraculous repair work these days, a repaired car is still not as desirable as a never-been-wrecked vehicle.

The variables you have little or no control over include what options the car has (power windows, automatic transmission, and so on), what model year the car is, and what type of car you have. We wish we could tell you that you can use the Internet to turn a 1978 Chevette into a 2000 Corvette (what a difference two letters makes!), but that just isn't so.

The Bible of used cars is the Kelley Blue Book. You can buy the book itself through an online bookstore, such as Amazon.com, Borders.com, or BarnesandNoble.com, or you can go directly to the Kelley Blue Book Web site (at www.kbb.com) to check out a wealth of information about every car model imaginable. You can use the information that you find online as a base to figure out what your car may be worth.

Edmunds.com (at www.edmunds.com) is a similar service that bases its information on a popular line of books. The Web site does a nice job with its valuation of all used car models, offering detailed evaluations and both trade-in and market prices. A car's trade-in price - what a dealer is likely to give you for the car if you trade it in for a newer model - is lower than its market price. A car's market price is lingo for the price at which a dealer expects to sell the car to an individual.

CarPrices.com (at www.carprices.com) is another great place to find out how much your car is worth. Click the Used Cars button on the home page of this Web site to access a section that enables you to check a trade-in's value by make and model. This site offers both a wholesale and retail value for the car of your choice.

Taking an Online Tour of Your Disposal Options

Time spent on the Internet is time well spent if you figure out from your online forays how to get the best value out of your existing car. Your choices vary, and you can make your decision easier by thoroughly exploring your online options. If you can discover what kind of market exists for your car, you can tap into it effectively. Some cars are much prized in the used-car market. Others are perfect only for the junkyard — but worth a tax deduction if you donate them to a worthwhile charity. All you need is the knowledge of where to find these resources, and that's what we show you in the followin sections.

Online newspaper classifieds

Most newspapers across North America and elsewhere contain classified advertisements. Many newspapers, in fact, rely on the income that classified ads generate to support their news-gathering activities.

As newspapers struggle to find their place in the Internet era, many of them find posting their classified sections online useful. This practice enables you, as a vehicle seller, to consult various classified sections online to compare what other sellers are asking for cars similar to yours. You can also use the Internet to place your ad.

TIPS!
Two key Web sites are worth bookmarking to provide you with direct access to most newspapers in the world. Bourque Newswatch (at www.bourque.com) provides direct access to hundreds of American and Canadian newspapers from one easy-to-navigate home page. OnlineNewspapers.com (at www.onlinenewspapers.com) is a more complex Web site full of listings for major newspapers from around the world.

These two URLs alone plug you into almost every key newspaper that you can find on the Internet. And in these newspapers, you can find tens of thousands of newspaper classified ads for cars online.

Here's an example: From the Bourque Web site, we recently accessed the Arkansas Democrat Gazette (at www.arclerngaz.com) to consult its classified ads - just click the Classified Ads button. There, we easily found the automotive page by clicking the Automotive link, and typing the word Chevrolet into its simple-to-use search engine. In an instant, we received details about hundreds of Chevrolets for sale, including model, year of manufacture, features, and asking price. This method is a terrific way to find out what others are asking for cars similar to yours.

Next, we consulted the paper's Info & E-mail page (just click the Info & E-mail button), which gave us all the information we needed to submit our own classified ad. This section of the site even enables you to use an online form to submit the ad directly to the paper's Classifieds department. Many other newspapers, from The Miami Herald (at www.herald.com) to the Toronto Star (at www.thestar.com), work along similar lines.

TIP!
Given the incredible reach of the Internet, visiting several newspapers online within your geographical area to compare both car prices and ad costs is always worthwhile. By finding out what prices people are asking for cars similar to yours, you can make sure that you get a fair price for your old jalopy. And by comparing ad prices, you can make sure that you're not paying too much to place an ad.

Online-only classifieds
A number of independent online used car Web sites have recently set up shop as e-commerce operations. They thrive exclusively online and are well worth considering as a potential place to list your car for sale because they contain many more listings than newspaper classifieds do, and they reach a larger number of prospective buyers.

AutoTrader.com (at www.autotrader.com) is one such place. This Web site bills itself as the worlds largest selection of used cars with "more than 1.5 million listings, updated daily".

What we love about AutoTrader.com is that it enables you to list your car for sale for free. Obtaining that free listing is a simple six-step process:
Select Your Make, Select Your Model, Enter the Year and Price, Enter the Description, Enhance Your Listing, and Enter Your Personal Information. After your entry is satisfactory to you, submit it and wait for a buyer. (You can modify or remove your listing at any time.)

America Online (at www.aol.com) offers its own classifieds: ClassifiedsPlus. Users benefit from access to the world's biggest online community. You can access the classifieds section directly off the main AOL home page by clicking the Classifieds link. From there, AOL prompts you to follow a Place Your Ad link to the Place an Ad page. From there, click the Vehicles link; this takes you to a page from which you can choose categories ranging from motorcycles to RVs to parts. The drawback here is that when you click the Used Cars link, you're sent to AutoTrader.com. Still, the combination of an AOL-AutoTrader linkup is a powerful siren call for your ad placement.

Trader Online (at www.traderonline.com) is another great classifieds Web site. As a supplement to the Trader newspapers that you can buy at news-stands, Trader Online offers for sale cars, trucks, boats, RVs, and more— just about any mode of motorized travel you can think of. To sell your car for free, click the Autos tab (or whichever of the others best describes the vehicle you have for sale) and then click the FREE classified listing link. This site also offers a link to the Kelley Blue Book site so that you can determine a fair price for your car.

AutoWeb.com (at www.autoweb.com), in affiliation with UsedCar.com (at www.usedcar.com), charges a monthly fee and promises that your ad is going to "reach three million potential car buyers a month." A bonus is that your AutoWeb listing is also posted on Yahoo!'s classifieds page (at automobiles.classifieds.yahoo.com) for additional exposure.

WorldWideWheels.com (at www.heels.com on the Web) bills itself as the "most comprehensive automobile site on the Net." You can place used car ads here, with or without a photo, for free, and the listing process takes just one or two seconds. All you do is click the Place a Free Ad link, click the ad form link, and fill in the requested information. You must renew the process every three weeks, however, to ensure that the listing continues; this requirement helps Web operators keep track of which cars are still for sale.

CarShoppers.com (at www.carshoppers.com) also offers free classified ads with photos. You must be a member of this site to use it, but membership is free.

AutoNetUSA.com (at www.autonetusa.com) is another interesting Web site. It promises the buyer "a faster, easier way of shopping for a new or used vehicle." And anything that enables a buyer to find your car more easily is well worth taking a look at.

CarPrices.com (at www.carprices.com) is also open to members, and its membership is free. During our recent visit, new members were enticed to sign up with an offer of free long-distance telephone service. This Web site offers a simple-to-use ad placement form for the seller, and buyers can enjoy the ease of searching for specific used cars.

On a much smaller scale, the Automotive Database Web site (at www.vaxxine.com/adbase/) lists both vehicles for sale and vehicles that people want. Users not only can browse, but also can post ads in both sections. The listing for each particular car is rudimentary, and interested parties contact the seller directly through e-mail. Although not the vastest archive of vehicles, this site's user-friendliness is attractive.

REMEMBER!
Online classifieds offer you a great way to get your car out into the open marketplace. But that open marketplace is highly competitive and contains many, many listings from just about everywhere. Consider the key selling points of your particular car and use them in your ad to highlight why a buyer wants to choose your car instead of someone else's similar offering.

TIP!
Because many locations offer free ad placements, you may want to try posting your ad at several sites to ensure maximum exposure. AutoTrader.com, WorldWideWheels.com, and CarPrices.com are good choices.

Online auctions

Some of the most popular e-commerce operations on the Internet are auction sites. Operations such as eBay.com (www.ebay.com), Bid.com (www.Bid.com), and a host of others attract millions of loyal users. Some observers think that online auctions may one day replace classifieds as the medium of choice for the majority in selling and buying between individuals.

You can find many different types of auctions online:

- Regular auctions, or English auctions, are the most popular. Generally, buyers bid on an item until the auction ends, and the item sells to the highest bidder at the end of the auction. If a seller lists an item with a minimum reserve price, this ensures that the product doesn't sell for less than a buyer's lowest sale price. Using a reserve bid ensures that you, as a seller, don't need to sell at a price below your comfort level.
- Dutch auctions, on the other hand, are a little trickier. In Dutch auctions, two or more identical items are put up for bid; all winning bidders pay an identical price, which is the lowest successful bid. This form of auction doesn't really suit the sale of your car online, as only one successful bidder can buy your car.
- Some online sites hold other forms of auctions. Lycos, for example, offers Quick Win auctions. In such an auction, the first bidder to meet your asking price buys the item.

Most online auction houses require that you register as a member or user. Generally, membership is free, and you must agree to a binding agreement with respect to terms of use.

We suggest that you start out at eBay, which is possibly the world's biggest and best-known Internet auction site. This Web site attracts millions of users and offers a vast array of products for auction at any given time of the day. The eBay site boasts a new automotive section, too — one of the slickest we've seen. During a recent visit, the site (at www.ebaymotors.com) featured an auction for Queen Wilhelmina's rare 1946 Daimler limousine. But don't worry if your car is slightly less glitzy. At eBay, you can find room for every kind of car imaginable. (Remember also to check out eBay's tips on how to sell online by clicking the How to sell button.)

CityAuction's Web site (at www.Utrade.com) also displays a lot of effervescence. Buyers and sellers meet here to exchange everything from Barbie dolls to BMWs. This site also enables sellers to sign up for FairMatch, a daily e-mail notification service that keeps you up to speed about prospective buyers.

A number of lesser-known auction sites ply their trade exclusively online, and one of these may well prove perfect for your needs:

- AuctionAddict.com (at www.auctionadctict.com) is an independent Web site that generates a fair amount of action. It thinks of itself as "a huge Internet swap meet" and makes listings available to anyone who registers for a free site membership. The service is free to the buyer, although the site charges a small commission to the seller — but only if the product sells at auction. Whether you're selling a convertible, coupe, hatchback, street rod, or racing vehicle, a buyer may well be lurking at this site just waiting for your auction to begin.
- ReverseAuction.com (at www.ra-vehicles.com) presents an intriguing pitch and charges no bidding or buying fees. It offers "online bidding in reverse for old and new cars.., our prices drop instead of rise, and you can watch this process live on your screen." This site specializes in auctioning antique and classic cars, such as classic Chevrolets and Corvettes. The site collects fees from the seller and is open to members only, although registration is available to everyone except minors.

In their quest to be all things to as many people as possible, several top search engine portals operate popular online auction sites:
- Yahoo! Auctions (at auctions.yahoo.com) are quite popular. Check out the Seller Guide to discover the rules and what you need to know to register yourself for a Yahoo! ID. Next, click the Automotive link on the main page to access the auctions area, where we recently noted that more than 2,500 car auctions were underway during our one visit. A 1998 Porsche Carrera had two bids, one topping $50,000, while a 1965 Thunderbird had six bids, the highest at just $2,000.
- Lycos' auction site (at auctions.lycos.com) is one of the biggest in this category. Lycos offers listings for everything from Beanie Babies to gold coins, and the site auctions thousands of vehicles, too. The Lycos auctions require both buyers and sellers to register.
- Amazon.com (at www.amazon.com) is also in the auction game now. Best known as "Earth's Biggest Bookstore," the online monolith is branching out into the sale of a wide variety of goods. Click the Auctions tab on the main page to visit its Auctions page, and then click the Cars & Transportation link to access a page of auctions for cars, parts, and automotive paraphernalia. You need an Amazon.com account to list your car for auction.

For more information about online auctions, check out Internet Auctions For Dummies and CliffsNotes Buying and Selling on eBay, both published by IDG
Books Worldwide, Inc.

Other online disposal options (If you can't get cash)

If you just can't seem to find a buyer who's willing or able to pay cash for your old faithful, you may want to consider other options for disposing of your vehicle online. Two possibilities are to trade — or barter — your car for something else, or simply to donate it to charity, as the following sections describe.

Trading your car for something else by bartering

What are your options if you can't find a buyer for your car with the cash to pay for it? Consider trading it for something else, such as a canoe, a couch, or even a drum set. Trade4lt.Net (at www.trade4it.net) is "where one man's junk is another man's treasure." This site is free to buyers, who can wheel and deal and pitch you just about anything imaginable in exchange for your car. Sellers — or those with items for which they want to barter — can set up an account for $9.95 per month to post an unlimited number of listings.

Expect the online barter market to explode over the next year. Other sites, such as CarBarter.com (www.carbarter.com), Barter.com (www.barter.com), Barter.net (www.barter.net), and Barter.ca(www.barter.ca.com), aren't yet operational at the time of this writing. But expect many of them to erupt online this year with their own barter systems.

Donating your used car on the Internet
Hauling that clunker to the local junkyard may end up being the only option left in the life of your car. But wait! Have you thought about donating it to a charitable organization in exchange for a legal IRS tax deduction?

Vehicle Donation Processing Center, Inc. (at www.donating-a-useci-car.com), acts as a middleman for charities seeking vehicle donations. This service covers many of America's largest urban centers, and it isn't picky about whether the car actually works. Its "main function is to provide a revenue stream for charities in need of funding," which happens if it can sell a car for more than the cost of the towing. Visit the site's list of participating charities, consult the categories of vehicles it's willing to accept, and apply online. (Notice that the service doesn't accept cars that are more than 15 years old.)

WARNING!
Although we demonstrate a wide variety of options open to you online as a car seller in this chapter, you always need to keep in mind whom the buyer is and how he intends to pay you for your car. Never sell merely on the promise of a vague future payment. In other words, make sure that you receive your payment before you hand over the ownership and the keys to your car. There are many scam artists out there, and because of the anonymity a person has through the Web, it's important to be cautious when selling any item online.