Car Buying Service vs Dealership - Where to Sell your Car

Car Buying Service vs Dealership - Where to Sell your Car

Posted on October 15, 2021

If you don’t want the hassle of selling your car privately, you have two main options. Use an online car buying service or sell to a dealership. Both have their pros and cons but which is best?

We’re not exactly unbiased here as our dealerships all buy quality used cars, but we will try to be as unbiased as possible in this post by outlining the pros and cons of selling to a car buying service vs dealership.

Pros of car buying services

Pros of car buying services include:

Convenient – Some online car buying services will value your car online, make you an offer online and let you accept that offer online. They may even come collect the car from your home!

Hands-free and safe – They offer a safer alternative to selling privately without many of the risks.

You can try multiple services to get the best price – As many work online, you can try them all to see which offers the highest price.

Cons of car buying services

Cons of car buying services include:

Low offers – Some car buying services or those run by brokers don’t always offer fair values for cars. Some do and some don’t so you have to know in advance what your car is worth.

Commissions – Some car buying services charge a commission. Those are usually those services that will advertise your car with their network for someone to bid on.

Valuations can be tough – If the car buying service you use has inspections, they are often merely exercises in driving down the offer. You’ll have to be a tough negotiator or be prepared to walk away.

Pros of selling to a dealership

Pros of selling to a dealership include:

Simple and safe – Drive to the dealership, take a seat and a coffee in our showroom and let us do the hard work. Get paid into your bank too!

Higher prices paid – Dealerships are now paying more than ever for quality used cars. We can offer much closer to what you would get selling privately, with none of the hassle.

No hassle car sales – No preparing ads, no taking photos, no having strangers at your house, no test drives. It’s all done at our dealership by professional staff.

Cons of selling to a dealership

Cons of selling to a dealership include:

No quite private sale prices – Even though we pay more than ever, we cannot quite get to private sale prices. We counter that with a safer, more enjoyable process though.

Hard to sell modified cars – It’s the same for car buying services but dealerships generally cannot buy heavily modified cars.

The good thing about selling to a Car buying service vs dealership is they are both safe, convenient ways to sell your car. Both have their pros and cons and will resonate better with some of you than others.

We bet we can beat their offer for your car though. Visit our dealership to find out!

For any questions, concerns, or inquiries. Please don’t hesitate to contact us here!

Thanks for reading. Be sure to connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn to stay up to date on our latest great articles!