UKC

Got a Citroen C1, 2010, 65k miles. Buying another car and getting rid of this. Is is best to trade in or sell. If selling, probably use a We Buy Any Car system. Anyone any experiences or advice?  Also, a bracket losing up the exhaust has corroded and exhaust securely held in by a botched up piece of wire. Should I get this fixed or sell as sold. I know close to zero about cars etc.and any tips greatly appreciated. 

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

If you're going WBAC don't bother getting any work done prior, it probably won't make any difference to what they offer. My feeling is they're a stress free way of getting rid of a piece of junk but that you'll probably get more for a decent car in a private sale. Trade ins are hit and miss in my experience.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

WBAC offered me £200 more than I ended up getting for my ancient car in part  exchange for latest motor. But it was in poor cosmetic condition and 120k on the clock. Ended up going with lower part-ex as needed the car to go test/collect the new one. Hope that helps!

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Stick your details in and get a price. Put your details into Autotrader for comparison. Factor in WBAC will knock off for any scuffs, dents or wear and tear. I’d imagine they’d offer around £400? Probably get more private but WBAC is hassle free.

Largely depends on whether you can be bothered advertising and enduring a series of tyre kickers and chancers offering you £200 to “take it off your hands”. Good luck

In reply to Stichtplate:

WBAC generally a bit naff. They’ll give you a decent quote online then knock a massive amount of it for the tiniest of marks when you actually bring it in. I’m assuming that’s the business model all round.

You could use the quote from WBAC then list it privately for a bit more and someone will come buy it pretty quick - that’s what I ended up doing anyway.

In reply to CMcBain:

This. They gave me a load of balls about how the paint was thicker on one panel as it had been repaired and knocked £200 off - can't see how that possibly affects the value of a 7 year old car but there you go!

In reply to featuresforfeet and all:

Im tempted for a private sale now. I’m inherently done idle lazy with this sort of stuff, but probs worth a punt for a private sale.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Sold two cars c 7 - 8 years old to WBAC, main thing is to declare everything then if they try to take further off you often find they will swap items in/out.

I had already agreed a part ex/without part ex price with the dealer, so when they tried to offer me less at WBAC I went to leave (in reality they were c£100 above) but the gesture prompted them to get back to within £50 of the original online quote 

In reply to Bottom Clinger: I've found WBAC to beat the dealer price twice now.... but it is better to go in there with an 'I will walk away' attitude. Saved 500 quid on one. It is pretty convenient for me though, and that's obviously something to bear in mind.

At the moment, I would sell privately. 2nd hand cars are in high demand so should be fairly straight forward to sell quickly

https://www.autoexpress.co.uk/news/355110/used-car-prices-skyrocket-all-tim...

In reply to CMcBain:

That wasn't our experience - they stood by the quoted price on our SMax, which did have some very minor marks/scuffs.

Maybe we were just lucky with the salesman, who seemed a very decent guy.

Very hassle-free and quick - which suited us as we weren't buying another car at the time.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

Last time I sold a car privately, it was a huge pain - lots of timewasters, lots of people calling back repeatedly offering a lot less etc.  Since then I've just PX'ed them, but armed with a we buy any car bottom line.  However, my son recently had to go to the US for a few years with only two weeks notice and didn't manage to sell his car before he left.  I found that the We buy... and the like would not buy unless the registered keeper was present.  VW were off-hand and dismissive as always (I wonder why I haven't had a VW in the past 20 years), so I just took it to a local dealer and got more than the We buy... price in 20 minutes.

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

It might be best to talk to where you are thinking of getting your next one from, my car dealer is currently only making sales with part exchange because the second hand car market is abit thin on the ground due to lack of production on new cars. So every time they sell something they want a car to either replace it on the forecourt or something they can take to auctions to trade in when they are looking for new stock. 

In reply to Mrs Only a Hill:

Good point, never thought of that. 

In reply to nniff:

I sold parents car to WBAC without them present, can't remember what documentation I needed (think I had a letter authorising me to sell the car signed by my dad, and id stuff for both him and me), but it wasn't a problem. This was just before Covid struck.

Also got a reasonable price from WBAC but that was because it was a small (Corsa) automatic which pushed their starting point up by £1k on a 13 year old car (eventual payment was £1,500).

Funnily enough, if the Gov website is accurate, it hasn't been taxed since 23 Feb 2020 so maybe it's been scrapped - doesn't look like one of WBAC's profitable purchases though 😁

In reply to Bottom Clinger:

As others have said, try a few decent secondhand dealers. They're all having problems getting stock at the moment so every chance they'd buy for a decent price.