Selling through Motorway

[Pondrew]

I said I would share my experience having just sold a car through Motorway.

For anyone who doesn't know; this is how it works with Motorway:
They are just a 'middle man', they don't buy anything. They get the details of your car, give an estimate of what it should sell for and put it into a 24 hour 'auction' for dealers who have signed up with them to bid. They suggest a reserve price, which in my case was £150 less than their original valuation. Once the auction has ended they notify you what the car achieved. You can accept of decline the offer, however, if it above reserve they don't like you saying no, as it is wasting everyone's time.

Once the offer has been confirmed, they ask the winning dealer to contact you directly and arrange to collect the car. Someone turns up to collect on the agreed date, does an appraisal to check it is 'as described', then contacts the dealer who transfers the money instantly. The car is driven away and all is complete.

You pay nothing. The dealers pay Motorway a fee for using their auction platform.

My experiences:

I sold a previous car through them in 2022. I called them on the phone and they set everything up for me and gave me an email link to send photos, etc. I spoke to two people, both based in London. The car sold in their 24 hour auction and was bought by a fairly local main dealer. The sales manager's wife actually turned up to collect. Took 5 minutes and the money was paid. She then drove the car away. It was the simplest transaction I have ever had TBH.

Two years later and I thought I would do it all through their website, as it should be simpler and quicker, as I knew the process. First problem I had was that the website will only accept photos taken with a phone, as they text you a link to upload them. I don't do photos that way, as I take them with a 'proper' camera and upload them onto my PC. No way to do that on their website.
So I phoned them. They now have a call centre in South Africa who can take a while to answer the phone. They were very helpful and emailed me a link to email photos through. It took a few calls to get everything sorted but it was fairly painless. There was a lot more information required than the last time I used them.

The car was auctioned the next day. It sold for £128 more than the reserve, but that was still around £100 less than the original valuation. This was still around 10% more than WBAC or Cazoo, etc so pretty good.

They emailed me details of who had won the auction and said they would be in touch within 24 hours. 24 hours came and went, so did 48 hours..nothing! I rang Motorway to see what was happening. They contacted the dealer (carbase in Bristol) to chase them. Next day I had a call from a logistics company to arrange collection. We agreed a day and a rough time. They didn't turn up and I had no call or message. I phoned them to see where they were...they got the days mixed up it should have been the next day! Luckily I work from home.
The collection guy turned up today, on time, did his appraisal phoned the dealer and they paid the money and he took the car. I NEVER spoke to or had a message from the buying dealer..at all!

So in summary...Motorway are very good just not quite as good as they used to be.
Depending who buys the car, the dealers can be excellent or not so good. And it seems logistics people don't know what day of the week is what!

HTH

[pvr]

Still better than private I would say. Cazoo was ok for me, but they did spend a long time looking at the minute of details but didn't take any money off.

I know you are not really a smartphone user, but you can take proper pics and put them on your OneDrive from which you have access to from your phone as well. On an iPhone you also have the iCloud drive where you have access to both PC/Mac as well as phone.

As you are a cheapskate, I suspect you have an Android phone so the OneDrive (or Google Drive) would work for you to have stuff on your phone as well as PC. If quality isnt the main issue, you can have WhatsApp on your phone and PC and you can send yourself pics that way as well.

[M1k3yC]

Thanks for sharing, this is useful info to know.

It feels like you should be able to get the same price by just calling a few dealers directly, especially as the dealer pays Motorway a fee for using the platform. I will probably need to sell a car over the next few weeks and am still undecided on what route to go down.

Re. being texted a link - if it's a link to a website I'm surprised you couldn't just manually type it into a web browser on a PC then drag and drop your camera photos.

[Boyo]

Thanks for sharing your experience of Motorway. I decided to sell my VW Up GTI through them earlier this week. The process of listing the car with them was painless. Unfortunately the car fell short of the reserve price by £500.
As a back up I had We Buy Any Car lined up and when the Motorway auction finished yesterday at 3.30pm and my car was short of the reserve price I booked an appointment at We Buy Any Car for an hour later and realised £325 net more than the highest Motorway bid. I have used We Buy Any Car once before and in my experience I have found them to be fair. I do think it depends how honest you are with your initial appraisal of your car and also how you present the car to them. I may have realised a little more with a private sale but tbh I just couldn't be bothered.

[Dav the wheel nut]

A couple of months ago I sold a car through Motorway. I got 8.5k for the car and the procedure was painless.
The garage put the car up for sale at £10.900. It was eventually reduced to £9450 before it was sold.
If you take in account they had to service it, MOT it and pay for collection they didn’t make a great deal of money on it so I was happy with how it worked out

[Nictrix]

A couple of months ago I sold a car through Motorway. I got 8.5k for the car and the procedure was painless.
The garage put the car up for sale at £10.900. It was eventually reduced to £9450 before it was sold.
If you take in account they had to service it, MOT it and pay for collection they didn’t make a great deal of money on it so I was happy with how it worked out

They probably make their money if the new owner takes their finance.

[pvr]

Exactly that. My car was only about £500 more advertised on their site so it had to be the finance

[Pondrew]

It feels like you should be able to get the same price by just calling a few dealers directly, especially as the dealer pays Motorway a fee for using the platform. I will probably need to sell a car over the next few weeks and am still undecided on what route to go down.

You would think so, but it doesn't seem to work IME. Problem is if you do that, YOU have to find a dealer that wants the car at that moment; many don't. When I sold my Focus, I called all of my local Ford dealers and none were interested. It sold to a different Ford dealer through Motorway!

Re. being texted a link - if it's a link to a website I'm surprised you couldn't just manually type it into a web browser on a PC then drag and drop your camera photos.

Yes you probably can do that, but a) I had already taken all the photos with my DSLR camera so didn't want to do them again and b) I don't know how to upload phone photos to my PC (cos I'm computer illiterate)!

[Pondrew]

A couple of months ago I sold a car through Motorway. I got 8.5k for the car and the procedure was painless.
The garage put the car up for sale at £10.900. It was eventually reduced to £9450 before it was sold.
If you take in account they had to service it, MOT it and pay for collection they didn’t make a great deal of money on it so I was happy with how it worked out

Funny you should say that as I was thinking the same thing.
My car sold to a supermarket type place in Bristol for £9,527.00. They would have to pay Motorway their fees which I am guessing is around £200 a car. They have to pay the logistics company to get it from me to them (150 miles away). Got to be another £200 minimum.
The car needs at least two (and probably 4) new tyres before they can sell it (two rears were advisories on MOT for perishing and the two fronts are at 2.5mm). Even cheapo tyres will cost them £300 for a set of four, as they are 18".
So before they can put it on sale it has cost them £10,200.
It should really have an oil service, as that is due in a couple of thousand miles which many buyers will insist on IMO.

The same supermarket have got three other cars identical to mine for sale, same mileage, same model, same spec for £10,900.

They could easily make nothing out of my car, especially if the intermittent parking sensor fault comes up while they are liable for the car.

The chap who collected the car did comment on how good it was, though, and I heard him say that to the buyer on the phone!

[Pondrew]

Mine is up for sale already! And the cheeky feckers have used MY photos in the ad taken from the Motorway site!
https://www.carbase.co.uk/used/mazda/3/ ... v65273153/

[Zedebee]

You’re busted. It’s still got your fingerprints all over the touchscreen

[Dav the wheel nut]

Mine is up for sale already! And the cheeky feckers have used MY photos in the ad taken from the Motorway site!
https://www.carbase.co.uk/used/mazda/3/ ... v65273153/

The most surprising thing is that they’ve used the photo of the well worn footwell

[pvr]

And those are pics from a proper camera ?

[Pondrew]

You’re busted. It’s still got your fingerprints all over the touchscreen

I cleaned it and took another one sans fingerprints, but they obviously weren't bothered!

[M1k3yC]

The data in this thread is useful. Based on listed prices, I know the rough retail value of my Jazz. I took it to Honda for a service last week and the sales manager is willing to pay me about £1,500 under what I think the retail value of the car is to take it off my hands. Admittedly they have almost nothing to do to the car to prepare it for sale. However, given they have to run a dealership, pay employees, and pay VAT on the profit they make I don't have too much of a problem with that margin. It's also the first garage I've asked so gives me a negotiating point if I'm going the part ex route.