AUTO BILD spoke to Ulf Voigt from carsale24 about the advantages of purchase portals and the development of used car prices.
CAR PICTURE: What particular strengths do you see at carsale24 compared to the competition?
Ulf Voigt: We see our neutral consulting service as the strongest point. We do not buy the vehicles ourselves and are therefore particularly motivated to get the best price for the seller. The commission to be paid by the buyer increases with the height of the sales price. Best of all, the seller and buyer have no contact until the contract is signed. If the seller accepts the bid, he sells the vehicle without having to negotiate himself – practically from the sofa.
To promise this would not be serious. Of course it can happen that a competitor submits a comparable or better bid. However, the seller also has to invest a lot more time. Depending on the process, he has to phone various people, negotiate, carry out test drives, organize payment or drive to a potential buyer. The dealer picks up the vehicle from us, pays the agreed price directly and, if desired, also deregisters it immediately. It couldn’t be more convenient and safer.
Many private individuals are afraid of contact with dubious buyers and rip-offs when selling used cars. Can carsale24 take this worry away? Or do you only determine the best price – and the seller may have to contact the buyer later, or in the worst case even agree to renegotiation upon collection?
We can absolutely take this fear. Our dealers are known to us by name – we do not accept dubious actions and would lead to the dealer being excluded from our platform. If there are any questions when handing over the vehicle, our employees will be happy to answer them by phone.
Ulf Voigt from carsale24: “We do not accept dubious actions!”
If all questions in the sales advertisement have been answered correctly and all defects that are obvious to the layperson have been pointed out – with photos if you like – we can rule out renegotiation.
Chip crisis, inflation and war continue to drive used car prices up. Should I still use the development, sell my used car now? Or can I still safely wait half a year because the high price level will last longer? How long do you think it will stay like this?
A clear recommendation for the next six months is not easy in this situation and also depends heavily on the car in question. Basically, we see a noticeable slowdown in the rise in used car prices – at a still high level. Driven by the rising fuel prices are straight vehicles with high consumption currently traded somewhat cheaper, while the prices of electric vehicles continue to rise.
Selling a car online is getting easier and easier. Nevertheless, you have to give a lot of information about your car. Do you see any opportunities to make the sales process even faster and more convenient, how will carsale24 develop in the future?
In fact, the average time to create an ad is currently just five minutes. The information requested is important in order to achieve a very good price for the seller and to sell the vehicle with binding effect. Of course, it is our goal to make the process even faster and more convenient for the user. For example, we are currently working on using artificial intelligence to extract vehicle information from the images.
