Another question for the BAT experts...

I think that the time has finally come to find a new home for the Volvo V70R. 
 

I've heard that once you submit your car to BAT, you wait ... and wait, as it goes through their review process. Then if it's accepted, it just pops up on their site one day,  sometimes as long as 45 days later. I assume that this is just standard procedure because there are so many people waiting to list their cars.

I was wondering if upgrading from the $99 version to the $299 pro-photographer option speeds up the process.

Anybody have any insight into this?

It does not, but you at least have a slightly better idea of when it'll show because you know when the photos were taken. At that point it's already accepted as one they'll list. 

Well, you hear back really quickly if they've accepted your car or not.  Then listing time depends on the car and how many others like it they already have in the queue.  My corrado got listed really quickly, from when I submitted it to auction was less than a month.  I did pay for their photographer to come, which I think was totally worth it.  He took great pictures and had a check list from BaT of what pictures to take, so you get a really comprehensive set that gets posted.  Nobody really asked me for any additional pics.

I can't remember if I had my auction date set before the photographer came or not, I don't think it was.  I got a date shortly after all the pics were in and everything was reviewed.

One thing that I found annoying is that people can (and will) reach out to you to see the car in person.  Yeah, I get it, I'm selling a car and people need to see it.  However I was really hoping that listing on BaT would weed out the tire kickers.  I spent an entire weekend showing the car to 4-5 people, none of which ended up bidding on the car.  So they weren't serious buyers and just wasted my time, which I wasn't happy about.

Then the amount you get for the car is extremely variable, another corrado just like mine but nowhere near as sorted sold for 50% more than mine 4 months previously.  BaT won't accept your listing if you set the reserve too high, which puts you in a position of having to be ok with whatever that reserve price is.....

In reply to docwyte :

Thank you.

How long between the time that you requested the photographer and the actual photoshoot?

docwyte said:

Then the amount you get for the car is extremely variable, another corrado just like mine but nowhere near as sorted sold for 50% more than mine 4 months previously.  BaT won't accept your listing if you set the reserve too high, which puts you in a position of having to be ok with whatever that reserve price is.....

No offense but this sounds like a case of "I saw someone sell the same car on the internet for $100k, so I want $100k for mine." 

Maybe...just maybe...that car wasn't worth anything near what was paid for it, and the buyer was a complete idiot with way too much money, and the car was far closer to that buyers market than your example was. 

This is my gripe with BAT - cars in California sell for considerably more than cars in Kansas - because the buyers CAN kick the tires and because they've got a lot more cash to burn, or because their local market doesn't have any examples of the car they want to buy. 

BAT has kinda ruined Grassroots Motorsports. No longer can we find cheap examples of fun cars because everyone thinks they are sitting on a goldmine. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Maybe two weeks or so?

Definitely worth it for the pro photos if you want top dollar.  

In reply to pheller :

Sure, it's possible that the other corrado wasn't worth $25,500 and that there was a bidding war between 2-3 people who really wanted it.  However I saw it as setting the market for mine since it was the same color as mine and had almost 100k miles on it, so it wasn't a low mileage survivor/cream puff.  I thought that the amount it got was really a flyer but that my car would sell for at least a few thousand less, or $5-6k more than it did. 

That car was in the Northeast, which is much closer to large population centers than I am, but shipping isn't that much money, to get my car to the East Coast would've been $1500-2000, so nowhere near the cost differential. 

All I'm saying is every auction is different and even though you might have the best example of the car out there, it still could under perform compared to one that sold previously.

I don't think BaT has ruined Grassroots Motorsports.  Cheap fun cars aren't cheap anymore because people want fun cars.  That means they're worth more money.  If you're lamenting the fact you can't buy a good miata anymore for $1500 I don't know what to tell you, those days are gone and BaT had very little to do with it

I sold this car on BaT, with the auction closing yesterday (car belongs to a friend - not mine). It was my first sale there. 

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2017-porsche-911-carrera-4-coupe/

The process was fairly quick, and I paid the higher amount for a BaT photographer. In my case, that process was outsourced to a company named Snappr, which in turn uses independent photographers. If you live in a larger metro area, the pictures might be handled differently? While the guy who showed up was perfectly pleasant, I wasn't thrilled with the results. Given that it was a fairly new car and bone stock, I don't think it hurt the results much, if at all. He uploaded the pictures that day, they were processed (offshore I believe) and then available via the ad draft a day later. 

Overall, the process with BaT was painless. It took a few weeks start to finish to negotiate the reserve, get the pictures taken and then fine tune the ad copy. From there, it went live a few days later. I'm in the process of getting the car paid for now and scheduling shipping.

I'm in the midst of this process myself right now and it's horrible. 

They give you a general idea of the pics they want you to take and then once you submit them they tell you why they won't work and what you really need to be taking pictures of.

Then when you do that they say well you also need to take pics of this and so on and so on.  If they'd have just given me the comprehensive list up front we'd have been done, but we are 2 months into the process now.  I'm about to submit 147 pictures in a few minutes and I guarantee they'll come back with we also need this & this AGAIN!!

Car has been accepted and we haven't even begun the write up process other than the fact I've sent them the info a couple of months ago.  Will we go through the same process on that?

docwyte said:

In reply to pheller :

All I'm saying is every auction is different and even though you might have the best example of the car out there, it still could under perform compared to one that sold previously.

Agreed.

I'm just getting up to speed on BaT et. al. but from what I've seen (and what makes sense) you're really at the mercy of multiple interest...if there's only one serious buyer, the sale price will surprise to the down side.

Case in point...a really clean, low mileage 1984 RX-7 GSL-SE 5 Speed recently sold for an even 22K.

One owner put 95%+ of the miles on it, dry desert car,  great color combo, rare & desirable options (no to leather and yes to power steering).

To me, that car is worth 30K.  I didn't bid because the timing wasn't right...the interesting question is "what would the car have sold for if I joined in the bidding?"

To get it, would my bidding have pushed the price to 24, 26, 28, or even what I consider the FMV of 30K to be.

We'll never know. 

In reply to docwyte :

Here's the problem comparing a similar car months apart, especially the same color. If I was thinking a certain car would be cool, I'd look on BAT. If I found one, I'd bid, maybe get caught up and go higher than expected. If I don't win, I move on. 4 months later the desire to own that car has waned, so I don't bid on yours. That's what happens most of the time. Some people get lucky and have 2 people looking at the same time, some don't. It's the risk you take. 

In reply to carguy123 :

This is precisely my fear. Once I decide to sell, I want to move forward with the process. I don't want to be held hostage by the site for two months. I don't necessarily expect to find a buyer overnight, but I want to get the ball rolling. 
 

Well someone needs to ask, price and miles?

In reply to Steve_Jones :

I believe that BAT has a thing about never having advertised it anywhere else previously, so I'm still kind of in limbo there, but the car has been pretty well documented here on the forum for the last three years or so and I've probably already disclosed that it has about 128k miles on it. 

Pretty sure it can be listed previously, just not while the auction is live. Actually I think you can even have it advertised, just not with a price listed?

I decided to drive it today. I was wrong on the mileage. It has 1000 miles less than I thought!

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

Is that fuel gauge calibrated in gallons?  I've not seen that before. 

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Yes, and it's surprisingly accurate.