Drive Virtually Free: Smart Used Car Buying Advice

Like most people, I hate when someone wastes my time. If you’ve ever sold anything through classifieds, you know the frustration of dealing with buyers who aren’t serious.

There are definitely more ways to identify people who are just looking rather than who want to buy, but in general, my experience has been that you shouldn’t waste your time with anyone who falls into the following categories:

• Someone who hasn’t already seen an example of the same car already (or one that is similar). Usually, people do not buy the first car that they look at, and these folks are still in the beginning phases of shopping.  They won’t have any reference point against which to evaluate your car and in my experience, are never ready to buy.  You may get the primacy part of the primacy-recency effect, but it seems that usually the convenience of buying the car you’re already looking at leads people to buy cars near the end of the shopping cycle.
• Someone who is undecided between different makes and/or models of cars. These folks are in a similar category as the ones who haven’t seen a similar car to yours already.  If someone is still deciding on what kind of car they want, don’t bother showing them your car, because more than likely they will come over, drive it and then tell you that they need to go look at another model before making any decisions.
• Someone who wants to buy sight-unseen. Not only do you have to be especially wary of scams with these individuals, but usually if someone claims they are ready to buy from out of state without seeing the car, they’re just poking around and trying to see what kind of deal they can get.  I have bought cars from out of state, but the difference is that I’ve always wanted to test drive them first.
• Someone who wants to negotiate over the phone, never having seen the car. These people seem to just be asking the same question to 100 different buyers, trying to use the shotgun approach to finding the lowest price.  They usually ask something like, “What’s the lowest price you’ll take?”  Without having seen the car or even having asked any other questions, they don’t know anything about its quality relative to other cars, so if you are priced competitively you can be pretty sure that these folks are just going to waste your time.
• Someone who is generally not knowledgeable about the car. My favorite question was from a friend who was selling his BMW M3, which is on par with a Porsche 911 in straight line acceleration – he said someone asked him, “Is it fast?”  If someone generally doesn’t know their stuff about your car, they are probably still in the beginning phases of shopping and will be using your time to learn about the car rather than actually evaluate whether it is the right car for them to take home that same day.

If you feel like you want to spend time with every prospective buyer, feel free to do so.  As with anything, there are exceptions to these guidelines and they aren’t hard and fast, so you may find buyers that I would have pegged as tire kickers early on.  My point is that you should try to focus on people who know what they want, have done their homework and are ready to buy because they are much more likely to take the car home and are less likely to waste your time.

If you have more suggestions, do feel free to share your experiences in the comments section.