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Comment by ValG | Hacker News Reader

Hi Guys, Val here from InstaMotor. We’re trying to be to car dealerships what airbnb is to the hotel industry.

We’d love to get some additional feedback on the service. Any feedback provided is super beneficial. We’re specifically looking for some feedback on:

1. When you get to the site, within the first 30 seconds, do you understand what we do. Why or why not?

2. If you do understand what we do, would you ever use a service like this? How much would you be willing to pay for this service?

3. What’s the biggest benefit to the service that you see?

4. Any general feedback on the site the content, the service as a whole would be great.

Thanks for the help guys, We always appreciate it!

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This is a very clean and straightforward website - no BS to wade through, no popups asking for my email, just straightforward here's-how-you-do-it. If I had seen this a couple months ago I would have definitely saved a couple thousand bucks.

One thing that's really inspiring about this is that it has the potential to completely change the concept of used car sales. Just like how realtors take you around to go see houses that are for sale, a car salesman can become a person who takes you around to test drive cars for sale.

I might be wrong about your target market, but it seems like it is currently a market of wealthy individuals with high-valued cars to sell but no time to sell them. However, the quickest sales are the ones for lower valued cars - way back when I only had four figures in the bank, my only requirement for my used car was that it not make weird noises.

One lucrative direction you could go with this in the future is adding financing options, so someone could lease a used car from you and you could pass a percentage of the monthly car payments on to the car owner. Or, you could buy the car from the owner and lease it out to potential owners. I have no idea what the legal requirements are to be able to do this, but if it works you'd have a pretty stable source of recurring income.

Overall it's a great idea, I wish you the best of luck with this!

primitivesuave - you have excellent insights, any experience in the car sales world? These are a lot of the same items that we've been exploring. I'd love to chat with you offline if you're available. Feel free to email me at val@instamotor.com if you're available or call text me at 510.761.5692

Ultimately, I want to know how much I could sell my car for before bothering to sign up.

Asking for a phone number made me close the page. People use the web because they want to do things on their time and not to have to deal with people calling them.

To be honest, the phone number made it seem like one of the millions of lead generation services (e.g. limos.com) where your information is forwarded to a bunch of companies who then all spam you and call you for weeks to come. Email should be enough.

1. Yep- you guys handle getting my car sold. Seems pretty straightforward.

2. Yes, definitely. When I moved to SF, I drove here from the east coast. After realizing that I didn't need my car and it was expensive to keep, I looked into getting rid of it. It was a 93 ford taurus, and from what I could tell, not worth too much more than the cost of getting it registered in CA and in shape to sell. I ended up donating it because I just wanted to get rid of it. Having someone sell it for me would definitely have been worth it.

3. Not having to spend the time and effort managing the car sale, finding a buyer, figuring out the price, etc.

4. Looks handy. Your recently sold cars are all much newer and nicer than mine was, though, so I'm curious if your service would have worked for my older vehicle.

> I ended up donating it because I just wanted to get rid of it. Having someone sell it for me would definitely have been worth it.

I just did the same thing for similar reasons. If there was no hassle for me, I would've sold it. 2 months too late!

Having just spent several hours and a ~hundred dollars to find out a potential minivan is a lemon, I'd love to utilize something like this from the buyers' side. Do you have plans to address the other side of the market?

My personal feeling is the 5% is to high for luxury or expensive cars.

I have one right now that I will be selling (2012 Porsche) and my immediate reaction was a) I still have to prep and detail my car - I don't have to do that if I trade it in and b) 5% is to much. c) I don't want strangers driving my car. d) I don't want to be hassled with selling my car which is why I take the hit at the dealer. If you want to call it that.

Remember also that trade in deals are actually negotiable. Like anything else.

Also dealers actually typically try to slant a trade in toward giving you more money (so it gives you an incentive to buy thinking you are selling something valuable).

You might want to alter your % based on price. And also create a way of separating sellers of higher priced cars from more commodity vehicles.

Should offer to detail the car as well (for a price), that can drastically increase the sale price. Perhaps you could find some mobile detail guys that you could contract out. Make it the gold package or something.

1. Yup you sell someone's car 2. Probably, I need to sell my car within the next year and it's a hassle to put the pictures online, etc. 3. You guys handle the test drive. 4. Seems good to me.

Thanks a lot Matt! And let us know when you're selling it. We'll give you the friends and family discount :)

I have a car I need to sell, I'm in the Bay Area. Sadly the car is back in Florida, I need to fly back and take the time to sell it. Major PITA, too bad you don't service South Florida ;)

What car are you selling?

Infiniti G35 Coupe.

1) Just looking at the site, without actually signing up, I can't really figure out what you do. I had to read through the comments here to understand what the service is. 2) I would be willing to pay several hundred to a thousand dollars, depending on what the car is and how difficult it is to sell. 3) Saving time and hassle is the biggest benefit for me. 4) Put more info on the site regarding what the service is, what benefits you provide, without having to sign up.

On the slider which compares selling with Instamotor vs. trading with a dealership, I think you should consider changing "You earn" with "You save." It was confusing to me exactly what it represented.

Also, not sure if it matters too much, but generally framing things as "not-losing" is better than framing something as a gain.[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_aversion

Is this a real thing? if you guys are in Chicago you can come by today to take some pictures of my car:)

Was thinking about selling it for 3 months already but just takes so much time.

Hey jsun,

Haha, yes it is a real thing, unfortunately only in the bay area for now. We've already sold a few cars and wanted to get some additional feedback. We'll push for Chicago soon!

That's one thing I didn't realize. It's only in the Bay Area (makes sense).

"Sorry, we're not able to save your info at this time."

1. yes 2.Yes 3. hassle free 4.good concept .

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