dan-jackson

thanks that's great feedback.

found a 1991 saab 900 turbo for you:

https://driverbase.com/vehicle/9330472/1991-saab-900-in-hins...

Good morning HN,

I know we need to dramatically improve our vehicle listing page template experience as our startup shifts from beta to general release.

Its a top page on our site and we are now up to 750,000 cars listed for sale so search and filtering is becoming even more important.

Please help us shred this page w/ any negative feedback.

We are working on an update and greatly appreciate feedback from HN.

Many thanks.

Dan Jackson CEO Driverbase dan@driverbase.com

1. find the right business partners

2. launch before its ready

3. getting our value proposition down to one sentence for each user type

4. seo instead of vanity marketing

5. freemium model instead of free or paid

6. listening to customer feedback

7. deliver tangible results to paid customers before fundraising

8. "do things that don't scale" to compete with large competitors who are focused on IRR and monetization

THANK YOU this helps.

awesome.

This summer dealers have regularly been offering more than the traditional trade values. 1-2 year old used cars are even selling above MSRP when the vehicle was new.

This is due to the new car supply shortage which is one of the reasons used car pricing is (temporarily) cranked up. Agree worth is based on actual sell price vs. listings and valuation can't solely be based on listings. The challenge is right now many vehicles are selling at list price or above (but starting to cool off in the last few weeks).

In the past few months dealers have been making record revenue and profits in this sellers market by holding firm on asking price and negotiating less especially when they have added online purchase tools to their websites that use a one price model (eg you can't negotiate).

Our valuations are a work in progress but they already do leverage several variables tied to the overall market & supply so when used car prices normalize our valuations will adjust accordingly (and to your point lots of people who bought this summer could be underwater on their used cars a few years down the road).

Understood. Will fix this trim issue. Thanks for testing!

agreed.

good feedback. thanks!

awesome.

2 toyotas? you are rich!

here is a 2004 listed 3 days ago for $9k: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8784108/2004-toyota-sienna-in...

or a 2003 for $5,795 and its getting a lot of views: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/7869797/2003-toyota-sienna-in...

interesting there seems to be a lot more 2004 siennas than with a 2003 model year.

here is a 2006 toyota corolla that listed 4 days ago for $12K: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8768002/2006-toyota-corolla-i...

appreciate the input. we have several products focused on vehicle discovery and purchase but wanted to help drivers leverage the sellers market especially for extra vehicles that don't have to be replaced since it's not the best time to buy a replacement car.

we will fix the trim issue and block dealership entered trims from showing alongside our standardized trims (which makes it impossible to find the "right" one)

ah yes the tacoma... awesome.

check out this 1999 tacoma base for $14K with 186K miles: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/7901072/1999-toyota-tacoma-in...

or this 2000 tacoma for $9K with 319,945 miles! https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8802783/2000-toyota-tacoma-in...

you have one of the lowest mileage 1999 tacomas in the usa right now. congratulations.

even this 2001 tacoma was just listed yesterday for $10K... it looks like its been running the baja 1000 for decades: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/8804882/2001-toyota-tacoma-in...

we are adding a better warning when we can't provide a valuation and also improving our fallback logic to prevent this outcome entirely. thanks for sharing.

good find randompwd! yes that job posting is old feels like 20 years ago.

we already launched a vehicle recommendation engine (https://driverbase.com/recommendation/step1) and a marketplace that is now almost up to 1 million vehicle listings without webscraping (https://driverbase.com/inventory).

this sell my car feature is new... we just launched it last week and it is definitely a work in progress: https://driverbase.com/company/update-v5681/

as you can see in this thread we take user feedback very seriously and have been actively making improvements.

cool. thank you for trying it out.

in our next update we will be improving trim support and adding condition specific values.

we pushed out this initial version that collects this information but we are finding some specific trims don't have enough data yet so we fallback to a year make model zip code estimate.

i have seen both cases where trim provides a more specific price but also where we don't have enough trim specific information yet and we have to ignore trim.

condition will be factored in in our next update but we are hearing from our dealership customers that they want some more details on "condition" including damage.

one of the reasons we initially had VIN in the user flow is because we can generate a lot of vehicle condition/history information in the background and not have to require a user enter vehicle history manually however collecting VIN was clearly a deal breaker especially for privacy focused communities like hacker news.

thanks for testing this out!

will do some more testing having a hard time replicating did this happen on an ipad pro? thank you.

nice catch. we will add a more friendly message and improve our fallback logic if we cant provide a specific valuation for your vehicle maybe show a range. the XKR is legit... don't sell!

i agree the price range is wide but everyone is unique. are you thinking we should default to a low price and assume everyone is a low cost buyer? we had a porsche buyer last month request we actually increase the top end of the range because nice 911s werent always showing in the search. everyone is unique.

it is crazy. but true. what is even harder to wrap your head around right now is that people who bought a new vehicle last year have been able to sell this year above the original MSRP... but as a used vehicle.

agree. we also use recent similar transactions to generate a market appraisal. this is why we are offering an estimate but the real price discovery happens when/if a dealership makes an offer to buy your vehicle. our market value is just a reference price... dealers have a unique willingness to pay for each available vehicle. some will pay above market and pickup your car from your house without an inspection right now while others will ask you to bring the vehicle to the dealership before they will buy it and only pay fair market value after verifying it's condition.

Agree. We will standardize trim levels right now trims that are manually input by the dealerships are included (in addition to our standard trims) but we will fix this. Thanks!

how long ago did you sell the rx-8? sounds like you should have sold it on driverbase for 8X!

it's a sellers market right now: https://driverbase.com/company/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/us...

we want to share a realistic estimate for the consumer based on market conditions (which are changing rapidly) and then let dealers make offers based on their interest in your vehicle.

thanks for the input especially on low-trust details. critical.

digging into the valuation a bit and noticed some similar listings:

here is a 2005 rx-8 for $9,000: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/6465715/2005-mazda-rx-8-in-mu...

and a 2004 rx-8 for $7,750: https://driverbase.com/vehicle/5204369/2004-mazda-rx-8-in-sh...

Yes standardize trim levels. We will fix this.

thank you we just made this change: https://driverbase.com/sell

hirundo:

What's My Car Worth? Sans VIN... now live:

https://driverbase.com/sell

Thank you for your feedback.

we are removing VIN right now.

then you can get a free appraisal without providing any detailed information but if you are going to engage with a dealership and want them to bid on your car in many cases without them ever seeing it... then you can optionally provide this directly to the dealerships interested in buying your car.

VIN is not required to provide a market valuation estimate and we respect hirundo's privacy concern.

separating market valuation from sell my car.

right now zip code is used in the valuation...

field is hidden on step1 but displayed on step 2.

we previously had it on step 1 but moved it to step 2 because then you can change the zip (defaults to your location) but if you want to try and sell your vehicle in another state (and easily select nearby dealers to request bids from) zip on step2 allows that.