Buyandsell.ie (Motors)

RoundyMooney

I've been posting free ads online via buyandsell for some time now, and post my latest experience out of curiosity as to whether anyone else has a similiar experience:

(Mods, if you see this as being on shaky ground, or more suitable for elsewhere, just let me know.)

The ads submitted online are subject to proof-reading before they appear online, or in the publication itself. That's fair enough, for obvious reasons, even though the process may take a few days (which is stated when the ad is submitted).

For a free ad, you are allowed a certain number of characters, and should you need to say more, you are obliged to pay a fee. Again, fair enough.

This has been the case for some time, and I've never had a problem. However, I posted an ad this week for a car I'm selling, and noticed, first when submitting, that the contact telephone number/email was counted in the character limit, but then disappeared when the ad was submitted for approval! In other words, if you have a rather long email, you can drop up to 20 characters out of your quota that you could be using to tell everybody how wonderful your car is . So be it, if that's the case, but it seems a little underhand.

Anyway.

My ad was approved and up on the site today. I was dismayed to note that it had been stripped of what little I tried to compress into the character quota. Despite nothing of relevance in the terms and conditions, a link to adverts.ie had been removed (again semi-understandable-given that they are "competitors" but why not say so?) as was the phrase "No Hawkers". (Anyone who has posted a car for sale on b+s before will know why that term is particularly important).

I await the calls from car website pimps with relish

Has this happened to anybody else?

unkel

Last car I sold was up on adverts.ie (free), carzone.ie (about €20 iirc) and buyandsell.ie (about €10 iirc)

Note that I paid for the buyandsell ad. This meant that my ad was allowed to be much longer than the standard free one. Also I was allowed to upload pictures

At the time adverts.ie was still in its infancy. I got most calls from the carzone.ie ad, but the call that sold the car was from buyandsell

I would never use terms like "no hawkers", "no time wasters", etc. as they will not prevent what you hope they will prevent imho

RoundyMooney

I think on that note, I'll speculate the 20 quid (on Carzone). It's worth noting that throwing a tenner at b+s would alleviate all my complaints regarding their site!

Adverts seems to have a good bit of traffic, but Carzone, being specifically based around the trade seems a good prospect.

Thanks Unkel, nice to get some feedback from others on selling online.

bazz26

Carzone is €30 afaik but the ad can stay up there until the car is sold. Good value imo and a wide audience.

bazz26

unkel wrote:

At the time adverts.ie was still in its infancy. I got most calls from the carzone.ie ad, but the call that sold the car was from buyandsell

I would never use terms like "no hawkers", "no time wasters", etc. as they will not prevent what you hope they will prevent imho

Using carzone.ie or buy&sell may really depend on the type of car your selling and what price bracket it falls into. My opinion is that most people searching buy&sell are generally looking for cheapish cars probably well under €10k. Most people looking on carzone.ie are probably looking at spending more.

Mike07

Just sold a month ago
Ad was on Carzone-- 3 respomses, adverts-- 2 responses and b&s 1 response and sale

unkel

bazz26 wrote:

Using carzone.ie or buy&sell may really depend on the type of car your selling and what price bracket it falls into. My opinion is that most people searching buy&sell are generally looking for cheapish cars probably well under €10k. Most people looking on carzone.ie are probably looking at spending more.

Agreed. Putting a €40k car in buyandsell is probably pointless. Then again, I guess the higher the value of the car, the less likely it will be sold in a private sale. I'd love to see some stats on this...

gyppo

bazz26 wrote:

Using carzone.ie or buy&sell may really depend on the type of car your selling and what price bracket it falls into. My opinion is that most people searching buy&sell are generally looking for cheapish cars probably well under €10k. Most people looking on carzone.ie are probably looking at spending more.

Agreed. I recently placed an ad in the B&S for a cheapy toyota starlet (much wanted car anyway), and I was swamped with phone calls. Car sold for 95% of asking price within 2 days.

louie

Buy&Sell indeed is a very good paper for bargain hunters.
The website I have to say is not up to scratch. I had a similar issue with number of letters you can put in and is very frustrating indeed.

prospect

unkel wrote:

I would never use terms like "no hawkers", "no time wasters", etc. as they will not prevent what you hope they will prevent imho

I have to disagree here, based on my experience.

I have advertised about 6 or 7 cars over the last 10 years or so, in buy and sell, and more recently in both buy and sell and carzone.
I used to get alot of calls from people trying to sell me advertising etc, but in the most recent ads (last 3 or 4), i have included the text "No Advertisers Please", and it has been 100% sucessful.