Would you let dealers bid on your car instead of taking one trade-in offer?

Yeah that’s a fair point. A lot of people are probably trading in against something specific so the deal as a whole matters more than just the trade-in number.

I think it would be more for people who aren’t tied to a particular car and just want to sell first and see what kind of offers they can get without going around a load of dealers. At least gives you a rough idea of what your car is actually worth and helps with budgeting the cost-of-change side of things. Offers would be non binding in a sense so you could check the stock of some dealers who placed an offer and then go in with some kind of idea of price. I could also imagine it being handy if someone is just looking to get rid of a car and not trying to deal with a long sale process - but still having some competition in there.

Good points all around. Firstly, I'm aware of TradeBid and that definitely works for dealers; but it's all done behind closed doors. With this, there's actual visibility and competition for the car which may promote higher offerings especially if a dealer has a customer for that certain car that's on bid.

Definitely get the downside of same-day swaps. As I said above it could be something I built in where it's like I want X I have Y but I didn't want to complicate it too much from the get-go by giving people too many options. I think there's 2 categories of customer; people who are getting rid of their car but don't want to deal with private (or just want a quick sale) - and people who aren't sure of what car they want to trade up to yet but want a rough idea of their cars trade value. There may also be a potential upside of cashing out a car yourself and then using cash (or finance) on a new car.

Theoretically there's already a better user offering from this idea as you mention the mark-up the dealer takes for themself - off of the already-provided price from another dealer with their margin factored in. I guess the hard part is predicting if the market is niche enough of people who aren't immediately sure of their next car, or want to just get rid. That's my main reason for just putting it up and seeing how people feel about it :)

Yeah the difference is though you need to be listing it on DoneDeal in the first place which costs €55-85 for that privilege depending on the car. If there was a service that was a fixed, low-cost just to get bids off dealerships directly - with a refund in place if no bids were received - I could still see some people preferring that over going through a full private listing process with calls/messages/viewings etc.

I think there’s probably room for both approaches depending on the type of seller. Some people want maximum money and are happy to wait it out privately, others just want a realistic trade value quickly without the hassle.

Interesting, thanks for the insight. I didn't realise they'd expanded it beyond just trade-in prompts on listings.

Will definitely take a closer look at how they're doing it. I still think there may be room for something a bit more focused around dealer bidding specifically rather than it being part of a broader classifieds flow, but it's useful to know there's clearly demand there already.