Don't Waste Your Time, And Don't Believe the Estimate!

What a complete waste of time. I decided to sell my 2010 Land Rover Discovery 4 HSE 5.0 V8 and after hearing a radio advert, thought I'd give CarZar a try.

All started very well, went online, entered model, age, mileage etc. and got a guide quote of up to R197k or up to R215k after 48 hours advertising to dealers. Booked myself an inspection online and received confirmations from CarZar by email, all in all a great experience and would have been happy with around R180k to R190k for my car which is in excellent condition for it's age and mileage (Both of which were submitted to get the quote).

This morning I took the 40 minute drive to a DEKRA station in Cape Town for a 10am appointment. I arrived a little early so checked for the CarZar guy who hadn't arrived yet so waited patiently outside. At 10:15 nobody had arrived so I called CarZar who helped me out by calling the guy and told me to wait at the front of the building. At 10:30 the representative finally showed up blaming his tech for being 30 minutes late. He asked me if the car had any problems (answer was no) and then spent around 2 minutes checking the air suspension worked and took a picture of my license disc and then said "I don't work for commission, I'm here to help you, the customer" . He asked me what I was hoping to get for the car to which I rep**** around R185k. He then jumped on his phone to a "Dealer" and asked him for a price. After a quick chat he came off the phone and said "At best, the Land Rover dealer would pay R135k for this at auction. " That was the sum total of his "inspection"

If I'd wanted a trade dealer price, I would have traded it to a dealer and cut out the middleman. I wanted a hassle free experience and knew that the quote would be top end but thought it would be in the same ballpark, hence expecting around R185k for a quote of R197k / R215k seemed reasonable. The car is in excellent condition with full Land Rover service history and zero issues. How did they get a quote so wrong?

A total waste of time, money (Petrol for a 70km round trip) and effort. Don't waste your time with CarZar, they are just middlemen who want to pay the trade auction price for your car and then sell it on to dealers. When they've taken their margin and the dealer still has to make a profit, you're the one paying for all that. Gumtree currently has 3 cars the same as mine for sale and they range from R230k to R300k (the higher end having lower KMs). I am not stupid and know everyone in the chain needs to make a profit so assume selling price of R230k and me selling for R180k, there's R20k for CarZar and R30k for the dealer., sounds feasible? At R135k, that's R45k for CarZar and R50k for the dealer, sounds excessive to me?

Either way, the quote system at the start of the customer experience journey is clearly just to pull you in, they clearly have no intention of being even close, to it. You then just get low balled to see how desperate you are. I wasn't, I just wanted a fair trade price and because of that the whole thing was over in less than 5 minutes.

Total waste of effort.