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-   -   Low-balling by the dealer during exchange of your car (https://www.team-bhp.com/forum/indian-car-dealerships/190196-low-balling-dealer-during-exchange-your-car.html)

Hello BHPians,

I have been exchanging cars and buying new ones for quite some time now, like most of you. This year I was shocked/extremely disappointed by the low-balling game the car dealers play on unsuspecting owners.

There are two instances:

1. During an exchange of my 2012, 1.28 lakh km run Safari DICOR 2.2 for an XUV 500:

I showed them the car for evaluation. The guys looked around, went for a test drive. Came back looking very impressed.

They told me "Sir, the car is in great condition. You have maintained it very well. I could say it from the moment I cranked the engine. I will call you tomorrow and inform you about the value".

The safari is very well maintained, does not even have a single niggle and it is running great. I wanted to sell it solely because it has seen 5 years and we wanted to have a new car. Tyres are fairly new (will last another 45-50k km), battery is new, insurance valid till 2018 May, and single owner. No scratches whatsoever, and it is always parked in a closed garage. You can understand how neat and new it would look. You can also check my tbhp ownership thread.

He calls me the next day and says "Sir, 2.2 lakh we can give for your car sir". I was like :Shockked: It is worth 4 lakhs minimum. Atleast a 3.5 lakh, heck, 3 lakh quote would have left me sane. I just had to drop the exchange idea. I decided let it run as long as it can, then I can use it as a kennel instead of selling it for peanuts.

2. During an exchange of Renault Kwid 1.0 RXT(O) for a Duster:

After Safari disappointment, I thought why not sell away my 11 month old, 8000 km run Kwid 1.0 RXT(O) for a Duster.

The renault guy saw the car, took photos and he told me he will have to have a word with his head office and that he will let me know tomorrow.

Next day, he calls me saying "Sir, we are giving you the best quote sir. 2.7 lakhs"

Again, the car is in pristine condition. No dents/scratches, properly maintained!

The car costed me 5.08 lakhs OTR, now it retails at 5 lakhs OTR. 8000 km is nothing and it is not even one year old. Let us say it depreciates 25% in first year, the quote must have been 3.75 lakhs! Mind you, 25% depreciation is very unlikely for A segment cars. And there is a good demand for Kwids/Altos in the used market.

We can olx/quikr our cars, but what disappoints me is how dealers undervalue our beloved cars, and try making quite a profit while selling them.

I am sure a lot of you would have encountered same experiences. Kindly share such incidents here.

Regards
Prasanna

Thread moved from the Assembly Line to the Dealership Section. Thanks for sharing!

It's best to research a bit yourself & find out what your car is worth. The internet has made it so easy. Then, tell the dealer that you'll give him your new car business only if he gives you a fair price on your trade-in. Be sure to mention a fair well-researched value of what your car is worth.

From the dealer's point-of-view, he has to refurbish your car, stock it till it sells & there might be unknown problems that crop up later too. Nevertheless, all of them start off with low-balling. Your best defense is research & negotiation.

Many customers wouldn't mind giving their car off to the dealer for a little less than the market price. Primary reason = convenience. While a private sale can fetch you the best price, it also requires a lot of work & sometimes dealing with shady characters. I personally wouldn't mind taking a 5% - 7% hit on the price for the time saved by exchanging at the dealer itself. You can also extract the best price for your used car by pitting a couple of dealers against each other.

Interesting thread. :thumbs up

The seller always expects a good price for his car.
But, the buyer always quotes minimum price for the car.

And then the mind games start.

Sellers who maintain a calm, business head and are in no hurry, slowly and slowly reach their fair price goal, whereas the not so informed/impatient sellers get fleeced.

This phenomenon is present every where in India, starting from exchanging cars at the dealerships to selling stuff at the Olx.

For example, a DUDE called me to offer me Rs500 for a phone, which I had put up on sale for Rs5000.
I politely replied to him that "500 mein phone ka cover milega, chahiye kya", and added that the cover was also for sale, and he is welcome to come home and collect the same. :D

Back in 2005, when I bought the Baleno, I ran into a situation of having two cars and one parking lot. So I decided to sell our 2 year old Santro AT, hoping to get at least 3.2L. The best offer I got was 1.6L, both from dealers and private buyers. This was a car retailing at 5L at that time. So we decided to keep the car, a neighbour lent his empty parking lot for free.

Six years later, I sold the same car for 1.8L to a fellow BHPian.

Just don't get too patient :). A car loses its value bit by bit on a daily basis. 3 months down the road, your car won't be worth the same $$$ it is today.

Here's our article with loads of tips - link.

Low balling does happen, but I know atleast two guys who are not finding any buyers for their Safari. The market worth + the dealer margins would have made them quote 2.2L. Not very surprising for a Safari that has covered over a lakh kilometres.

The Kwid one seems to be a genuine case. Obviously, they are trying to get maximum profits by tricking you into a cheaper sale.

I think team-bhp members find it very hard to sell their cars :) because the market doesn't really pay much premium for our well maintained cars. Such cars get sold faster but not necessarily for a hefty premium.

Like others have mentioned, one needs to do proper research and figure out a reasonable win-win price. Most people forget to value their time and get stuck on the price alone when considering an offer.

In my opinion, our cars are easier to sell but not at a premium

This happens everywhere. Buyers and sellers try to maximize their gain by quoting low and high prices respectively. One always better gets price selling your vehicle to genuine individual buyers. And a well-maintained vehicle gets more interest among buyers.

I have been a victim and beneficiary of such resale offers. I was offered ~50% of the OTR for my 9 month, 9.5k kms old Pulsar 180 which I had to decline. Three years and 18k kms later, I sold it for the same offered price. A dealer offered an exchange value of <50% of the OTR for a 2 year, 14k km old top end WagonR to the owner who was trading it for a new car. The dealer was known to us and we purchased the car for the same price.

That's exactly what I meant, thought it didn't come out that way. It's like renting an apartment in a project. Better maintained ones are easier to sell/rent, but you still get the market price based on the project.

Although I agree with what you say, but usually from my personal experience dealer low-balling is hardly affected by the variant. Regardless of the car they will always cite extremely low demand for the same in the market for that particular model. To rub salt in your wound, they usually also give you "gyan" as to how a different model from the same segment as your old car would have fetched a better price. It happened with me when I tried selling my Honda city, Nissan Sunny and now the Hyundai i10. It is always something or the other. Even for my Innova - a car with phenomenal resale value, the evaluator from Toyota itself put the value at 3L at tops ( the car was 8 years old that time with 1.3L kms on the odo). On reasoning with him that the car was exclusively serviced at Toyota, he had the guts to say that it is the reason he is offering me 3L, otherwise there is hardly any value left and only cab drivers from Punjab buy such vehicles if at all. It left such a bad taste in my mouth that we dropped our plans for selling the Innova ( and buying a Fortuner in its place). 2 years later due to the 10 year diesel vehicle rule in Delhi, I sold the same car within a day of listing in on Olx for 4L. That was the only time I felt like a king, such was the demand for the Innova.

Hence, they are dealers. They are there to make profit from the exchange and not just add a customer. I am surprised you expected fairness in the dealership. Dealership is there to run a business and they will milk a bull if they can.

The dealer has to sell it at the OLX price as you mentioned above. How exactly will he make a profit if he is buying at the olx price. Secondly, buying from private party does not come with warranty or any protection for a limited period.

The dealership takes this expense as part of the sale. Buyers prefer dealership based used cars because of this protection they get though they are paying the same or slightly above the OLX market price. If I were a dealer I will low ball as much as possible to maximize my profit in that deal.

A very clever approach being used by the dealers these days is to use multiple fake ids/friends ids and send text messages or call you with extremely low quotes when you are trying to sell through olx or other similar platforms. They actually try to make you believe that indeed the car is not worth the money that you are expecting and sell the car to any one of these 4-5 related ids/employees of the deal whom you think has the highest quote but is still far lower than what you were expecting at the first place.

This is what i have experienced in past and been facing currently while selling my 1 yr old car.

Also, the exchange guys at the showrooms are also in touch with all the nearby dealers. You might have noticed that after doing a checkup of the car you intent to exchange, they always call a senior who actually is a nearby dealer. So it is the showroom guy's cut + the nearby dealer's cut which makes the offer less than 1-1.5 lakhs.

Even platforms like Cars 24 is just another way of playing with owner's psychology. They do all sorts of test in front of you whereas actually all of them have a pre decided price in mind. In my case i wasted one full day at cars 24 and then later decided to not go in with their quoted price which were even lower to what they promised on their website/email while inviting me. After a few days they increased the price quote but it was still lower than what i got finally in market.

I believe, if you want to know the actual price of your car, looks for a dealer advertised car of similar make/mileage on olx.

In Jan 2017, despite knowing very well my WagonR should never be sold to Maruti for exchange, I gave-in just because those guys at Nexa said free evaluation. Despite refusing several times they said no strings attached & probably the thought of giving them another count to show on their job, I yielded.

Sure my WagonR was 13 years old pristine only with engine with visible visual blemishes & repainted door & bonnet & replaced quadra panel, they quoted Rs 65000. It was shockingly disappointing :Shockked: Even the RM at Nexa himself agreed the quote was low. However the evaluator showed some fancy tablet & said based on some inputs he obtained this figure. Since I knew all these drama, I smiled & moved on.

Anyway, I got double the price of what they quoted eventually.

My incident may be one of a case or I might've been lucky, but I got exactly what I quoted from Olx, absolutely no negotiations or whatsoever. Key was patience, research the market & quote a realistic & not inflated price. Had politely knocked off all the unwanted impatient buyers & broker one by one. I listed the car in Jan 2017 & sold on 19-Mar. I had 2 buyers who agreed to all my terms & conditions inclusive of price, date of sale, paper works & to my convenience. But I agree there were 1000 different questions from 100 different folks & eventually I would say just 1% turned into actual sale.

The platforms like OLX, Cars24 etc. are a pain because anybody can copy your ad. and paste the same with their name for a lesser price just to blackmail you!
Happened with me while selling my 3 year old Honda City Diesel. I could find at least two ads with exactly same description and the photos of my car but for a lesser value than I had mentioned. I would get many chat requests like 'are you ready for 6.0 lacs' etc. and when I responded in a fair way, I would get a reply saying that 'nobody will buy'. This happened for almost a month and finally I could find an individual buyer who was very interested in buying my car and we settled for a fair price!

OT : OLX is a hopeless website with absolute low ballers masquerading as buyers. They don't mind abusing you if you are not willing to lower the price to match their expectation. The buyers even start spamming you with messages and also ask their 'friends' to do so!

My advice is to not sell a 5 year old car if it is trouble free! hold it till reaches 7 years of life or until you can find a 'friend' who is interested in buying.