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I've bought and sold quite a few on eBay. I currently have a car for sale on eBay. It all depends on the type of car you're selling- if it's pretty cheap then you might do well with an auction style format, but most prefer the "buy it now with best offer" option, which is just essentially a classified ad with an option to buy the car on the spot.
Most normal people will want to see the car before they buy it, but eBay is full of people who like to buy sight unseen and have the cars shipped to them. eBay has insurance that covers the buyer in case your car doesn't show up (and that covers you in case the transaction is a scam), so it's pretty painless overall. eBay takes a $125 fee if your car sells on the platform, but you only pay once you sell it so if you place your ad elsewhere and sell it through another channel, eBay doesn't cost anything.
My preferred method for the car I'm selling right now is a three pronged approach- I have it listed on eBay as "buy it now with best offer", cars.com (free ad) and craigslist (free). So far I've gotten a couple of lowball offers on eBay that I rejected immediately and a few interested parties through cars.com, but nothing from craigslist yet. My car has only been for sale for 2 days but I'm happy with the number of responses so far. The eBay offers came from Florida and Texas, but the Cars.com requests came from within a ~50 mile radius.
I have purchased and sold on ebay with good success. Only one vehicle (of 5 that I remember) was not a good vehicle and I don't know if that was really the fault of the seller. I later discovered there was a flaw with some units in that particular model year that the owner may or may not have known about.
First of all, never send the money ahead of seeing the vehicle in person, other than a small deposit. I always shopped places I could fly to and hand deliver the funds when I have the vehicle keys and title in hand. Flew from WI to Texas to buy one, MA and CT, and a couple that were fairly local.
If the car is something rare or unusual, ebay gets it nationwide exposure compared to Craigslist or a local ad. Another good source is Autotrader which many of us search nationally as well when looking for a particular model or type of vehicle.
NYCresident wrote: " eBay has insurance that covers the buyer in case your car doesn't show up (and that covers you in case the transaction is a scam), so it's pretty painless overall."
Not sure how this works of if it's different policy than just a couple years ago when I bought cars from a guy in VT who turned out to be a scammer.
I bought two cars from him on eBay, paid in full. Turned out that he never owned one of the cars, he'd only looked at it locally and never came back to the seller to buy it. The car ... represented on eBay as a good runner in nice condition when I contacted the owner turned out to be a "parts car" that they'd bought to provide parts for another car they were restoring. After they got the parts off of it they wanted, they listed the car locally and that's where the eBay seller found it.
I should have known something was wrong when the eBay seller balked at me wanting to come to VT with a trailer to bring both cars home. I sent a transporter there and the seller only had one of the cars to ship but I had to pay for the two cars space on the transporter.
The car that did arrive, represented as being in perfect condition and a daily driver had the typical blown head gaskets of the series and couldn't be driven more than a couple hundred feet before the coolant was being blown out of the remote coolant tank. Cosmetically looked OK, but it wasn't driveable.
I managed to track down a whole bunch of eBay cars that the guy had sold. All with turned back odometers and serious mechanical defects. eBay was absolutely no help in getting my money back for the one car and of no assistance whatsoever on the car that was so badly misrepresented.
I finally had to turn the whole matter over to the VT motor vehicle department. They were of little help, too ... although they did go after the car dealership under whose license the eBay seller had been buying/selling cars. VT DMV managed to persuade the dealer to send me a partial refund of the money paid for the non-owned car, but didn't do much more than give him a verbal warning about how car titles and ownership were to be handled.
Upon finding out that the eBay seller had rolled back odo's on numerous cars, I persuaded VT DMV to turn it over to the feds. They investigated and prosecuted the eBay seller for odo fraud, getting him a 24-month sentence in federal prison.
This was the only car seller on eBay that did this to me, but eBay did nothing to get my money back or even kick the guy off of eBay for his deeds. He was still selling misrepresented cars with rolled back odo's on eBay when he went to prison.
So, I'd suggest that buying cars on eBay from a distance can have risks. Perhaps better to deal with legitimate dealers rather than what are effectively private party sales if you can't check out the cars in advance of the bids.
Bought a certified-used Acura via eBay from an Acura dealer. It worked out really well. Granted, it was a low-mileage manufacturer-certified car from an actual branded dealer.
It was a great experience.
But, that was like seven years ago. As the above post indicates, there are lots of other ways to find a car.
I've bought and sold a number of cars, trucks, and RVs there with no problems, but it's been a few years since the last one.
Cars.com and autotrader aren't a great way to find specialty cars, and ebay tends to have good projects and specialty stuff there that you can't even find on CL usually at lower prices than Bring A Trailer and hot rod or specialty websites.
Don't use ebay for common cars or late model stuff, though.
We've bought and sold quite a few on there, no real problems at all. On a higher priced car, you will want to communicate with the seller a lot before it ends, and maybe even talk a few times via phone. That will give you more info than their ad will.
Last car we bought was a Mach I Mustang out of Pa. Flew up, it was better than described, and drove back to Florida with zero problems. But we spoke with the owner a few times and had a good feeling about him before we bid.
It does work because I have bought several. I'd ask the seller many questions and if they gave straight answers, I'd take a bus to their city and drive it home and sell it in the local paper and make 100% or so on each one. However that was when you could list cars that were in good condition is the parts cars section. They cracked down on it and now they are more strict. There are lemon laws in most states so a seller better have a clean title and disclose all defects and even have maintenance records.
I have not sold a car on Ebay and I would buy one though.
You could list one for sell and entertain buyers within say 150-200 miles. That way your buyers can afford to drive to you to check it out in person and drive it home or tow it home.
I doubt I'd buy a car many hundreds of miles away or want to sell to someone that far away. Refunds on small non car items are problems enough, much less a refund on an expensive car.
Just an update- sold my car yesterday to an eBay buyer. I live in NY state, the buyer flew in from MN, then we went to his bank and I watched the teller print out the cashiers check, then I immediately deposited it using my iPhone mobile deposit app, and he drove off into the sunset.
Super painless. I probably could have received a slightly higher price if I kept it for sale for a couple more weeks locally, but I like the speed and ease of eBay transactions.
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