So tred.com, you they act as a middle man for your car sale to a private party transaction. They advertise it and once you have a buyer TRED buys it as a dealer then turns around and sells it directly to the new buyer on the spot. The problem is that you have to show and test drive the car to potential buyers. For our Mercedes GLC the our buyout is around $29k and TRED recommend price is $34k (then 2.99% commission). So we can make around $3k but not really excited about meeting people and test driving with them.
Anyone use TRED?
Who negotiates the final price? Who smogs the car (in CA)?
They recommend the starting price but ultimately the negotiation is better you and the buyer. Not sure about smog.
Not sure how this makes any sense versus Autotrader or Craigslist
Well if you have a lease and you want to sell it to someone then you need to buy it out and turn around to sell then handle all the paperwork. Here they help find a buyer for you and handle all of the paperwork. I see the appeal but I just don’t want to deal with people test driving my car with me.
Never heard of TRED before. How are they finding these buyers? Why use TRED over finding a car on Autotrader? Their commission is a percentage of the sale price of the car as opposed to a flat fee. The service they provide seems to be the same for all products regardless of price. So they make less money on a 15k dollar car sale than they do on a 80k dollar car sale providing the very same service.
There may be a conflict of interest with TRED. They may artificially inflate proposed sales price to pull in more profit.