Your prices are what make your instant offers. A new account starts with no prices at all, so no instant offer goes out in your name until you enter your own. Your instant offers start once you have prices of your own, have chosen where you buy and have added a card. From then on, when a car is listed in one of your ZIP codes, we work out your offer from your prices and it reaches the seller within seconds. To set them, go to Pricing in your menu, or press Set my prices in the Your prices section of Your profile. Once you have prices, that button reads Open my prices.
Prices are optional. Without them, or until your instant offers start, you can make an offer by hand on any car on your Cars for sale page, as long as your card is on file. That suits a buyer who would rather look at each car before making an offer.
The first time you open Pricing
A short setup walks you through it one step at a time: the cars you don’t want, your age groups, your prices, specific vehicles, what changes your price, title, distance, and then a check of what you would offer on a few common cars. Nothing is saved until the last step, where one button saves it all. If you would rather look at each car before you offer, press Skip prices for now on the age groups step. The cars you said you don’t want are saved, and Pricing opens on the full page from then on. You can go through the setup again at any time with Walk through the setup again at the top of the Pricing page, and it opens with your current prices filled in.
Cars you don’t want
At the top of Pricing, Cars you don’t want is where you list the cars you never buy. You can pick a car with no title or a salvage or rebuilt title, body styles such as cargo vans, cars older than a model year you choose, makes and models with a range of years if you like, and answers from the seller’s questions, such as flood or fire damage. You won’t hear about those cars at all. You get no alert, you make no instant offer, and they are hidden on your Cars for sale page. A link at the bottom of that page shows the hidden cars, each one saying why it was hidden, so you can still open one and offer on it by hand. A car you have already made an offer on is never hidden.
How a car is priced
Your specific vehicles are checked first, top to bottom, and the first row that fits the car sets the price. You can drag the rows into the order you want. A row can name one or more makes, or all domestic or all foreign makes, the models of one make, and a range of years. It can pay a set price, a price per ton of the car’s weight, or no instant offer. A row can also be set so the seller’s answers about the car don’t change its price.
When no row fits, your price sheet prices the car. It has a column for each age group and a row for each kind of car, such as Cars or Pickups. Every body style takes its group’s price unless you give it a row of its own, and in a body style’s own row an empty box means no instant offer for cars of that age. A car our records list as a Midsize car from 2009, for example, gets your Cars price from the column that covers 2009. A car our records have no body style for is priced from the Any other car row.
Then the seller’s answers can move that number. For any answer you can take money off, add money, make no instant offer, or pay one set price instead of what the car would normally get. An answer you leave alone doesn’t change your price. Last comes the Title box, which covers a car with no title and a car with a salvage or rebuilt title. For each one you choose Same as clean title, Take off $ with an amount, or No instant offer. With No instant offer you make no instant offer on that car, but it still shows up on your Cars for sale page and you can offer on it by hand.
Distance comes after that. Choose Same price anywhere and distance never changes your offers, or choose Price by distance to take money off, or add it, by how far the car is from you, such as $25 off cars 25 to 50 miles away. Distance is measured in a straight line from the middle of your ZIP code to the middle of the car’s, so it needs your ZIP code under Where you buy in Your profile. If you move your ZIP code there, your distances are measured again from the new one. You can also price certain ZIP codes differently, and those are checked before your distances. A row of specific vehicles that is set so the seller’s answers don’t change its price has no money taken off or added for title or distance either.
When a box is empty, or a car works out to $0, you make no instant offer on it either. The car still shows up on your Cars for sale page, and you can offer on it by hand.
Saving and testing
One Save changes button at the bottom of the page saves everything you changed. If you try to leave the page with changes you haven’t saved, you are asked first. Test a vehicle, at the bottom of the page, shows what your saved prices would offer on a car that runs and has a clean title, with your distance change when you type the car’s ZIP code, so save before you test a change.
Set numbers you are happy to pay
While your offer on a car stands, it can go up but never down, because lowering a number the seller has already seen is the driveway haggle this site exists to end. So price each row for a car you haven’t seen, the way you would quote one over the phone. If the photos show something better, you can raise your offer on that one car.
Changing your prices later
A change to your prices applies to cars listed after you save it. Offers you have already made stay as they are, and you can raise any of them by hand from the car’s page. Your age groups stay as you set them and never shift on their own. A change to the cars you don’t want shows on your Cars for sale page as soon as you save it, for cars already listed too.