Bring a Trailer rejected me.
I'm surprised, and a little bummed.
I've owned this car for over three years, drove it for 18,000 miles over that time, and I had been thinking about listing it for a few months now, but I was slow to pull the trigger because I kept reading minor horror stories about BAT being slow and a little hard to deal with. From what I've read, it seems fairly common for it to take as long as 45 days from the time you submit your car, to the time that the auction goes live, sellers are often asked to add additional photos from different angles, and that BAT will try to get you to lower your reserve.
Last weekend, I finally sat down and submitted the car. I answered all their questions, provided a complete description of the car, pointed out every possible flaw that I could think of, included descriptions of all the work done on it and attached receipts (timing belt, water pump, lower control arms and ball joints, transmission fluid change, AWD system service, brakes, tires, etc.), and even included oil test reports from Blackstone Laboratories from samples taken from four consecutive oil changes, that indicate that the engine is in excellent condition. I attached over a hundred photos, and a clean AutoCheck report from when I purchased it from the second owner. I requested a modest (four figure) reserve, which was substantially below the car's insured value.
In the description, I noted that 1998 was the first year for the V70R, and that it is estimated that only 500 were sold in the country that year. It was also the last year with a throttle cable (before they switched to the troublesome and pricey to fix drive-by-wire system), has the four speed automatic that is generally found to be more reliable than the five speed auto that came along two years later, and features the simpler and more reliable AWD system than the one in the second generation cars. I also mentioned that MSRP on this car was around $43,000 when it was new.
I fully expected to hear back from them in a week or two with a request for more photos, and to see if I would be willing to adjust my reserve price downward.
Much to my surprise, I received an email reply less than 24 hours after my submission:
"Sorry, but your submission was not accepted.
Thank you for submitting your 1998 Volvo V70R to us for consideration.
We reviewed your submission and the details of your vehicle closely and while we appreciate its merits, unfortunately we are unable to offer to list it at this time. We are very selective with the vehicles we accept for auction and while we wish that we could list them all, given the volume of submissions we receive and the nature of our curation process, we simply can't.
We appreciate that you considered BaT Auctions and wish you best of luck with the sale. We hope to have the opportunity to work with you in the future.
Thanks,
The Bring a Trailer Team"
I'm not really sure why this happened. It's a good looking, fairly rare and desirable, well maintained and documented AWD Turbo Wagon, with 127k miles, no rust, and no accident history. I'm the third owner (3 years), and the original female owner kept it for two decades.
This is a great looking car that you could quickly, and very comfortably, drive across the country tomorrow.
The only real snag that I can see in my submission is that when my photos were uploaded, they ended up in a random, illogical order. They were transferred as a group, and I don't know why they were shuffled in the process, but I also thought I would be able sort and reorder them like you can when you set up a Craigslist ad or eBay auction. That was not the case here, and I wasn't given that option before sending it in. BAT does follow up with an email almost immediately and gives you a chance to ad information and ask questions, so I did note that I wanted a chance to reorder my photos, but didn't get a response to that, just the denial the next day.
Aside from the photo thing, the only other negative that I can think of is that maybe I was too honest in the description of the flaws. I believe in full disclosure, and the last thing I want to do is go through a long auction process and then have the winning bidder find something that he wasn't expecting when he comes to pick up the car. Some of the stuff that I noted could go unnoticed for weeks or longer if I didn't point it out.
Before submitting the car, I had searched BAT (including completed listings), and found a bunch of second generation (P2) V70Rs, but there were no active listings for a P80 car (1998, 1999, 2000), and there were no completed auctions for one in the recent past.
Where did I go wrong?
