BAT rejected me... : (

Not a big deal.  They curate their listings and don't take everything.  I had a fairly good experience selling the corrado through them.  They listed it quickly, I used their photographer, who took extensive pictures.  They didn't batter me about my reserve price and never asked me to lower it.  My annoyances were more related to people vs BaT, nothing that happened was in their control or fault.

I'd hoped my car would've done better, based on what the last one sold for, but the market had gone down in the 4-5 months since that one sold.  I also took an entire Sunday showing my car to 4-5 people who wanted to see it, none of whom bought it or even bid on it I think.  So that was a huge waste of time for me and something I'd hoped to avoid by listing it on BaT vs trying to sell it myself.

I applied to work there, so I have a little bit of insight. Despite the mountain of documentation that you submit to them, there's still a human being on the other side organizing every single listing. 

Based on the salary they offered, my guess is that # of submissions will vastly outstrip the number of workers they have for a long, long time, so the volume of rejections will continue to pile up. 

Weird. I just had my '03 jag accepted the other day. I was kind of laughing because the description of all the flaws was 4 or 5 times larger than the improvements I've done.

If one just popped up today, I'd wait a few weeks and try again.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

RabidBullFrog said:

Did you see what popped up on BaT today? Stick shift but over 200k on the clock. When I saw your post here it was like deja vu seeing the same car, color and all.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2000-volvo-v70r-5/

"...acquired by the seller in 2022...." 

 

So bad timing / bad luck with regards to this other car was probably working against me on this one. I can understand and accept this.

That being said, I'll be watching his auction, and I hope that the seller can flip his car for a lot of money, as it can only help me.

That car does look like a bit of a disaster though. If nothing else, it gives me the confidence that my car should easily go another 100,000 miles or so before it needs an engine/transmission swap and a cheesy carpeted dash cover.

grover said:

In reply to Steve_Jones :

As a former pro photographer that number is depressing. 

I don't know how anyone survives a photographer outside of weddings...

I'd definitely try C & B with that one. Some cars are fetching good money there. I had friends that sold a Marauder and a Lotus there, both got more than they'd expected 

The main issue with C&B for me is they cut off at 1980, nothing older than that. So whats an alternative for BaT for older stuff?  I mean, besides eBay.

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

RabidBullFrog said:

Did you see what popped up on BaT today? Stick shift but over 200k on the clock. When I saw your post here it was like deja vu seeing the same car, color and all.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2000-volvo-v70r-5/

"...acquired by the seller in 2022...." 

 

They would have been a lot more likely to accept it without a reserve price.  It you're selling on BaT you don't need a reserve.  You're already getting all the money.  

There is enough demand that they are unlikely to accept a listing and do all the work for a lower-value auction that may not close.  

I'd follow up with them and ask them if they would consider it if you drop the reserve.

Steve_Jones said:

In reply to MiniDave :

$99 if you take the photos, $250 they send someone to take them. 

BAT's basic deal is $99. If you want them to arrange for a pro photographer to take the pictures, it's an additional $250...so $349 total. 

I still think that's a good deal for the seller.

I almost chose that option, and since the photographer actually submits them, that would have saved me from the photo upload snag that I ran into, but then I decided that I had enough good pictures of the car. But now that this other car has shown up on their site, I don't think that the photo jumble is what got me bumped. It was just bad timing.
 

I do wish that I hadn't spent so much time sitting on the fence and trying to decide if a BAT auction was worth the trouble or not. Had I either submitted the car sooner or just advertised it somewhere else, it would probably have a new home by now. I knew that BAT asks if it's ever been advertised anywhere else, so I was purposely avoiding that route. 
 

I just wasn't 100% sure if I wanted to let go of the car or not. I do really like it. 

I'm going to look into Cars and Bids this weekend.

Up to this point, I haven't paid much attention to them.

If they let you place a reserve that you are happy with, there is not much downside to listing it with them other than it not selling and being out the listing fee. 

I have a few friends who work at BAT in various capacities. Another friend submitted a 1-of-5 Audi S3 in orange that belonged first to the Audi Americas CEO. Rejected. "Just another car" was the unofficial reason.

There is literally no rhyme or reason why stuff gets rejected other than the wild volume of submissions. They tend to have 500-600 auctions active at any given time and it's truly a team of like, three people who make the decisions. One friend had his red F31 328xi M-Sport wagon rejected despite a few others recently being listed and one active when he submitted.

Don't take it personally. You're playing to the whims of a very small team when you submit.

In reply to Brake_L8 (Forum Supporter) :

I honestly feel that the rejection is forgivable if they already had another silver V70R lined up and waiting on deck ahead of me. 

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) 
Well there you go being all reasonable, you new to the internet?

Your car is BaT worthy, IMHO.  Wait and resubmit?  You don't need a reserve there, but I would use one at CaB. 

I'm heading out to Caffeine and Carburetors this morning and I'll throw a For Sale sign in the window to see if there's any local interest.

If not, I'll probably send it to Cars and Bids tomorrow.

RabidBullFrog said:

Did you see what popped up on BaT today? Stick shift but over 200k on the clock. When I saw your post here it was like deja vu seeing the same car, color and all.

https://bringatrailer.com/listing/2000-volvo-v70r-5/

Bid to $9050. Reserve not met. 

Based on this ^, sounds like the timing would be right to submit your car again, but with no reserve... assuming that ~$10K would be an acceptable selling price.

ea_sport said:

It happened to me last year when I tried to sell my clean, low mileage C5 Z06. I ended up selling it for a really good price on Cars&Bids with $0 listing fee (they were having promo) and $0 commission. Since you have all of the documentation ready just contact them and see what happens.

Yeah, go for Doug's cars and buds.

kb58 said:

Based on this ^, sounds like the timing would be right to submit your car again, but with no reserve... assuming that ~$10K would be an acceptable selling price.

I hadn't really considered that, but I think I might give it another try. 

In reply to 93EXCivic :

I photographed 400 weddings in 15 years. Haha. The pay was not bad. 

Woody (Forum Supportum) said:

kb58 said:

Based on this ^, sounds like the timing would be right to submit your car again, but with no reserve... assuming that ~$10K would be an acceptable selling price.

I hadn't really considered that, but I think I might give it another try. 

"If" ~$10K is acceptable, submitting it with zero reserve makes it much more appealing to BaT because they know upfront that they're guaranteed a commission. Given that it's a nice reasonable car, it's highly unlikely that it could sell to someone lowballing it at $100.

To give credit, someone earlier in this thread suggested the same.

Ah-ha Moment...

In the course of attempting to resubmit this car to BAT, I discovered that since I took the photos with my iPhone and exported them to a Mac, they were in HEIC format instead of JPEG.

I didn't know that HEIC was a thing, and apparently BAT does not support this format, so they may not have been able to even open my pictures.

So now I need to figure out how to convert all of these photos from HEIC to JPEG, which people online say is easy to do. 

Unfortunately, those online people are not taking into account the fact that I suck at this sort of thing and it's going to take me a while to figure it all out.

In reply to Woody (Forum Supportum) :

If you have them in Apple Photos, select the photos you wish to convert/export for BaT, then go to "File -> Export -> Export <n> photos".

That opens up a dialog where you can pick the target format for the photo (JPEG) and some other parameters like size etc.

HEICs can be a PITA but if anyone who works with photos for a living is completely incapable of opening them, they're not worth your time anyway.

Surprised no one shared this yet.