Car finding service?

[Condi]

Has anyone used one before, or can recommend one? Is it worthwhile for medium value (up to £20k) vehicles, or only for more expensive vehicles whereby their fee will make less of a difference to the final price? I know exactly the make/model/spec/milage/budget etc, and while they do exist they are pretty uncommon.

[bennno]

Condi said:

Has anyone used one before, or can recommend one? Is it worthwhile for medium value (up to £20k) vehicles, or only for more expensive vehicles whereby their fee will make less of a difference to the final price? I know exactly the make/model/spec/milage/budget etc, and while they do exist they are pretty uncommon.

Try find and finance, they brought a car off me and were very professional.

[MitchT]

Condi said:

Is it worthwhile for medium value (up to £20k) vehicles, or only for more expensive vehicles whereby their fee will make less of a difference to the final price?

I think that question pretty much answers itself. What sort of a fee are we talking about? If it's a percentage then it won't be worth it for the "finder" on lower priced cars, if it's a fixed amount it won't be worth it for the buyer as it'll add to much to the price.

I think a more effective solution would be some kind of search that aggregates the results from all used car platforms. For example, I'm currently interested in a BMW 4 Series with a fairly specific spec. I've noticed a significant disparity between the results delivered via BMW's approved used car search, PH Classifieds, Auto Trader, Car Gurus, Cazoo, Cinch, etc. One platform that scraped cars from all advertisers would remove a lot of hassle and be a better fit for lower priced cars.

[ZX10R NIN]

It depends on what kind of car you're looking for.

[Condi]

MitchT said:

I've noticed a significant disparity between the results delivered via BMW's approved used car search, PH Classifieds, Auto Trader, Car Gurus, Cazoo, Cinch, etc.

Interesting, I've found that most platforms also list on Autotrader (Cinch, Cazoo etc certainly do).

[MitchT]

Condi said:

Interesting, I've found that most platforms also list on Autotrader (Cinch, Cazoo etc certainly do).

Some of the BMWs I've seen at main dealers and elsewhere are also on Auto Trader, but by no means all of them. Gar Gurus is relatively lousy in terms of achieving the same, which is a shame as I like the price history feature and particularly like being able to get price drop notifications for a car I'm watching.