Hi, I've been researching the car buying space for several years and started the site RealCarTips.com. Here's my take on this:
There's currently a site called RollSale (http://rollsale.com) that's doing something similar to this.
There's also AutoTrade.com Trade-In Marketplace where you can get quotes for your trade-in (https://tradein.autotrader.com)
But the problem I see with this business model is that any quote you get from a dealer for a vehicle they haven't personally seen and inspected will not be a reliable bid.
They can always do a bait and switch after you bring the vehicle in. Now that they have you at the dealership, they can wear you down and convince you to drop the price due to "unforseen" issues. Perhaps the vehicle is not in the condition they expected, or there's some mechanical "issues" and they can't honor their original bid.
I don't know of any dealers that will absolutely guarantee a used car bid sight unseen (unless they bid way below market rate), which isn't good for consumers.
Not saying this business model won't work, it's just hard to get guaranteed bids.
Edit: I may have misunderstood the question, but I'm assuming this is a service where you try to sell or "unload" your car to a dealer.
That is the main way to dispose of the car. If the public wants to also make an "offer" they can. But the model is similar to Lending Tree where the dealers bid for your business.
I think that the business-model has to have high conversion for the consumer and dealer.
Dealers are frustrated by "tire-kickers." Lots of wasted money following up on email. We hope to take this up another notch by having a bona-fide consumer walking in with an offer in hand.
I agree the competition can become very stiff in this space.
We're looking to bring in personal data (financial) from Neustar to qualify the seller along with carfax data to verify the quality of the car prior to the bid.
I see having to have some sort of dispute resolution or mitigate that risk like eBay Autos does. Like Gazelle does I believe they have right to modify the trade-in price upon inspecting the gadget.
There's currently a site called RollSale (http://rollsale.com) that's doing something similar to this.
There's also AutoTrade.com Trade-In Marketplace where you can get quotes for your trade-in (https://tradein.autotrader.com)
But the problem I see with this business model is that any quote you get from a dealer for a vehicle they haven't personally seen and inspected will not be a reliable bid.
They can always do a bait and switch after you bring the vehicle in. Now that they have you at the dealership, they can wear you down and convince you to drop the price due to "unforseen" issues. Perhaps the vehicle is not in the condition they expected, or there's some mechanical "issues" and they can't honor their original bid.
I don't know of any dealers that will absolutely guarantee a used car bid sight unseen (unless they bid way below market rate), which isn't good for consumers.
Not saying this business model won't work, it's just hard to get guaranteed bids.
Edit: I may have misunderstood the question, but I'm assuming this is a service where you try to sell or "unload" your car to a dealer.