Autotrader.com Reviews

Worst site ever to sell on. Thought I'd a vehicle on this site instead of Facebook Marketplace. Never had so many ghosts in my life. Constant offers, acceptance, and then nothing. Test drive appointments, sit at home waiting and no one shows up. Complete crap, no vetting. 5 times worse than Facebook, best part... You gotta pay for this junk.

Allow my voice to join the chorus of reviews touting scammers, phishing, and other fraud on Autotrader. I wanted to give Auto Trader the opportunity to resolve this, and they agreed the site has mostly spammers for the "first 48 hours," that's conservative. After one week, all we had were scammers wanting us to visit websites and pay for reports, then be blocked by Auto Trader, after calling and hearing them agree they offered a refund of $19, Facebook Marketplace is the best bet. The car was sold there in three days, for free!

Total crap. It seems that I can only sell through their private seller exchange, where they insert themselves into the process for 1%. Really? It's a website folks. Well maybe it will reduce the BS scam garbage that lives on CL and FBM. No dice. received multiple complete BS responses within 2 hrs of placing ad. Deleted the ad the same day. Bye Bye Autotrader. Was good to know you - I had sold maybe 10 cars through the years, going back to when it was a print magazine. See ya.

$49 to list your car...for what? Sifting through the scammers? Fake offers? I regret giving them my money. This has been nothing but a constant "is this a scammer, too?" Game. What a joke. FYI, I'm also listed on Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist and none of this happens there. I told them what was happening and asked for a refund but they refused. Also, why do they want us to upload our information i.e. driver's license, title to their site? No way!

Not a good experience. I had 2 buyers requesting 2 different car VIN reports I never heard of. Even though I provided one that I use (for years), was not acceptable to them. I believe there's additional fees based on selling price (commission). The chat back and forth is cumbersome and too many restrictions. I can not recommend Auto Trader (private seller exchange). In fact, I'll never use again. I pulled my ad in just one day, a waste of good money, lesson learned.

Stay away. Shady s*** going on here. Especially when trying to finance. Emails from many different individuals. The tech is not functioning correctly. This buying/selling of cars on your behalf needs to be ironed out.

Make sure that your listing shows up after you list it, with the correct search parameters. Mine would disappear if I clicked on crew cab. Tried for a week and they couldn't fix it. I probably talked to close to a dozen people there.

Tried numerous times to post an ad just after setting up account. The site crashed three times losing all of my work. When I finally got to purchase an ad my account was frozen and later received an email saying my account was closed due to community standards violations. I never got to do anything, so not sure what they are talking about. Customer Serivce gave me a run around and said they would respond later.

Has to be the worst website now to try and sell a car. Go on car guru or just put the car on the side of the road. You have a better shot of selling it than putting it on AutoTrader. Said I gave them any money to put up an ad.

Had my car advertised for two weeks. Paid the money and got 8 “interested parties” within 5 days. 7 of these were scams. Listed on Facebook Marketplace for free and sold the car for asking price in 3 days. This site is a scam at $40 an ad. I don’t see this “service” being around for much longer…

I remember when Autotrader was a good service. Absolutely terrible now. Every contact about my car was scam last time and the first contact was this time. What a joke. The new private seller exchange has ruined Auto trader.

They sent is to a Mazda Dealer that had sold the car listed on their site although it is still listed on Autotrader site and prices are inaccurate to say the least. Terrible waste of time. Do not use this site.

These guys are awful, ever since they were bought by KBB. They are nothing like they used to be and you should not give them a penny of your money for anything. After listing my Genesis GV80 2024 with only 20,000 miles on it and listing it below KBB price by $3000 the only offer I ever received after weeks on the market was from Autotrader direct, offering me a ridiculous number hoping I would be desperate to sell since I had no offers from over 300 Views. They are a total scam now and whatever you do don't waste your money!!!

Don't waste your time or Money! We wasted a great deal of time and money posting three ads, all of which received no or little response and the one that did get an offer, Autotrader notified us AFTER the ad expired and refused to share the offer info with us unless we renewed the ad for more money! Attempts to call their customer service found us talking with an individual, out of the country and unable to address the issue, other than to tell us we were right but there was nothing he could do to help us. Autotrader's activity is fraudulent and deserving of legal action.

Don't ever use this scam POS company. After receiving multiple notifications of what I would receive after payoff, AutoTrader turned around and deducted $100 more since they didn't pay the holder on time. Due to their negligence, I'm forced out of profit?! Never again.

System is dominated by dealers. Private listing are at best limited in description of car being sold. System is slow and not accurate. Just overall a bad site. Almost scammed into buying a car, but walked away when I realized what was happening. AutoTrader should warn people what a scam it is. Oh yes don't pre authorize for financing, Your information will be stolen and your identity too. Auto Trader should be embarrassed to have their names on it. D D

Probably the worst customer service experience - I have had with any vendor. Most recently these guys deceptively changed their pricing - charging outrageous fees for a 30 day opportunity to sell your car. REALY..? Who can sell any car within a 30 day window. Equally frustrating - is the lack of customer service. It took me like 10 days - just to get my pictures loaded and properly positioned. CARS.com - much better experience & will be getting all of my future business..!

Updated on 1/5/2026: A few years back any ad to sell any type of vehicle I would get very quick responses, it's been 3 months and no calls, their new system I think is not effective, on top of that your ad expires in 40 days, that was not the case back then. I am very disappointed in Autotrader, it feels to me they are ripping me off by re charging every 40 days and I can't even put my own phone number anymore, has to go through their system claiming it's for our protection. I don't trust them anymore!

We are a car dealer and use all the major advertising platforms. Autotrader is a very poorly run company and a completely ineffective platform. They also run payment scams and charge you more than you agree to. Just stay away, absolutely no reason to deal with them.

BEWARE!!! Manager, Phillip, decided he doesn't have to make good on his IOU to replace a damaged bumper on the truck I purchased. When the body shop told him it would cost $4700, he refused to replace the bumper. It's been 3 months now and all I was offered was $1300 with no reasonable explanation as to why not the full amount. Not even half the cost. The damaged bumper started causing cosmetic issues so I had to pay for the bumper to be fixed. Now I will be taking them to court as I gave them 3 months to make good on their promise. Miracle Nissan of North Augusta lacks integrity and has no moral ethics. They just want your buck at any cost. This could be you if you shop there. Think twice and BEWARE!!!

This psx is a pain, and too much hassle. Autotrader does not follow up, you have no direct contact with seller and it costs more than they initially communicated. Without our passports, you can not use it! What about all Florida snowbirds wanting a used car?

The website is so complicated to use. It took an hour to list my truck. Finally, after listing the truck, I received an offer. The offer page was completely fractured and there was no guidance to respond to the offer. In fact, it's complicated you find yourself afraid to move forward with the links for fear you're going to do something wrong. After calling customer support the leadership from them was also a joke. They don't even know how to help guide you through the process. The call to customer support was so bad I had to cancel my ad and move on. Bottom line, Autotrader is a complete mess. Autotrader is a complete waste of time and money!

I will never use AutoTrader again! I advertised my vehicle on 3 sites including Autotrader. The only responses I got from Autotrader was them offering to buy my truck for thousands under the value and scammers trying to trick me into giving them info. You cannot talk directly with anyone who responds to your ad, all communication must be done through email from Autotrader. It's like they don't want you to sell your vehicle so they can steal it. Expensive fees, total ripoff. I got multiple legit responses from the other sites and sold my truck in 3 weeks.

Ripoff - Paid for an ad. I paid for a sponsored ad and received just 4 responses. In comparison, the identical ad posted for free on Facebook Marketplace generated 156 interested buyers. Identical timeframe.

In a three week period interacted with the customer service person about a vehicle and was told a salesperson would follow up with me. I never heard back from anyone. I continued to text their CSM team and was told I would hear from someone. CRICKETS

$9 was just bait, by the time I got to listing it was $79. AND much to my surprise I wasn't just listing my Truck for sale. I was signing up to have them manage the whole sale. Just another $317 dollars! I just wanted to list my truck for sale. Pages of fine print.

Worst experience ever. No legit offers. Just nothing but scammers trying to sell their own fake auto history report. Cancelled same day, so will get a refund through credit card due to a shoddy service that needs to be gone. Totally worthless. I would have given less than one star if I could.

The first person was fraudulent. Sheila was a fraud. Found out this person was doing it all over the country, then other people were fraudulent. No other people would respond in the chat. I assume they were all fraudulent. Deleted my account because it is too difficult to navigate through. It needs to be made way simpler. Buyers should be completely verified to be legitimate and they are not. Not comfortable to let someone drive away in a vehicle without payment. That’s just wrong. In fact, it’s just plain stupid. You certainly can’t do that at any dealership. Needless to say Auto Trader will never get my business ever again nor will I ever refer someone to use Auto Trader?

I have been AutoTrader.com for years to sell my personal vehicles as private seller, however over the last 12+ months or more, I have not been receiving any interest from perspective buyers other than requests for a test drive which is crazy because most people will not even ask to test drive without first having the opportunity to engage in a conversation first with the seller. And even then, I never hear back from the interested party only to find out that they probably did not want to have to have their driver’s license or passport scanned due to a identity verification process that is now required.

There seems to be no penalty to be paid by a seller who will not respond to messages from a buyer. After spending much time and then reluctantly providing a picture of my driver license to Autotrader.com/Private Seller Exchange for "verification", my request for a test drive of an advertised vehicle has gone unanswered for three days. The seller's offer count continues to increase but the car is still advertised as for-sell. A seller should be required to respond to all messages within a reasonable time, and be barred for not following this basic requirement. The current mode of operation by Private Seller Exchange causes a buyer to waste considerable time because of a non-responsive seller.