What your Camry did before is a question, not a verdict.
Somewhere in the pricing of a car like this, a stranger settles for themselves what it probably did for a living before it was yours.
We put the question to you instead, then send somebody to look. What you say changes where the time goes on the day, not whether there is an offer.
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The question nobody asks you
A car nobody has seen gets priced as the version that worked hardest
It is not suspicion and it is almost never said out loud. It is what happens when a figure has to be produced quickly and nobody has been anywhere near the car.
Most people selling one of these have never given it a thought, and there is no reason they would have. The car did the run to school, the trip up the highway at Christmas, the drive to work and back for years. Then a figure comes back that sits lower than the car felt like it was worth, with nothing attached to explain how anybody arrived at it. Nothing unkind gets said. Nothing gets said at all, which is the part that is impossible to argue with.
What is going on underneath it is ordinary caution. A number has to be produced without anybody laying eyes on the car, so it gets built to cover the hardest life that car could plausibly have had, and the owner whose car did not have that life is handed the same figure as the owner whose car did. It is quick and it is not dishonest. It is also the one thing about a Camry Hybrid that a person standing in front of it can settle in about two minutes.
So we ask you at the beginning, on the phone, before anybody drives anywhere. A taxi, a hire car, a company pool car, a government fleet, or nothing but your own driveway for years, all of those are answers we can work with and not one of them ends the call. And if it has only ever been yours, say that too, because that is the answer nobody can see from the outside and the one most likely to be assumed away. What we would rather avoid is finding it while you are standing there watching, because that is the version where it feels like something has been caught rather than told.
On the call
What we ask about a car that may have worked
Not one of these is a test, and none of them has a wrong answer. They decide what the inspector arrives already knowing, which is what keeps the visit short.
- Do you know what it did before you had it?
- Yes, no, or you have never thought about it. All three are good answers. Thirty seconds on the phone here saves everybody guessing at it later, and if it has only ever been the family car, that counts as an answer too.
- Who has been servicing it, one name or a list of them?
- One workshop for years reads differently from a string of them, and neither is a mark against the car. It tells the inspector what sort of history to expect. If the book is stamped, have it in the car when we come, because a stamped page is worth more than a sentence about a stamped page.
- Has anything ever been mounted to the roof, the dash or the windscreen?
- A roof sign, a meter, a bracket for a screen, signage on the doors, a partition behind the front seats. Anything bolted on leaves something behind when it comes off, and what matters is the repair rather than the fitting. If somebody made good afterwards, tell us who did it and roughly when.
- Did it come to you from a dealer, an auction or a private seller?
- Where a car came from tells us what paperwork is likely to exist and what is likely to be missing. A dealer sale usually leaves a trail behind it, a private sale sometimes leaves an excellent one, and an auction can leave almost nothing. None of the three counts against the car.
- Was it ever used for work, including your own?
- Plenty of people run their own car for the job without ever once calling it a work car. A sales round, deliveries, the tools living in the boot for a couple of years, a trailer for the business on weekends. It is a real answer and it points at the parts of the car worth a longer look.
- Has somebody already put a low figure on it without explaining why?
- If a number came back with nothing attached to explain it, tell us what it was and who it came from. We are not asking so we can talk anybody down. We are asking because it tells us what has already been assumed about this car by somebody who never saw it.
Whatever the answer turns out to be
Three things a working past does not decide
- A car that worked is still a car we buy. Taxi, hire car, pool car or private the whole way through, the conversation carries on either way. It moves what gets looked at and how long the looking takes. It does not move whether there is an offer at the end of it.
- What cannot be seen gets asked about rather than assumed. The battery is assessed properly rather than discounted on a guess, and on this car it sits beside the service history, the body and the kilometres rather than out in front of them. Same with the history. We ask, then we look.
- Saying it early is not the same as being marked down for it. Anything you tell us on the phone is built into the number from the start, which is precisely why it does not lurch on the day. The awkward version is the one where nobody mentioned it and everybody is standing in the driveway.
The awkward ones
Three questions sellers of this car brace for
It was a hire car before I bought it. Does that make it worth less to you?
It is worth what it is worth once somebody has looked at it, which is true of every car we buy. A working past changes what the inspector goes over and how long the visit takes. Told at the start, it is planned for. Found on the day it is a surprise, and surprises are the only thing that move a number.
I bought it second hand and I have no idea what it did before that. Is that a problem?
No, and plenty of people are in exactly that position. Tell us what you do know, which is usually where you bought it and what you have done with it since, and leave the rest of it blank rather than filling it in with a maybe. A car keeps its own records in places a previous owner never thought about, and the person who comes out knows where to look.
There are holes in the roof where something used to be mounted. Should I get them repaired first?
Please do not. Money spent tidying a car up for a sale does not often come back, and a repair like that is visible to anybody who knows to look for it. Leave it alone, point it out when we speak, and it gets counted once instead of argued about twice.
Tell us what the Camry did before you had it, even if the answer is that nobody knows.
Or call us on 03 9000 0075 and talk it through first.