I’ve been toying with the idea of selling my car for almost a year now. First, it was as I was planning maternity leave and realized that I wouldn’t be driving as much not to mention that my MINI Cooper just wasn’t really a baby-car. Then, as time went on and the stay at home orders due to COVID-19 become a reality, my husband and I both started working from home and we really didn’t need two cars. Now we’ve made the big decision to relocate for several months to be closer to my family so selling both of our cars became the new plan.

Deciding Not to Sell Private Party

When we’ve sold cars in the past, it made sense to sell private party. With a bit more work, you can usually get the most money by doing it this way. But, this time around, we decided not to do that. We both still had loans on our cars (yay low-interest rates!) and that made things more complicated. Even if we paid them off immediately, we wouldn’t get our lien-free titles in hand for 30 days. That made selling to a private party (via Craigslist or something similar) way more complicated. It also would have meant dealing with more people for test drives and a lot of interaction that we didn’t have time for or felt safe planning.

Getting Quotes & Choosing Shift

Next, we turned to online options, again we were trying to limit contact. I picked a few different companies via online search and friend recommendations and saw a range of ways to sell your car (mostly online). These were the three companies I looked at before ultimately choosing Shift.

• TRED is similar to private party sales but with a lot of help from their team for matching you with potential customers.
• Carvana will give you a quick quote online and then they will pick the car up from you (or you can do a trade-in for a new car).
• Shift is almost identical to Carvana. It’s mostly CA-based, though they do have a few other west coast states that they work with. I chose them because Laura had used them in the past so I knew it was legit and they gave me a much better quote for both of our cars, plus opportunities for bonuses.

I’ve gotten a quote from Carmax in the past but decided not to this time because you have to go in person and I felt like they super low balled me when I tried them before. It’s an easy way to get rid of a car fast — but, ultimately, I think you’ll get more money from one of their competitors with a tiny bit more work.

The Process

I entered my VIN number on Shift’s website and filled out a few basics on my car — and received an instant quote. The quote is displayed first and then you can enter your email address if you want to lock it.

I scheduled a “pick up” for the next day. A representative from Shift arrived at my garage, took a look at the car, did a test drive, and confirmed I had all the necessities: 2 sets of keys, title (or 10-day pay off a statement from the bank), my ID, etc).

They took money off for my tires which needed to be replaced and adjusted the quote then calculated bonuses (see below) and made me a final offer. I signed everything on their iPad and filled out the info for my bank ACH transfer for payment on my phone while I was standing with the representative.

After I filled out the paperwork, I handed over the keys, they took the car and, within a few days, the money arrived in my bank account. It all felt a little too easy and too good to be true. I was thrilled with how simple it was and that I was able to sell my car for a price I felt comfortable with quickly and without leaving home. I only had to interact with one person, which helped my comfort level greatly during COVID.

Tips & Tricks

If you don’t lock in the online quote with your email address, the amount can change. For my husband’s car, the quote went up by $100 in a 3-day time period, but for mine, it went down by over $1000! I locked in the rate for my husband’s car at the higher price point and then stressed about mine for a few minutes before figuring out that I could get my initial high quote back by opening the window in an incognito window!

One small quirk with Shift is that they have it written into their contract that they can have a mechanic take a more in-depth look under the car after they take it. They do this within 48 hours of taking the car. This means that if they find anything crazy, they can adjust the amount or return the car to you. We didn’t have an issue with this and they seemed to be a very honest company to me. However, if that part makes you uneasy — their mechanics don’t work on the weekends, so schedule your pick up for Friday night or Saturday morning and then they don’t even have time to look.

Customer support for Shift is top-notch. I spoke to several different representatives throughout the process for various questions and was really pleased with how open the company was with everything and how helpful they were in navigating a unique car-selling process.

Bonuses

From time to time, Shift offers a bonus if you let them take the car at the first appointment. They say that it’s so they don’t have to send another agent out later. But I imagine it also helps them stop you from getting quotes elsewhere. When we locked in the rate, Shift included the bonus amount in our email confirmation of the quote. We sold ours at the end of June 2020 and the bonus was for $300. When Laura sold her car in 2017, the bonus was for $100. And the person I spoke to at Shift said that when COVID first hit (March/April 2020) they were not even doing a bonus because of the demand. So if you have time to spare, you could call to see what the current bonus is and decide on your timeline based on what they offer you.

There is also a $100 referral bonus for both the person who refers and the person that gets referred that comes in the form of an Amazon gift card. If you are considering Shift — I’d love for you to use my link, we will each get the $100 gift card!