I’ve been trying to buy a 986 Boxster for a fun weekend car. All the big car sites seem poorly coded, but the Autotrader website and app borderline both break if you try to add more than 1 search parameter at a time without waiting 5 minutes for the whole site to reload between. Half the time when the site reloads the search adjustment didn’t even take.
So I finally work through that and find a car. I use the sign in with my Apple account feature, message the guy, and schedule a test drive through their site. The guy seems paranoid about getting scammed and wants to do everything through Autotrader, at that point I’m thinking whatever. I’m excited to look at the car, the seller has bad photos on the ad but what I can see looks really clean, carfax and whatnot agree.
I show up today for the test drive at the designated time and location. After a few minutes I try and call the guy. He never responds. I check my email right as I’m about to leave and see I have a new Autotrader message. It’s from the seller telling me I canceled the test drive yesterday.
I didn’t cancel, I look through my email and find a notification at like 2 am that HE cancelled on me!!! So I send him a screenshot of that and he responds with the text from an email Autotrader supposedly sent him reading:
Hello SELLER, this is the Private Seller Exchange on Autotrader. We wanted to reach out and let you know that we've gone ahead and cancelled the test drive that was scheduled with BUYER for tomorrow. Our security team had them removed for fraudulent behavior. It seems they were asking for third party vin reports from suspicious websites. If you have any questions please just let us know.
Best Regards,
PSX Support Team
So Autotrader cancelled it, told each of us initially the other cancelled it, then falsely accused me of fraud.
I call Autotrader and they claim they can’t find anything showing I was accused of fraud, according to the person I spoke with if I engaged in fraud they would have suspended my account. Autotrader told me the test drive was cancelled automatically by their system because I hadn’t verified my identity, and apparently none of my information came through when I signed up with my apple account. My account didn’t even have a name associated.
They said they would follow up with the seller but they basically kneecapped this deal already. Unfortunately the other car I looked at was in terrible shape so they kinda screwed me.
TLDR: Their search function sucks, then you try and buy a car using their systems they will cancel the test drive, lie about who canceled it, and tell the seller you are committing fraud.