How Carsome Sold Our Car RM8,150 Higher Than Trade-In Price Within 2 Days

In this article, I will be sharing my experience selling a car through Carsome, an alternative way to sell your car online. The whole process was frictionless, where:

• Carsome prevented us from getting RIPPED OFF at the used car dealers.
• We don’t have to deal with time-wasting buyers.
• We don’t have to deal with getting our car inspected at PUSPAKOM.
• Got paid within 2 days of Carsome car inspection.

A little backstory: The owner of the car is expecting his 3rd child. A 3-row MPV for his expanding family is in order. Therefore, he wants to sell the hatchback and roll the money into a new MPV.

The Car to Be Sold:

The car is a pleasure to drive. As much as I hate to say it, it drove better than the Civic Turbo. It was in mint condition & ‘under-mileage as the owner lived & work in the KL city center.

What a waste to sell. I would’ve paid for it cash myself if I had the money. But unfortunately, I don’t. So here I am making this blog & video content instead 😭

3 Ways to Sell a Car in Malaysia

I volunteered to help & we had 3 options on how to sell the car at the time:

1. Trade it in at the used car dealer (easiest but lowest trade-in price).
2. Advertise online and get our own buyer for a possibly higher selling price (but I hate to entertain people & I have to get the car manually inspected at PUSPAKOM).
3. Use Carsome or MyTukar to bid our cars online to car dealers for a potentially higher price compared to #1, and less headache than #2.

We obviously don’t want to get ripped off, so option #1 is out of the picture. I don’t want to deal with time-wasters online & getting the car inspected at Puspakom, so option #2 is also out.

So that leaves us with the last one, using the new online selling platform, either MyTukar or Carsome.my:

How Does MyTukar & Carsome Work?

Carsome & MyTukar are 2 companies that help you sell your car fast, at a possibly higher price compared to used car dealers.

The concept is genius:

1. You’d get your car inspected at one of their locations (this is free).
2. They’ll offer you a price if you were to sell it directly to them.
3. Or, you can list your car on their website for car dealers nationwide to bid amongst themselves.
4. You’ll only pay their transaction fee (RM250 to RM 500) if you accept the bidding price.

Sounds like a solid, power back to the people kind of internet solution. I was all in. So before I started with step #1, I researched to see the current market price for our car with similar specs & registered year:

Comparing Online Selling & Trade-In Prices

Trade-In Price: We went to a Mazda showroom and asked them for the trade-in value of the VW Golf. They offered us RM45,000. Now, we know our bottom price. We won’t accept anything below this value.

Online Selling Price: Next, I went back home and searched how much are people selling similar cars on mudah.my. The average turned out to be around RM 57,000:

RM 57k minus RM 45k, the used car dealers have RM 12k to play with for repairs + haggling + profit. That’s insane profit margins if you ask me.

Obviously, we want to sell our car as close to the RM 57k as possible. We targeted a realistic selling price between RM 50k – 55k.

Physical Car Inspection

The next order of business is to get the car physically inspected by MyTukar & Carsome.

Mobile Inspection With MyTukar

I called MyTukar first and set a date for an appointment. They gave me an option to get their inspector over to my apartment free of charge.

The inspection was 98% visual. He had a small flashlight with him, and he took a lot of photos with his smartphone. Here’s what I noticed what he was looking for:

• Mileage on the odometer.
• He used a flashlight to look inside the air-cond vents.
• He looked inside the engine bay (where he spent most of his time).
• He climbed at the back seat to inspect the condition of the seat cushions and headlining.
• He looked at the imperfections of the body for dings and scratches.
• He drove the car for a short distance to do a 3 point turn and face the car in the opposite direction.

The inspection lasted between 15 – 20 mins. A day later, MyTukar Whatsapped me and offered me a price of RM 46,000 if I were to sell it to them directly. They also gave me an option if I wanted to list my car on their online bidding service.

I did not proceed, and took the opportunity to get a price comparison with Carsome.my:

Carsome Inspection at Setiawangsa Branch

I called Carsome up and set up a date to go there because I wanted to see how their inspection site looks like.

The Carsome rep went the extra mile to create the MITI travel letter for me just in case if I ever were to get caught at a COVID roadblock:

When I arrived, I was surprised to see the branch looking very professional and well run:

• There were a min of 2 and a max of 4 inspectors looking at the car at one time
• Similar process to MyTukar, where the inspectors used a flashlight and smartphone to document any imperfections
• Between MyTukar & Carsome, Carsome did a more thorough job at inspecting the vehicle. It lasted about 30 – 45 mins.
• They test drove the car longer. They drove it at least 3 rounds around the car park.

After the inspection was finished, I was told to wait at the office as the inspector uploaded the photos that he took into a computer and did some phone calls to what I assumed to be their network of used car dealers.

After 15 mins, the inspector came out, sat me down and offered me a price of RM 45,000 if I were to sell it directly to them (MyTukar’s direct sell price was RM 46,000).

I was dissapointed with the direct buy prices for both MyTukar & Carsome as it was the same with trading it at a used car dealer.

But similar to MyTukar, they recommended another option, where they can list my car on their website for used car dealers to bid amongst themselves to get a potentially higher selling price.

Online Bidding with Carsome.my

I agreed to list my car for bidding with Carsome as I was already there and the inspector shared with me a few interesting points about their bidding system:

• He can get my car listed on their bidding platform by next morning.
• The bidding will start around noon the next day and will only last 1.5 hours per session.
• If there were no bidders, they will reduce the listing price by 10% each time the car is relisted until there is a bidder.
• I don’t have to pay anything until I agree on a price to sell.

Sounds interesting. He asked me, what is my starting price, and I told him RM50,000.

So the guy set it up, but somehow, they forgot to email me the link where I can see my car being bid live. That would’ve been pretty dope to see.

The next day, the car entered bidding around noon, and at 8pm, the inspector rang me up to tell me that they’ve gotten a highest bid of RM 53,400:

I was pleasantly surprised, because I thought not many people wanted to buy a used VW due to the notorious DSG gearbox issue (although ours was fine).

A quick call to the owner of the car and we agreed on the bid price. Nice! We were all happy.

Handing Over the Car at Carsome Ampang

Yay! We’ve got a price higher than expected! The Carsome guy said that we needed to bring in the car within 2 days of accepting the bid and their processing fee will be RM 250 instead of RM 500.

We’re cheap, so we sent the car over the very next day. Here’s what you have to bring to hand over the car:

1. The owner, whose name is in the car’s grant must physically show up to do the thumbprint verification.
2. The owner’s original IC.
3. The original car grant.
4. 2 set of keys.

Getting Paid From Carsome

The entire documentation and verification took about an hour, finishing at about 4:45pm, we then headed back home and the owner received the money (minus the RM 250 processing fee) into his bank account within 1 hour of documentation verification:

Conclusion From Carsome & MyTukar

The bidding business modal and processing fee is very similar between Carsome & MyTukar. I don’t think it would make any difference if you’d pick one over the other.

Both transaction fees for accepting the bid price is RM 500 for both companies, but when I was selling the car, Carsome ran a promotion where I’d only have to pay RM 250 (usually RM 500) if I brought the car in within 2 days of accepting a bid price.

I made a table to summarize all the finances for this event:

There you have it, I am very happy with my overall experience because I feel:

• The employees were trained and professional.
• Carsome saved us RM 8,150!
• It’s super FAST: 2 day timeline from inspecting the car to selling it and getting paid.

I highly recommend you try either brand’s bidding platform to explore your potential selling price. Check out their website below: