Autotrader Reviews 

My issue is trying to sell your car on the site. There are a lot of scammers that make fake offers. There is very little to prevent this behavior. One scammer was shut down on the site only to pop up again a few days later and make another scam offer.
The company would not provide a refund. Facebook Marketplace works a lot better.

Super streamlined, helps avoid any scam behavior and verifies payment. Very easy process overall and has step by step checklists to follow the entire way.

Posted an ad for $50 and honestly, I’d give negative five stars if I could. Every single inquiry I received was a scam — not most, not almost all, but 100%. When I called Autotrader, all they said was “sorry, nothing we can do” and refused a refund. Total waste of time.

I was told the majority of scams come from unverified accounts and that Autotrader can filter them out, but they simply don’t. Again, a complete waste of time. At this point, I’d be better off parking my car on the street with a “for sale” sign.

My experience with AutoTrader was extremely disappointing. Every inquiry I received were from scammers or individuals who were not legitimate buyers. Despite paying to list my vehicle, I was unable to connect with any serious purchasers through the platform.

I ultimately sold my vehicle through Facebook Marketplace, which was free to use and generated far more genuine interest. Based on my experience, AutoTrader needs to do a much better job screening inquiries and reducing the volume of scam and spam contacts.

Unfortunately, I cannot recommend this platform for private vehicle sales and would not use it again.

Posting my ad went very well, but Autotrader needs to figure out a better and faster way to weed out the scammers that are littered all over their site. I tried to sell a car private-party and every person who contacted me was a scammer. If I want to combat scammers trying to get me to call phone numbers that I find online as a scam risk, or sending me links to some other vehicle history report service because they don't want Carfax, I'll just save my money and use free classified options.

I had a very poor experience using AutoTrader.com to sell my car. I paid to list my vehicle expecting to reach real buyers, but almost every response I received appeared to be fraudulent or suspicious. Instead of serious inquiries, I got scam-style messages and no legitimate buyers.

The service did not feel useful, safe, or properly monitored. For a paid listing platform, I expected better fraud prevention and a better-quality buyer pool. Based on my experience, AutoTrader.com was a waste of money and time, and I would not recommend it to someone trying to sell their car privately.

Don’t waste your time or money. I received 4 calls on my car priced $1,000 lower than any dealer or other ads and only received 4 scam calls from idiots playing games. I finally just sold it to a dealer. Additionally I just reviewed some of the reviews and some of the positive ones are from names of people that tried to scam me. One I noticed was a guy trying to get me to ship my car then pay like the reviewer that had it happen to him and never got paid for his car.

I repeat do not waste your money on this scam site. I posted a vehicle for sale in June. 100 percent of the responses to my ad were fraud and they only caught three. They do nothing to verify that buyers are real even though it's apparent there fake. What a waste of money. I called customer service and they said they are working on that. Guaranteed that is a flat out lie. Once they get your money they don't care.

Complete waste of your time and money. I've gotten nothing but scammer messages only. Really nice car really good price and only messages about 20 of them are all scammers. Not one real person. This is a complete scam itself and Autotrader is just taking your money knowing you're going to get nothing but scammers. They should be banned and their business closed.

As a seller, Autotrader is completely overrun by scammers and bots. Don’t waste your time and money trying to sell your car on this site. All you’ll do is receive scam messages. Autotrader Customer Service response is pretty much “oh well”

Paid $50 to get 7-8 spam and scam messages in the first 24 hours. Was so bad I deactivated the listing and just ate the $50 loss. Save your money.

I only received scam messages during the two months my vehicle was listed.
And the Auto Trader Cash Offers? An absolute insult. The algorithm for the offer doesn’t scan for any info in the offer. I received a cash offer that’s lower than KBB advertises. Insulting. $28,000 for a $50,000 vehicle? Screw off. I’ll be using competitor sites going forward.

Poor communication, etc.. I have used them over the years rather easily... Posted an ad this time its for 180 ($49) fixed rate. The ad did not post in 24 hours like in the past. The email/site later implied they would charge me extra to sell the car (0.99% of value) and they would handle the sale. I never saw this when I placed the ad and never inthe past used this. I like to deal with buyers direct. AT told me I could in a latter email after i sent them a message. Days later the ad still not post and I had to reach out again (call).. they sent me to an agent and they sent email wanting a title to verify ownership. I did NOT send it (clean title) as I did not feel safe and I know they can verify ownership other ways and not sure why they needed it now. Feels like a scam to me. And why did I have to reach out to call to ask why my ad was NOT posted days later.... just poor communication. I told them to cancel the ad and refund my fee to my card.

When I found a buyer it went smoothly, but there were a lot of scam messages prior. I don't know what can be done to stop them, but please try.

Smooth process, but please eliminate scam "buyers" I was flooded with at start.

A great way to do used car sales. My only complaint is sellers and buyers should be verified to cut down on the poliferation of scam messaging. At the current time, you have to be internet savy to spot all the scam messaging.

Autotrader took the stress out of selling our Corvette as our first attempt would have been a $46,000 SCAM. Do not sell your vehicle by yourself even when you get a cashiers Check in hand for more than your asking price! Let Autotrader verify your buyer or seller!!

What a disappointment. After listing my car 99% scammers that want to have their "financier" send a cashier's check then have their moving company pick up the car. The Better Business Bureau lists this as the top scam in the industry. Unless Autotrader can figure out a way to block this type of criminal I will tell everyone I run into to list there car anywhere else. What an epic waste of time. People say Craigslist is scammy. No, Autotrader takes the cake in scam land.

I was extremely disappointed with my experience listing my vehicle on AutoTrader. The platform generated nothing but scam and phishing inquiries instead of legitimate buyers. Most messages were obvious attempts to get me to email outside the platform, click suspicious links, or engage with fake escrow/payment schemes.

I paid for the advertisement expecting qualified exposure to real car shoppers, but instead it became a frustrating waste of both time and money. The amount of scam activity made the platform feel poorly monitored and unsafe for private sellers.

I understand scams exist everywhere online, but I expected far better filtering, verification, and seller protection from a paid automotive marketplace. Unfortunately, I would not recommend AutoTrader to private sellers based on this experience.

Paying $50 for an ad just to receive ai scam bot messages is diabolical. This should be a free service if they are not willing to secure their platform and verified users. I only received spam messages and scam attempts, no real users. Absolutely disappointed in the experience and would never use Autotrader in the future.