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Scrub up if you’re selling your car

First impressions count for a lot when it comes to selling your car privately

Gold jewellery isn’t popular with purchasers

02nd July 2007

Simply wearing the wrong clothes or having a dodgy haircut could cost you a sale. That’s according to a survey of more than 1,400 people carried out by leading auction website eBay.

An incredible 98 per cent of poll respondents admitted to instantly judging whether or not someone selling a car is trustworthy.

The attribute voted the least desirable was a moustache, with 92 per cent of people finding it off-putting. Gold jewellery (63 per cent), visible tattoos (54 per cent) and the use of a Bluetooth mobile phone headset (38 per cent) were all considered undesirable, too. And an incredible 50 per cent of those polled would prefer to remove the personal element of a used car deal entirely by using the website’s one-click ‘Buy It Now’ function. This stops the auction immediately at the seller’s preferred price.

When it comes to writing an advertisement to sell your car, the phrases which gain the most attention from potential purchasers are ‘non-smoking owner, no pets’, followed by ‘used as a second car’ and ‘one lady owner from new’.

Completing the top five most appealing descriptions were ‘full service history, including all bills and MoTs’ and ‘only used locally’.

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