How to compare junk car quotes

1. Write down the car’s details once: year, make, model, title status, whether it runs, what’s damaged and what’s missing.
2. Give those exact details to every buyer you ask.
3. Ask each buyer the same five questions about price, towing, payment, changes at pickup and how long the offer lasts.
4. Compare what you’d actually receive, and keep the car complete until it’s sold.

The rest of this guide takes each step in turn, because each one has a way of going wrong.

Before you call or fill in a single form, write down your car in a few lines. For example:

2009 Honda Accord, 4-door. Has title. Doesn’t run: engine turns over but won’t start. Front bumper cracked, otherwise straight. All four wheels, battery and catalytic converter still on it. In a garage off the alley, rolls.

That’s it. Year, make and model; title status; runs or not, and how it fails; damage; anything missing; where it is and whether it rolls.

Why bother? Because the most common reason two quotes aren’t comparable is that the seller described the car differently each time. Tell one buyer “runs rough” and another “doesn’t run” and you’ve asked for prices on two different cars.

Copy and paste. Read it out word for word on the phone. If a buyer asks something your description doesn’t cover, add the answer to your note and give it to the others too.

This step is also a test of the buyer. A buyer who asks good questions (how does it fail to start? which panels are damaged?) is pricing your car. A buyer who gives you a number before you’ve finished describing it is pricing a guess, and guesses tend to get “corrected” at the curb.

Write each answer next to the buyer’s name. If you want a ready-made sheet, the one on our second offer page has a column per buyer.

Our own answers, so you can hold us to them: towing is free and nothing comes off the offer for it; you’re paid at pickup when the car is collected, in cash or by Zelle, Cash App or another digital payment; and our offer has no expiry date. The amount comes on the call, because it depends on your car.

For each buyer, start with the number and subtract anything that comes off: tow fees, “admin” fees, anything they mentioned. That’s the real offer.

Then weigh the other answers. A slightly lower number paid when the car is collected can beat a higher one paid “within a week”. An offer that stands for three days lets you finish your calls; one that expires in an hour is asking you to stop comparing.

And keep the car complete while you do this. If you pull the battery or sell the wheels halfway through, every quote you’ve collected is for a car that no longer exists.

“We pay up to $X” and “we’ll give you $Y for your car” are not two prices. The first is a ceiling on what the company pays for any car. The second is an offer for yours.

It’s easy to treat the bigger figure as the better deal. Don’t. An “up to” figure becomes comparable only when the buyer turns it into a number for your car, and when you know whether towing comes out of it. Until then, set it aside.

There’s no honest typical figure, and a page that gives you one is guessing. What a junk car fetches depends on how much it weighs, which parts are still on it and working, how much demand there is for those parts, and the price of scrap metal at the time, which goes up and down.

What you can do is make sure the quotes you collect are for the same car, measured the same way. That gets you the real top number for your car, which is the one that matters.

When you have two or three offers answered on all five questions, you’re done. Pick the one that leaves the most in your hand at pickup, from a buyer whose answers were plain.

If any buyer’s answers made you uneasy (vague about towing, keen to get the title signed, “we’ll pay you after”), read the warning signs to watch for before you book them. And if you’ve already got a number from someone else, send us the same details and we’ll call within 15 minutes with ours.