CarTreat

Web Service for dealers and developers

2007-05-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

A web service has been created to grab recently added car ads and incorporate into your website. For an example you can take a look at this website: http://www.bestqualityautoinc.com/carsale.php. They have the web service to pull only their car ads. Another website http://www.dyatel.com has a generic version of the web service use - it pulls all recently added car ads. the amount of car ads and optional dealer ID is configurable though parameters passed to the web service.

Please send an email if ouy're interested in putting car ads feed onto your website.

New feature - Browse

2006-09-21T10:39:00.000-07:00

A new feature has been added to CarTreat.com - browse. Now users can drill down from vehicle to a car advertisement. Start from make and get to what you're looking for without submitting boring search forms.

Happy car trading!

Sincerely,
CarTreat.com

Create a nice-looking web page for your car ad

2006-09-12T10:36:00.000-07:00

CarTreat.com is finally starting out. It already has several user car ads. And this is great news!

We'd like to say a few words about posting an ad to sell your car. We're going to be honest to myself - CarTreat.com will need to be full of active car ads to start working as a car buying resource as well as car selling.

So we thought about a little alternative usage. Now you can create an account and post your car ad on CarTreat.com just to have a nice-looking page for your car. It's absolutely free and requires a few minutes to complete.

After having created your car ad at CarTreat.com make sure you submitted you car pictures. Another thing that helps is getting a CarFax report beforehand and putting a public link to it into CarTreat's special field. By default your ad will be in PENDING state so you could double check everything before publishing it online. After you're done with putting your ad together just click "Publish" link and your ad will instantanously be published and searchable.

All this been done, go ahead and find your ad on CarTreat.com, click on it and you should see what other users would see - your car ad all shiny and beautiful :) And if you want to post it anywhere else - just copy the link from the address bar - you've got yourself a free web page!

Happy selling!

Yours truly,
CarTreat.com

Start selling at CarTreat.com

2006-01-17T10:05:00.000-08:00

To start selling follow these simple steps:

Create an account with CarTreat.com
Login onto your account. You will see your current profile, your ads (published, unpublished, and sold), questions from potential buyers.
Note, if you're a car dealer there are additional fields for you to put your dealership's contact information. To identify yourself as a dealer check the box "Are your a dealer?"
If you're selling more than 1 car, your car inventory will be automatically created
To create a new car ad click on "New Ad" menu
Enter the following information:

Vehicle Information. Select you car's make, model and year. Check the box if it's new. If you can't find your car fill in the form and we'll update our configuration.
Pricing Information. Enter your price here. In Price Comment field you can optionally enter price comments, for example "OBO", "ASKING", "FIXED", etc.
Location. Enter your 5-digit Zip-code.
Vehicle Features. Fill in as more details here as possible. This will help to sell your car better. If you car has a common feature which is not listed here, please let us know and we'll correct this.
Text. Enter short description of you car, model/submodel specifics, point your car's condition, for example - "Like new", "Runs great". List features that are not included automatically, for example "Custom shift knobs", "ski rack", "bike rack", etc. Try to make this description short. Remember, the longer the unnecessary text the less desire there is to read it.

After you submit your new ad you'll be redirected to your account page. You should see you car in "My Pending Advertisements" section. This means that you saved your ad, but it's not visible to other people yet.
To add images click "Images" link and add up to 9 pictures of your car. The images will be automatically organized into a gallery. Please remember that images should be of JPEG format and less than 200kb in size.
You can edit and preview your ad as much as you want
When your car ad is ready click "Publish" button. The ad will instantly become visible and searchable for all CarTreat.com visitors.
If you'd like to pause but not delete your ad, click "UnPublish". If you sold your car, please click "Sold", don't confuse other people who might still be interested.
Feel free to ask us any questions and/or send your comments/suggestions. We are listening!

Happy car selling!

Sincerely,
CarTreat.com - Free Car Trading Resource
http://www.cartreat.com

New car trading resource

2005-12-16T09:59:00.000-08:00

A new free car trading resource http://www.cartreat.com has been launched!

It allows people to search online car ads for a specific car, sell their cars using our services. And it's all free!

Here are several features of the new website:

Professional-looking web page for every car ad
Images gallery (up to 9 images)
CarFax links support
Ease of use and managing sellers' accounts
Search existing car ads
No web annoyances

Car trading resources

2005-11-05T09:57:00.000-08:00

Almost all car trading web sites follow the same pattern in their application design. There are three major sections in each, "buy", "sell", "tips" or "advice". This is pretty much straightforward. Bigger sites have also all kinds of tools such as "research a car", "find a true value" and the like. I'm talking about free tools to attract users to the web site, make them want to visit it again, not the tools that brong profit to an owner (vehicle history check, loan application, insurance).

Auto repair

2005-11-03T09:58:00.000-08:00

Auto repair is pretty good business from different points of view. Some of its profit goes from unaware customers. Example? Imagine this. You don't know squad about cars, let alone repairing them. Something is clicking in your front left wheel when you do a right turn. You go to a repair shop you had found in a PennySaver ad. They tell you with all the confidence and sorrow in their faces that if had had driven your car a couple of miles more it would have been your last ride... and that you need a to change your brakes. You agree and after a while a manager comes out of the office with a sad look. He tells you that rotors are bad and need replacement, that they also made you a favor and checked your fluids for free... Turns out, you need a transmission fluid flush, coolant flush, oil change and fuel system cleanup. Without knowing anything about cars (and thus failing to regular maintain your car until it's broken) you would agree to what they offer. Of course, how can you not trust this caring guy, he virtually saved your life. You end up paying about $1500 total. Example 2? You know something or at least read the users manual (which, btw, has a troubleshooting guide, maintanance schedule, good pieces of advice about using your car, to name a few). You hear same clicking in your left front wheel and look it up. You realize that most likely has something to do with brakes or rotors. You go to a repair shop and ask them to check your brakes (not just "something is wrong with my car"). They check your brakes and it turns out the brake pad is split in two halves. They change your front brake pads, and check rears just in case. In the worst case scenario they'll try to upsell you an oil change or a transmission flush... But you kill them saying, "Oh, I just did one at my dealership a month ago... Should I call them and ask why they did such a bad job for Mr. Smith says it needs to be re-done..." I wonder what would Mr Smith say :) You walk away having paid $50 for front pads change. See the difference? Of course, it's all ideallistic and overdramatic, but...