Seller's statements: answers that save questions

The seller's statements are a fixed catalogue of closed questions about your listing: how many keys are there, when was the cambelt done, do you hold the registration document, is any finance outstanding? You answer them in your account, on the listing under “Seller's statements”; dealers do the same in the dashboard. The answers appear on the car's page in the “Seller's statements” block, together with the date of the last change.

Because the answers are not sentences but fixed values — yes, no, don't know, a number, a month — a buyer from Lyon or Milan reads them in whatever language they use the site in, even if you answered in German. Nothing is translated along the way, and nothing is reworded. That is the real advantage over the listing text: a question that reads the same in every language no longer has to be asked by message.

What they are not is a check. Carvexia does not check the answers, and the block says so: “Seller's statements, not checked.” Filling them in is voluntary. They replace neither the viewing nor the contract, but they record what you said before the first conversation.

The catalogue is deliberately short and the same for every car. It covers the points where buyers most often get stuck, because neither the photos nor the data fields answer them.

Two questions only appear when they fit the listing: for an electric car, the one about the charging cable; and when the roadworthiness test is due soon or already expired according to the listing, the question whether it will be renewed before handover. Otherwise both only come up at handover — when it is too late to build them into the price.

Besides the actual answers there is “Don't know”, and you can also leave a question on “No answer”. Neither is a weakness. “Don't know” for the cambelt tells the buyer exactly what he needs: he budgets for the change. An estimated date, by contrast, reads as a fact, and as a fact it can be held against you later.

The line runs between knowledge and memory. If you know the last service was in March because the invoice is in the folder, enter the month. If you think it was “sometime in spring” and find no receipt, then “No receipt available” is the honest answer — the question explicitly asks for the last service that has a receipt.

Read the questions closely. “Is any hail or water damage known?” asks about your knowledge. “Has anyone smoked in the car?” asks about the car's whole life — if you bought it used, you only know that for your own time. And the warning light is a snapshot: check with the engine running rather than answering from memory. Conversely, “Don't know” is no escape for things you do know. Concealment is still concealment, even in a drop-down.

“Are any defects known?” is the only question with free text. If you answer yes, you have room for a sentence or two. That text is not translated: it appears in the original, marked as the seller's own words. A buyer who does not read German will paste it into a translation tool, and that works better the simpler the sentence is.

So what works is the shortest form a third party could find again: part, location, finding. “Dent in the tailgate, lower left, about thumb-sized. Air conditioning cools weakly.” No dialect, no workshop abbreviations. Words like “normal for its age” or “nothing serious” translate badly and still give away that something is there.

A defect you name rarely wrecks the price. Someone who knows about it before setting off has priced it in and comes anyway; someone who finds it at the viewing renegotiates and wonders what else is missing. Whatever does not fit into two sentences, such as a repair history, belongs in the listing text or on a photo. Names, phone numbers and plates do not belong in the free text at all: it is public on the car's page.

Interested buyers can send up to five questions from the catalogue along with their enquiry. You see them on your listing as open questions, and often an e-mail arrives as well, with a link through which you can answer directly. The link is valid for two weeks and for one reply; after that you answer the same questions in your account or dashboard under “Seller's statements”.

On the car's page, such questions are shown as “open” while they remain unanswered, at most for as long as the link is valid, with a note that interested buyers have asked. That is meant neutrally, not as a black mark. But it does show every later visitor which question is hanging in the air.

Your answer counts for everyone: it appears on the car's page, for every later buyer too. That is the point — the fifth message with the same question never arrives. Whether and when you answer is up to you. A question you would rather not answer stays on “No answer”.

Every change stays visible. When you replace an answer, the old one moves into the “Change history” below the block, with the period during which it applied; for defects, only the answer, not the replaced free text. Anyone visiting the car's page can open it and see that the tyres still said “Don't know” in May and have carried a month since June. You cannot shorten the history; a history that could be quietly tidied up would tell nobody anything.

That looks like a restriction but is mainly evidence in your favour. If a new defect shows up after the listing goes live — the warning light comes on, the air conditioning fails — and you add it, the record shows from when it was there. That does not replace naming it explicitly at the sale, but it shows you held nothing back. A mistake that appears as corrected in the history is better than one left standing until the sale.

For buyers, the history works the other way round: an answer that switches from “No” to “Don't know” shortly before the viewing is worth a question. And anyone who thinks a statement is wrong can report it via “Statement wrong? Report it” directly below the block.

What the seller's statements say is a statement about the car, just like a sentence in the listing text. A buyer is entitled to rely on it, and a warranty exclusion does not cover a false statement about condition. All the more reason for the contract to say the same thing, no more and no less.

In practice, the lines of the seller's statements move into the contract: the number of keys, the COC and the registration document into the list of items handed over, the known defects word for word into the list of defects. Where a lease or finance agreement is outstanding, the lender has a say in when the car can change hands; in Germany the registration certificate part II is then often held by the lender. How and when the settlement happens belongs in the contract before any money moves.

“Don't know” belongs in there too, as what it is: “Cambelt change: not known to the seller.” That is neither a promise nor a gap but the recorded state of knowledge. Also file the state of the seller's statements on the day of signing, as a printout or screenshot. Once the car is sold the listing is no longer public, and the block on the car's page disappears with it.