Answering wanted requests: offers for cars you lack

Buyers who find nothing suitable in the search can describe the car they want once: the make, the model if they like, plus the filters from their search — fuel, gearbox, body type, year, mileage, power and so on. Added to that are a budget or a note that it is open, the countries they would buy from, a time frame and whether they want to trade a car in. The request only becomes visible once the buyer has confirmed it through a link sent by email.

In the dashboard these requests appear under “Wanted”, without a name and without an address. You see what someone is looking for, but not who they are. That is the core of the process: the buyer decides whether to reply to an offer, and only with their reply do you learn their email address. Conversely, you are under no obligation to respond to a request — and the buyer knows that.

A wanted request therefore reads differently from an enquiry about a listing. An enquiry concerns a car you have. A request describes a gap — in the market, in the search, sometimes in your stock. The time frame tells you how urgent it is: “as soon as possible” calls for a car in stock, “in the coming months” leaves room to source one.

Two settings decide which requests appear in your list. The first is your business's country: you only see requests where the buyer has named that country among those they would buy from. The second is the list of makes in your business profile. If it is empty, you see requests for every make; if it holds a list, only requests for those makes.

The list of makes is therefore a working decision, not advertising. An empty list brings you every request, including makes you neither stock nor can source, and the daily summary email turns into a list nobody reads any more. A list that is too narrow hides requests you could serve. Include the makes you keep in stock and those you reliably source through your usual channels — not every make that has ever stood on your forecourt.

At the top of the list you see how many open requests you have not yet sent an offer for, and once a day a summary email arrives. There is no deadline by which you must reply. But each request only runs for a limited time from confirmation, and the buyer can close it at any moment.

An offer consists of a message to the buyer and three optional items: a price, a date until which the offer is valid, and a linked listing from your published stock. A linked listing is almost always better than a description, because it brings photos, a data table and the seller's statements with it. If the car is not online yet because it has only just come in, it is often worth listing it first and then linking it.

An offer that plainly does not fit the request — a different model, far over budget, sent on principle — helps nobody. Buyers can report offers, and anyone who has received three unsuitable ones will not read the fourth.

The message is the heart of it, and it should answer the questions the request leaves open:

A price to private customers includes VAT; price indication rules in the EU and in Switzerland require it, and the form says so too. Anything not included belongs in the message rather than in a later surprise: delivery, registration, preparation, inspection.

With requests from abroad this is the decisive point. A buyer who has named your country among the possible ones is expecting import, taxes and registration at their end. So state what gets added to your price as far as it concerns you — delivery, export papers, a net price where VAT can be shown — and say explicitly that import charges in the destination country are not included. Do not quote rates for them; they belong to the destination country's customs administration, and a wrong figure in your offer is worse than none.

The “valid until” date says how long the price holds. It does not say that the car is held for the buyer that long. If you keep selling it to others in the meantime, say so; if you hold it, say on what condition. An offer that stops being valid after a week because the car has gone, without that being stated anywhere, costs you more than this one buyer.

A request can also be answered with a car you do not have yet — from a partner business, from an auction, from another market, or for new cars through an order. That is the real strength of the process: the buyer is looking for exactly what you can source, and no competitor's listing sits next to yours.

Carvexia does not handle purchases and holds no money; whatever you and the buyer agree is governed by your own contract. A buyer asked for a deposit wants to know in writing beforehand when and in what circumstances they get it back — and a dealer who sets that out clearly is more likely to get the job than one who leaves it open.

A sourcing offer therefore needs different details from a car in stock, and the terms at the end matter most:

The offer goes to the buyer by email. If they reply, the reply goes straight to the email address in your business profile; without an address on file you cannot make an offer at all. From that point the conversation runs like any other enquiry — except that the buyer has already told you what they are looking for.

Each business can answer a request once and change its offer while the request is running — say, because a better-matching car comes in or the price changes. A change is only emailed to the buyer again if something has actually changed, and not an unlimited number of times. Use it for a new situation, not as a reminder.

Once the buyer closes the request or it expires, nothing more can be sent or changed; the request stays visible alongside your offer, marked as ended. Many offers go unanswered, and that does not mean they were bad — the buyer may have bought elsewhere or changed their plans. You cannot follow up, because you do not know their address. That is intentional, and it is the reason buyers are willing to post a request at all.