Autotrader – Shop All the Cars Ratings and Reviews

Glitchy, Poor results and too Expensive

I have been using Autotrader for years. The last few times I have used it not only is it glitchy and freeze up, but the quality of the results were not inclusive of many many other results found on other competing websites. Step it up or I will start my car searches where the results can be found. I have also sold a few cars on Autotrader. The last time I TRIED to sell a car I was SHOCKED how expensive it was. Tried it for a few weeks with only a few calls, all tire kickers. I put the same car on another site after a few weeks on Autotrader and we had ten calls in two days and the car was sold within a week. So, again poor results. Autotrader needs to lower the cost to list a car to solve their two biggest problems. 1)Not enough listings 2)because it’s to expensive to list a vehicle. Look, I think Autotrader has been the goto in car searches/selling over the years, but they got too big for their britches! Come back to reality Autotrader and realize you are getting your clocks cleaned cause you got greedy.......

Trashed

The developers have been destroying the app with each update over the years, to the point where it’s unusable now. I have been a longtime user of Autotrader and have been using it for over 5 years. The old app was the best. When they started to modernize the app, each update introduced new bugs and annoyances. The most recent update that introduced a new interface and a type search feature is the absolute worst thing. It was easy to tap make and model in the old app as it was front and center, but now it’s the search bar. The search bar does not recognize some very common models. For example, I type “S550” it brings up every Mercedes model except for the S550. If you do manage to find what you're looking for, when you apply the filter sometimes it doesn’t work, it shows the entire brand instead of what model you’re looking for. The app has had issues with it logging you out of your account for OVER A YEAR! How ridiculous is that? The newest issue is that, if you do manage to stay logged in, it won’t save cars that you want to save. Instead, it will give you an error. What’s also new is that if you tap on a vehicle to open the listing, it will show a blank screen. The app is literally unusable, in addition to showing us showing ads for this ridiculous performance, the developers and the company as a whole should be ashamed.

Developer Response ,

Dear Aaron, We appreciate you bringing this experience to our attention. The Autotrader team will look into this issue to make your next visit more enjoyable.

An Unfortunate Descent Into Chaos

It deeply saddens me to write this review. After consistently providing in depth feedback via the surveys that used to pop up for years; I have been reduced to an App Store reviewer whereas I doubt the team will truly read each one of these reviews. The app is simply beyond use at this point, and an experience as mine is apparently relatively common nowadays. I have used old tactics that used to work to revive the utility of the application (i.e. deleting and reinstalling, clearing the data from my device in between installations) without success. I am not someone who uses many apps on a daily basis but Autotrader has always been a personal favorite of mine considering my lifelong affinity for automobiles as both an industry member and a buyer myself. In the case that my review be read by the team:
Please do make a serious attempt at increasing the stability and hence utility of searching on the application, even at the expense of removing alternative features temporarily; it would appear to me that a core line of business and viability of the advertising revenue is at stake.
Thank you for your time and new users beware: the application is effectively useless at this time but please use the website in its absence and i’m sure very soon it will be in proper working order.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for taking a moment to send us your feedback. A dedicated member of the Autotrader team will be reviewing your input and working to incorporate it into our future app experience.

Saved me a lot and made me happy

I needed to replace an Audi. I kept cruising Autotrader and the net deciding what I wanted, seeing the options, and, mainly, working up the nerve to drop that much money on a purchase. One day I noticed the latest model with everything I wanted and very low mileage for 25% off. I contacted the dealer and it was already sold. However I learned from that dealer that the dealers sell their loaner cars at the same time when the new model arrives. So I watched Autotrader like a hawk. Sure enough another one appeared at a dealer closer to me. I emailed them immediately through the app and snagged the prize. I was planning to pay full price for a new car, but I figured a loaner was basically a new car at 25% off. I think I got the new car with everything I wanted and saved $13,000 or more. I presume the app made a little money too—good for them. Unfortunately the Audi dealer we always worked with wasn’t part of Autotrader so they lost my business. Thanks Autotrader! I’m a big fan.

App Unusable Due To Obnoxious Ads

You’re looking for cars? How about an ad on something else that is not cars? Yes, that’s what you want. Touch any where in the app…even that car you’re trying to look at and no, it’s not going to take you to that car you were looking for but an advertiser that is paying us to funnel traffic to them and we can show them all the clicks we are getting that are in essence, falsifying customer interest. So after happily using this app for years, this current version I have recently deleted because you can no longer scroll vehicles and search results without the app leaving the search results every 2 to 5 seconds and bringing you to another advertisement in a web browser. No matter where you touch in the app at all, it prompts this as if you clicked an ad. I am not interested in the ads and this is just obnoxious. At first this was just irritating, but now it’s made the app completely unusable. I’d rather use other platforms that do not do this. Look, I get it, you have to pay the bills and monetize this content you provide in some kind of way. But you’ve lost me with the poor user experience here. Hope you figure this all out before you lose more of us and this app is no more. Appreciate how this used to be.

Can you maybe unbreak your app?

For the most part I love Autotrader. I find it very useful. I found my most recent vehicle purchase on it. But you guys really need to hammer out the glitches in your app. If I get particularly far in scrolling through a search the app just decides it can’t handle it and shuts down. Then I have to restart my search from the beginning and try to scroll back to where I left off. I think to myself “maybe I should check to see if there’s an update that fixes this.” Yes! An update there is. Great, let’s try this out again. Problem definitely “fixed.” It’s not crashing out of the searches any more because it will only let me see....oh, I dunno....50 of the results? Out of 1600. Yeah that’s just perfect. That’s exactly what I was hoping for. Just show me those 50 cars. And let’s forget all about the other 1550 I might be interested in. God forbid you let me see them, because obviously your app can’t handle it without crashing. I’m rolling my eyes so hard that if I was driving, I would crash like your app. Or, I just update my brain to the new software version that only lets me see 5 cars on the road at a time, and then I would never crash. Because that’s how things work, right?

If it Ain’t Broken, Don’t Fix it

I agree with a prior review. AT was clean and generally simple. The best in my opinion. Not a bunch of hidden menus and options with overly complicate (IT nerdy) ways to use the tool. Competitor tools tend to overwhelm the user and are confusing to navigate. I’d set all of my advanced settings, multiple vehicles at times, and hit search. And, I’d save the search or vehicle(s) and periodically set alerts. If I were to improve anything - realizing AT must satisfy both the retailers/sellers and buyers experience - I’d continue efforts to only show vehicles asked for under set query parameters. Meaning, if I say Toyota Tundra CrewMax, under 75k miles, max $30k, within 25 miles, don’t show me vehicles that don’t match this criteria. It’s annoying and I abandon tools that do this. Asking the user if they’d like to see similar vehicles or those further out or more dollars, etc. would be fine - though essentially running a finite report criteria and getting back incorrect results is a pain. Clean, Simple, Accurate!

CLEARLY THE APP DEVELOPER NEVER USES THE APP!!!

This app is just short of great but for the reasons it’s not, are nothing short of frustrating. If you search for cars and set a mileage or price parameter, lets say under 20,000 miles under $10,000. The search returns 80% of your results with cars that have unlisted mileage. Unlisted mileage doesn’t mean they forgot to list the mileage, it means the mileage is so high they don’t want you to know until you look into the vehicle. There’s no way to exclude these high mileage vehicles (or unlisted as they say), & its a huge waste of time to make people view them. You can’t sort them out to show only actual low mile vehicles, they mix the unlisted in with lets say 15,000. Even if you sort from low to high mileage, still mixes them all up. They could have made a minimum mileage search option, or a “exclude keyword”, but what they should do, is FORCE the advertiser to list the mileage. It is what it is, so put it in the ad. Auto Trader, you need to fix this, and stop making this a frustrating experience. Should be easy and enjoyable. Your developers clearly don’t USE the app, just test it. Maybe you should actually use it for a change, and work on sorting out these issues.

App Structure needs fixing.

For finding cars, this app does the job for you. There are various filters you can apply, in addition to being able to save certain vehicles and even your searches.

The reason I rated this three stars rather than five is due to the application performance. The app tends to lag and delay response time to scrolling significantly. The result amount listed was tested at 127 results and 100. I do not think the app should be struggling to display these results, and I don’t think it does, however I believe the advertisements cause this latency issue. As they load in continuously, the app must focus on loading the pictures in for the ads, in addition to the specific dimensions. It seems that when the ads is loading in, the performance drops. When this happens, it seems to slow any scrolling, even in the filter screen.

As this looks like a big con, and to me it kinda is, the app still gives you the ability to search cars to a tee that fit your style.

How is it this bad?!?!

I’ve been using the Autotrader app for around 10 years. It has become unbelievable slow and unresponsive, and having it open for just a couple seconds causes my phone to get incredibly hot and then it starts lagging to the point the app is useless. More often than not, it’ll say theirs an issue and have a reload button, only problem is that the reload button doesn’t work. Then you make a selection to filter, it takes about 10 seconds for it to make that change. And sometimes it doesn’t actually make the change. The ads are horrible, if you so much as graze one, it opens your browser and takes you to whatever the ad was for. Even if you select the filter to remove cars that were in an accident, or damaged severely, it’ll still show them. This app has gotten so bad over the years. I like to research cars, and compare them, and Autotrader used to be my favorite app to use for that. But I have since switched to another app that is significantly more stable, functional and more responsive. This really is a shame since Autotrader used to be the best.

Developer Response ,

Thank you for bringing your experience to the attention of our team. We strive to have a seamless interaction between the Autotrader app and users. We will determine the best solution to address this issue moving forward.