Will's Thoughtstream

Auto Link is essentially a consignment used car lot. They find people who are trying to sell a car themselves, and offer to put the car on the Auto Link lot to sell it. For this, they nominally charge about $350.

In my case, it was a bit more, because they recommended auto detailing and some finish work. So it ended up costing about $500 to have Auto Link try to sell my car. For that $500, what do you get? According to the folks at Auto Link, they sell 90% of cars within 30 days of the time they get the car. In fact, this is the primary reason you'd go with them. 

Auto Link gets more than just your $500 fee for selling the car. You tell Auto Link how much money you want, and Autolink gets anything above that. In my case, Auto Link set a sticker price about $1500 above the amount I wanted. I was assured that Auto Link wouldn't have a problem selling my car at that price, and that in fact they had many customers looking for my model car.

Even though the whole thing seemed slightly fishy, I decided to give it a try. At least I wouldn't need to keep posting my ad on Craigslist, and perhaps they would actually sell my car without any time investment on my part.

I checked in about every two weeks with Auto Link. They had my car about two and a half months - well beyond the 30 days in which they said they sold 90% of their cars. They never sold it. I made an appointment to pick it up in early September.

When I arrived, the battery was dead. The trunk was ajar. And after the three jumpstarts needed to get the car going, the engine light was on. Any reasonably intelligent person who shopping for cars in a used car lot is not going to be interested in a car with the engine light on and a dead battery. I managed to drive the car home, although the engine drove badly. It turned out that there was water in one of the engine cylinders. I'm not sure how water gets in an engine cylinder. The car didn't have the problem when I brought it into Auto Link, but the problem was then when I picked it up. So it seemed pretty clear to me that Auto Link should pick up the repair cost of $200. Nope - they refused reimbursement of any kind, even after phone calls and emails. So in the end, I spent $700 in total to have a car sit in an Auto Link parking lot for two and a half months, with seemingly little chance of it being sold.

I made that mistake, but hopefully other people won't.  If you read the Auto Link reviews at DealerRater.com you'll see that every review for Auto Link Gresham is negative. The two reviews at Citysearch are also very negative. Given my experience and that of the individuals who submitted reviews, I think it makes sense to be very, very cautious about giving Auto Link your business.

Update 10/7/2008: According to the Better Business Bureau, Auto Link has an "unsatisfactory" rating due to outstanding unresolved consumer complaints.