Autotrader - enshittification

[WindyCommon]

Is it just me, or has Autotrader deteriorated to the point where it is less than useful…?

I’ve been looking for a new Defender, and am tired of:

- listing thumbnails showing a CGI not the actual car that is for sale
- no clear listing of optional extras fitted (so many standard features “passed off” as options…)
- search results not ordered properly, if I ask for Price High to Low I just want a list in (descending) price order
- poor search functionality generally, with cars randomly appearing and disappearing from the list

I could go on.

I don’t remember it being this bad!

Just a rant. Sorry….

[nordboy]

I still find it's ok, but one of the issues with the list order is that there's so many paid adverts or boosts so if I have a screen of 12 vehicles, half of those are probably not in the position I asked for as they're paid for? Then there's the 'you might be interested' ads which are usually over the budget I put into the search engine.

if i'd got a bigger budget, I think I'd put it in there? So, whilst it has quite a few user issues, I still think it's one of the better (only) ways of searching for vehicles.

[valiant]

Autotrader videos piss me right off.

A video should be a walk around the car, opening doors and boots and whatnot.

It should not be the same bleedin’ photos shown in a sequence and fading from one to another or even worse, it’s just a dealership video welcoming us to their dealership and telling me absolutely nothing about the car.

[DSMSMR]

if you click on the View all specs and features, it slides in from the right. IF the seller has loaded up one of the sub bars(or whatever they are called) it wont open all the way. Great.....nice.

[CMTMB]

I dont understand why dealers use AI to generate nonsense adverts. It'll list 400 completely irrelevant and standard features of the car (do I really need to know a 2 year old car has a driver airbag?!), but nothing about actual specification or options, then a 500 word essay on the history of the company nobody reads. Just tell us about the actual car ffs!

[defblade]

Results that "can be brought to near you" (mainly Cinch or something) when doing a search by distance.

I don't want to buy a car I can't go and look at and sit in first.

[borcy]

CMTMB said:

I dont understand why dealers use AI to generate nonsense adverts. It'll list 400 completely irrelevant and standard features of the car (do I really need to know a 2 year old car has a driver airbag?!), but nothing about actual specification or options, then a 500 word essay on the history of the company nobody reads. Just tell us about the actual car ffs!

Yeah i don't get why they need add huge amounts of information about car dealers.

[v8notbrave]

Disagree, think it's a great app. Many have tried to rival it and failed, good to save cars/searches so you can see what's sold etc. guess you need to be confident on what you're looking for.

How about Rightmove? Does that perfectly list and detail all property details?

It's a sales portal trying to generate views and sales, maybe not perfect but then nothing is....

[TarquinMX5]

I agree that it's not perfect but it's also not as good as it was. I, too, find the 'you may be interested in' and those like Cinch to be irritating: if there's a sort option, I'd like it to sort as per my selection.

[MrBen.911]

It's definitely got worse in recent years. The design of the site has got less functional, and the number of sponsored 'ad's (surely the whole thing is an 'ad'?) just ruin trying to search by price as you get a £40k car in the middle of the £25k cars you are looking at, highly annoying.

They also don't seem to have the market share they did - for example if you search for one manufacturer's approved cars on AT and on the manufacturer's site, they used to be very similar but now there are clearly some dealers not bothering with AT.