Entrusting your car to a garage so it sells on your behalf is called consignment selling. You stay the owner, the garage handles everything, and you receive the sale price minus its fee. It is a poorly understood option in French-speaking Switzerland, often confused with an outright buyout, even though it answers a different need and a different calculation. Here is how it actually works, from the first phone call to the bank transfer.
Neither selling alone nor being bought out
There are three ways to part with a vehicle, and they differ in both price and effort.
- Selling privately: you get the full private market price, but you carry the ad, the calls, the test drives, the contract and the payment risk.
- Selling to the garage: it buys for its own account, you are paid immediately, at a necessarily lower price since it will have to resell.
- Consignment: the garage sells on your behalf. You aim for a price close to the private market, without doing the work.
Consignment sits between the first two. You accept waiting, in exchange for a higher price than a buyout and almost no effort. If timing does not matter and the amount does, it is nearly always the right option.
A word on the legal framework, because it explains why terms vary so much between garages. Consignment is not a single contract: depending on how it is structured, it combines several contracts set out in the Swiss Code of Obligations, notably commission when the garage sells in its own name on your behalf, mandate for the management, and deposit for keeping the vehicle. There is therefore no standard template. Everything depends on what you sign.
Two formats: at your place, or in the showroom
Online consignment leaves the car with you. The garage photographs it, writes the ad, publishes it, filters the calls and arranges viewings. You keep using the vehicle until it sells. This suits you if you still drive it daily.
Physical consignment brings the car to the showroom. It is displayed, visible, and can be test-driven without disturbing you. It generally sells faster, because a buyer who can see it the same day decides faster. In exchange, you no longer use it.
The choice comes down to one question: do you still need the car over the coming weeks?
Who sets the price, and what a floor price is
The advertised price is decided together. The garage proposes a range based on the real Swiss market, you decide. It is your car, nobody can impose an amount on you.
What matters most is the floor price: the amount below which the garage may not close without calling you back. Without it, a negotiation held in your absence can land well below what you had in mind. Get it in writing, along with the advertised price.
On what actually creates value and what barely moves it, we set out the method in what makes the price of a used car.
What the garage does in your place
This is what its fee pays for. The real work covers:
- cosmetic preparation, which changes the starting point of every negotiation
- photographs and ad copy, in both languages if needed
- publishing on the platforms and refreshing the listing regularly
- filtering calls, browsers and offers that never materialise
- test drives, accompanied by a professional who can answer questions
- negotiation, handled by someone not emotionally attached to the car
- the sale contract and securing the payment
- the administrative formalities at handover
The most underestimated item is preparation. On a well-kept car, the gap between corrected paintwork and a surface covered in swirl marks is visible from three metres away, and it is paid for in the negotiation. That is the purpose of cosmetic preparation before the photographs.
How long it takes, and what slows a sale down
Nobody can guarantee you a timescale, and be wary of anyone who does. What lengthens a sale is always one of four things:
- an advertised price above the market, by far the first factor
- an engine or trim level with little demand in Switzerland
- weak photographs, or an ad that omits the essentials
- an unfavourable season, a convertible in November for instance
Price can be corrected. A vehicle that has produced no serious enquiry in three weeks is almost always overpriced rather than badly presented. A good garage will tell you instead of waiting.
Who collects the money, and when you are paid
This is the question that worries people most, and rightly so. Two structures exist and you need to know which one you are signing.
Either the buyer pays the garage, which then transfers you the balance after deducting its fee. Or the buyer pays you directly and you settle with the garage. The first is the more common, it is simpler for the buyer, but it means your money passes through a third party.
Three things must be written down in black and white: within what deadline the balance reaches you after collection, by what means, and what happens if the buyer pays in instalments. A vague deadline is the one genuine warning sign in this whole contract.
Who answers for defects after the sale
A crucial point, and almost never explained. The answer depends on who signs the sale contract.
If you, as a private individual, sell to another private individual, excluding the warranty is in principle possible, and the buyer bears the consequences. If the garage sells in its own name, it sells as a professional, and Swiss law then places far tighter limits on what it may exclude when facing a private buyer.
This difference changes nothing about your payment, but it changes everything if a fault appears three months later. Ask the garage explicitly who appears as seller on the contract, and have them explain what you are still guaranteeing once the car has gone.
Papers, plates and insurance during the consignment
Until the car is sold, it remains yours, with everything that implies.
- The registration document stays in your name. Hand it over only at delivery, against a receipt.
- In Switzerland, plates belong to the keeper, not the vehicle. They do not follow the car to its buyer.
- With physical consignment, if you deposit your plates with the vehicle licensing office, your insurance follows that change. Tell your insurer beforehand, not afterwards.
- Ask how the vehicle is covered during test drives run by the garage. The answer should be immediate and in writing.
If your car is still on a lease, you cannot consign it as it stands: the vehicle is not yet yours. The route goes through lease takeover.
And if it does not sell
A consignment mandate has a duration. At the end, three outcomes are possible: you extend, you take the vehicle back, or the garage offers to buy it at an agreed price.
From the outset, get the duration in writing, what happens at expiry, and above all who pays for what if nothing comes of it. Cosmetic work already carried out, a set of photographs, several weeks of display: if these costs stay with you in the event of failure, you need to know before signing, not after.
Consignment or immediate buyout: three questions
- Do you need the money now? If so, a buyout. Consignment only pays on sale.
- What is your time worth? The gap between the two runs into thousands of francs on a fifty-thousand-franc car. Set against the hours you will not spend, the sum does itself.
- Is the car easy to sell? A sought-after model moves quickly on consignment. A niche model can sit for months, and a firm buyout offer then beats a theoretical price never reached.
If speed is what matters, our buyout offer answers within twenty-four hours. If the amount matters, consignment almost always wins.
Seeing what it looks like in practice
The cars we have sold on behalf of their owners are visible on our sold vehicles page, and our current stock in the catalogue. We travel across the whole Riviera and Chablais region to collect a vehicle.
A question about your particular situation, a specific car, an ongoing contract? Write to us describing the vehicle and what you are trying to do. We will tell you honestly which of the three routes suits you, even when it is not ours.
