I’m disappointed with Clutch.ca. I don’t just mean I’m displeased with how they treated me—I feel let down because I so strongly believe their business model can and should be the way of the future. But they’re ruining in.

Let’s start with a little background, in case you’re not familiar with Clutch.ca.

Clutch.ca is an online used car dealership selling cars across Canada. There are no dealerships to visit. They have headquarters in Toronto and Halifax. Rather than a test drive, they offer a 10-day money-back guarantee for you to take your new car and try it out. They provide very detailed inspection details on each vehicle, including close-up photos of every nick and scratch, to minimize the risk of surprises and dissatisfaction with buyers. There are no sales people. There’s no negotiation. Deposits are paid online. Vehicles are delivered to doorsteps. It’s a seamless online experience–sort of.

In order to sell used cars, they also have to buy used cars. The model is similar to the sales process. You input detailed information about your car into an online system, which generates an instant offer to purchase (or trade in) your car. If you accept the offer, they’ll pick it up from you within a few days with their tow truck. After they do a quick inspection, the load it up, drive off, and send you a direct deposit within a few days.

I’ve never bought from Clutch.ca, but I have sold my vehicle to them twice. I wouldn’t describe either sale as a negative experience, but I wouldn’t rave positively about the experience either. And in both cases, the reason I’m not 100% satisfied, was last-minute surprises related to fees.

First Sale

The first car I sold to Clutch.ca was my 2021 BMW 330i xDrive, in October 2023. They offered me about $5,000 more than dealerships were offering me. They came and picked it up without any issue. They were upfront about a fee of about $500 for the pick-up. My gripe was that it wasn’t until I was scheduling the pick-up that I got a call from someone at Clutch.ca saying the $500 fee had to be paid up-front. Rather than just deducting it from the amount they were paying me for the car, I had to put that amount on my credit card. I was effectively paying them to buy my car. That annoyed me, but they offered me such a good price for my car, I went ahead with the sale. (I watched the vehicle when it was re-sold on their website… they took a loss.)

Second Sale

The second car I sold to Clutch.ca was a 2022 Volkswagen Taos Highline, just this past weekend. Again they offered me substantially more than the dealerships (about $3,000) and that was after they deducted a $1,500 “service fee” to “help us cover the costs of inspection, reconditioning, marketing, detailing, photography, insurance, storage and more.“ Still a good deal, I was ahead by $3,000 compared to selling it to a dealership, I didn’t have to deal with the headaches that come with anything that has to do with a car dealership, and I didn’t have to navigate trying to sell a vehicle for $30,000 privately. But again there was a call less than a week before the sale. This time I was advised of a $200 fee for them to remove the lien on my car. I hadn’t been charged a similar fee about 6 months earlier when I’d sold the BMW. And they knew about the lien when they made me the offer to purchase, because I had included that information when I submitted all of the details of my vehicle into their system. So this time they were tagging on a surprise fee that I was told was 100% non-negotiable. I was so annoyed that I said forget that. I went to my bank, got a bank draft for the balance owing on my car using my line of credit, drove across the street to the bank that held the loan for the car, and paid it off. It was a hassle because I also had to have two drawn-out conversations with the lending bank on the phone to get proof of pay-out to provide to Clutch.ca, but it was worth it not to let them charge me their ridiculous surprise fee.

Would I use Clutch.ca to sell or buy a car again in the future? If the numbers are right, sure. It’s actually a pretty great experience. But I will continue to voice my annoyance with their annoying fees. They’re trying to be different. They’re trying to be better than the brick and mortar dealerships. So they should actually be different. Be fully transparent about fees. No surprises. Make the experience one that’s 100% positive.

Here’s the VW I just sold. I’m going to miss it.