You’ve all been there. It’s time for a new car, but your job and personal life and just don’t really give you the time to sell your old one. It’s a lot of work! Getting it cleaned and detailed. Fixing any minor things it needs before it will sell. Taking photos that might catch someone’s eye, and figuring out how to price it. Shift, a new company based on the West Coast, is attempting to change all that.

I’m a motorcycle and car dork who lives on the internet, and car selling can be overwhelming even for me. And that’s before factoring in actually having to deal with people. It’s no surprise so many people leave their car at the dealership they buy their next one from, and are willing to take so much less than they potentially could get.

So when I saw an ad for , I decided to give it a shot. I mean, if they were terrible, I could at least give myself the excuse that I gave it a try to write about it and not feel too bad, right?

Shift aims to take all the legwork out of private car selling. They aren’t even actually a recognized car dealer, more of just a car sales facilitator. Think of it like having a friend who helps friends sell cars, but does it so often they can streamline the process so it doesn’t actually take much effort. Here’s how it works:

First, I went to their site and entered the info for my car. I bought my 2008 Mazda3 hatchback in 2009, and have taken very good care of it ever since. I ride a bike a lot, so my car had just under 100k miles and, outside of a scratch here or there, had nothing wrong with it.

Shift gave me a very rough estimate and then emailed and asked if I had any questions or if I’d like to schedule to have someone come look at in person and give me a more exact quote.

The way the money part works is this: Shift gives you a base amount they guarantee they will get for your car. Anything above that is considered profit, which they split with you 50/50. In this case, the base amount was a bit above what Kelley Blue Book listed for my car’s value for dealer trade in, and their projections had me making about what was expected for private sale.

I was heading to Italy for a Ducati launch and had very little time, but I managed to find an afternoon I could be around and told the nice man on the email I had about an hour the day before I left.

I got a call about 15 minutes before my appointment reminding me about it, and Jordan, my Shift rep, showed up right on time. I’d researched how Shift worked before letting them come bug me in person, but Jordan could not have been a better customer service rep and car evaluator.

It blows my mind when companies still screw up customer service because there are so many guys like Jordan out there who can be knowledgeable, personable, and like their job enough to treat me like a human and not a paycheck. Anyone I emailed on the Shift team responded quickly and answered any question I had, no matter how dumb, and Jordan left me with his cell phone number. Giving your car to a stranger is weird, and it isn’t hard to treat people like friends.