we buy any car ... business model

northernneil

obviously I know that this company offer you an easy way to sell your but will offer you a rock bottom price, lower than trade in and when they turn up they will always find tesco dinks and scratches and offer you even less ....

however....

the amount they must make on each car, baring in mind the bulk of thier stuff is probably going to +3 years old in the £4-£7 bracket I am guessing they make £1K a car, tops approx,

however the sheer advertising costs that these guys have is enormous, sponsoring Dave, Radio adverts every 4 or 5 seconds, TV ads .... even if they buy 100 cars a day they surely cant be even covering thier current daily costs ?

especially as they can only make any money when they sell the car they buy .... and I thought no-one is buying cars anymore ?

drewfromrisca

I bought a car last week for £1600 and decided out of interest to see what webuyanycar would offer. £750...I was shocked!!!

Cressers

Do they charge a 'storage fee' until the car is sold?

Slow Downcp

They charge an admin fee for all cars purchased, plus there was a directive from head office leaked out some time before Xmas from head office stating that they were looking for a minimum of around 30% reduction on final value, so if a car is valued online at £6k they'd offer around £4,200. I'd guess they then ship a lot to auction to sell at trade price which is still more than they give.

TommyEss

northernneil wrote:

and I thought no-one is buying cars anymore ?

No-one's buying new cars anymore. I thought the 2nd hand market was where it's at? Mind you, if that market's doing so well, why would there be a gap in said market for Webuyanycar?

DCowling

I was offered £1800 for my 12yr old Td5 Discovery only has 140k on clock

drewfromrisca

Friend of mine was a used car sale lot owner. He jacked it in after 19yrs last May because he said no-one is buying used cars anymore.

I myself have bought three of the f***ers in 3 months and last two have died and the 3rd has a problem with the internal fan which I found out today costing about £700 to repair!!!

I only want it to last until May when I emigrate otherwise I would probably buy a new car and have that peace of mind of it working properly...hopefully.


p.s. I hate cars...really hate them!!!

Pross

DCowling wrote:

I was offered £1800 for my 12yr old Td5 Discovery only has 140k on clock

Was that the online offer? Final offer goes lower! Better off taking the car to a local auction if selling privately is a hassle.

Slow1972

northernneil wrote:

however the sheer advertising costs that these guys have is enormous, sponsoring Dave, Radio adverts every 4 or 5 seconds, TV ads .... even if they buy 100 cars a day they surely cant be even covering thier current daily costs ?

TV advertising in Jan will be cheaper than pre-Christmas. Also a good time for their business model, people overspend at christmas, they need cash quick, havent got time to wait selling privately so this where they step in. No different to the house / gold buying equivalents.

But you're right they are spending a load on advertising, no doubt got some capital behind themk with a big burn burn rate early on built in to stop anyone else thinking of entering the market and to establish brand identity.

Has it worked? Well if you wanted to sell you car to get some cash quickly, where would be your first point of call?

..... may end up being advertising money well spent in the longer term then!

DCowling

Pross wrote:

DCowling wrote:

I was offered £1800 for my 12yr old Td5 Discovery only has 140k on clock

Was that the online offer? Final offer goes lower! Better off taking the car to a local auction if selling privately is a hassle.

That was the online offer, but to be honest I only tried themto get an idea of value, far better off trawling auto trader and doing comparisons

OffTheBackAdam

"Honest John" responded to a letter on this subject, I can't for the life of me remember who he reccomended using, but it certianly wasn't this lot. I'd refuse to use them simply due to their irritating adverts!
Bought my current car, Rover 214 for £500. Apart from routine (& home!) servicing, it's needed its head gasket doing (common fault with K-series engines). Cost £85 in parts.

unixnerd

If you're buying or selling a car you can do a lot worse than ebay. I've bought and sold there and had good deals.

If you want a cheap car that'll last well my advice is to get something German aged over 10 years with over 100k miles but with a decent service history and recent mot. And if you're in Scotland buy from the south of England, no rust from all the salt up here. I paid 1000 for a mint 13 year old 328i estate with full history and every extra fitted, new price 28k! Still drives like a new / £28k car and has no rust. I wrote it's predecessor off on black ice and parted it out for 700 quid so my new car only cost 300!

Folk are frightened by high miles but these cars will often do 200k miles without much fuss. Parts are cheap from folk like Euro Car Parts, 23 quid for a new BMW front wing. I can change the pads and discs on any of my BMWs for under 50 quid inc. shipping the parts. There's also loads of info on the web for these cars if they do break. Recently I needed a new front bumper, 50 for one the right colour from ebay and under an hour to fit it. If you can't service them yourself find a good independant BMW / Merc specialist, most of them are owned by ex-dealer trained mechanics.