all these new car sales websites, advertised on telly

[Calmchap]

This screenclip from the heycar website sums up exactly why these websites exist.

Edited by Calmchap on Sunday 22 November 16:40

[Auto810graphy]

gizlaroc said:

Sorry, I was talking mileage.

I have a contact there that I have said I will speak to when we come out of this lockdown.

If that gets no where I will take you up on that offer. Is that someone at Inchape who is not Audi Norwich based?

I was referring to mileage. If the car was financed at a lower mileage VWFS would be very interested and would back the consumer for a refund.

I know a few people in Inchcape but it depends if he purchased when they owned it as they sold to Robinsons a while back.

[A1VDY]

marksx said:

vikingaero said:

These are the people who have home shopping delivered, Amazon deliveries, Argos deliveries, so why not have a car delivered?

Most people then?

Same here.
Who wants to mix with the peasants at the shops be breathed upon by the unwashed and then have your car destroyed in the car park when it can all be chucked on your doorstep, left in the bin or hurled over the fence..

[gizlaroc]

Auto810graphy said:

I was referring to mileage. If the car was financed at a lower mileage VWFS would be very interested and would back the consumer for a refund.

I know a few people in Inchcape but it depends if he purchased when they owned it as they sold to Robinsons a while back.

I said that to him too.

I will get him to speak to VWFS and see what their take on it is.

Cheers.

[CS Garth]

2otter said:

Sheepshanks said:

I guess the main difference/complication is that most people (I wonder how many?) will have an existing car they need to deal with somehow.

What did you do?

We were in the fortunate position of buying outright (through our Debit card) with no part-ex involved. No faffing about. Like I say, exactly like buying a new bread bin on Amazon.

New poster. Second mention of debit card. Come on chaps the warning signs are all there. He’s messed up as a true PistonHeader wouldn’t buy using his debit card, not only does a credit card afford greater protection it also more readily pays reward points

[GR_WILL]

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

[DonkeyApple]

GR_WILL said:

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

It's a really smart way to sell cars. All the stock gets brought to a cheap central depot staffed with cheap labour who carry out worknon a strict formula that has been designed to keep time spent to an absolute minimum. The car then goes to sit in a cheap, non retail carpark, again saving money against the normal vendor who has to pay a premium for his land to be where retail consumers are.

It then gets sold online so much lower costs to having a human sitting in a retail building.

And complaints are dealt with via the standard, drag out and fob off online chat mechanism so no mentalists turning up at the shop screaming about their rights, that the car isn't brand new and that they have been defrauded. Instead you just pay immoral, lonely folk a few quid to write sufficient online reviews to drown out the mental and the justified.

And your website just filters by badge, size, colour as that's all that matters and you then steer them into house finance, taking a fat clip on the funding spread as well as upselling lots of other lucrative domestic and car related services that carry big, ongoing rebates.

I did find the tyre aspect amusing as I've always binned tyres at around 3mm and generally done the lot at the same time but again, it highlights who this service is targetting which is 99% of the population not the loser 1% who like to check out what it is they are buying.

Cars are just like fridges are to us. We simply go online once the wife's nagging had reached that defined point, chose the brand required to stop all the whining, look down the list for the one with the price we are willing to pay and take it. We then have to go through the motions of the finance offers etc before arranging a delivery date upon which we simply move on with our lives not giving fridges a second thought until the whining noise picks up again.

[The Mad Monk]

GR_WILL said:

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

O.K. I'll bite.

Who or what is Carol? Is it a typo for Cazoo?

[DocJock]

WJNB said:

The bearded Kazoo bloke with his awful Essex accent grates on the nerves. And as for the childish reference to having the snip it's just darn childish but I can see such adverts would appeal to a certain demographic. The couple in the little semi just have to choose a BMW don't they?

It's Cazoo
He advertises Cinch, not Cazoo.

[Hub]

The Mad Monk said:

GR_WILL said:

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

O.K. I'll bite.

Who or what is Carol? Is it a typo for Cazoo?

Is Carol the anti-Karen?

[DocJock]

Sheepshanks said:

Andyjc86 said:

Much like the OP, I’m recently been questioning how these companies are making as much money as they are (or appear to be)

Cazoo for example. I’d never heard of at the start of the year. Now they’re the main sponsors of 2 premier league football teams, have a large advertising campaign on both TV and Radio, and deliver they cars in brand new cover car transporters.

Even on a £10k car, they can’t be making more then say £750. To cover all of that expense? They must be really heavily backed

Your idea of "making money" is quite strange!

The question really is, how are they managing to attract so much finance? Investors must be bemused by them buying up physical premises.

They are spending massive amounts on advertising to establish the brand, and don't expect to make a profit for 24 months. I guess finance is easier if you have a track record like Alex Chesterman.

They bought Imperial Cars mainly for the large stock that came with it. They've already closed some sites with more to follow.

My lad was a network guy for Imperial and now works for Cazoo.

[Justin Case]

What can these new companies offer that established supermarkets can't. For example, picked at random:

https://www.availablecar.com/latest-news-1/keeping...

[DillonL]

gizlaroc said:

Sheepshanks said:

I guess the main difference is that most people (I wonder how many?) will have an existing car they need to deal with somehow.

What did you do?

WBAC.

I know people knock it, but those people, from what I have seen on here, have a totally unrealistic idea of what their car is worth.

WBAC has always pays more than any dealer has offered and often pay considerably more than what private sales are 'selling' for.

Really? I had the opposite experience recently. I wanted £30k, the private dealers were offering £27-£28k so I went to WBAC who could only offer £24k.

Ended up selling privately for £29.5k. I did have to spend 2 frustrating weeks dealing with the “best price” brigade, but it wasn’t too much extra hassle for an extra couple of grand.

[Sheepshanks]

DocJock said:

WJNB said:

The bearded Kazoo bloke with his awful Essex accent grates on the nerves. And as for the childish reference to having the snip it's just darn childish but I can see such adverts would appeal to a certain demographic. The couple in the little semi just have to choose a BMW don't they?

It's Cazoo
He advertises Cinch, not Cazoo.

Somewhere, an advertising agency, and probably the person who hired them, just got fired!

[DonkeyApple]

Justin Case said:

What can these new companies offer that established supermarkets can't. For example, picked at random:

https://www.availablecar.com/latest-news-1/keeping...

Super cool! Only 'norms' buy from a website that uses real words. The seriously on trend know that you get a better product when you buy from an app with a made up word. And they will be out on social media showcasing their winning purchase, promoting your business for free.

Gladis, conversely, who bought from someonebuysacar.com will, at best, just be on mumsnet asking where the washer bottle is.

You can't 'disrupt' and take market share using real words.

Make up a name. Get the VC funding, smash social media to take market share, once you have revenue your multiple goes up and you use that revised multiple to borrow more money to take out the businesses which use real words so trade at much lower multiples because they are established, not growth plays. That further builds your revenues so your valuation. You then sell to a pension fund or float and walk away before it becomes a non growth story.

As a VC, you back as many as you can knowing that only one or two will reach that sale point and you look for people like Chesterman who have done it before and know exactly how it works. Just hoping it wasn't just down to getting lucky or having a partner who was the real brains. Which probably isn't the case here.

Edited by DonkeyApple on Tuesday 24th November 09:02

[Sheepshanks]

DonkeyApple said:

GR_WILL said:

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

It's a really smart way to sell cars. All the stock gets brought to a cheap central depot staffed with cheap labour who carry out worknon a strict formula that has been designed to keep time spent to an absolute minimum. The car then goes to sit in a cheap, non retail carpark, again saving money against the normal vendor who has to pay a premium for his land to be where retail consumers are.

It then gets sold online so much lower costs to having a human sitting in a retail building.

That's great. But apparently they're not happy at how much BCA charge them for prep and storage so they've started buying up premises, inlcuding a car supermarket chain. And BCA have launched Cinch.

[gizlaroc]

DillonL said:

Really? I had the opposite experience recently. I wanted £30k, the private dealers were offering £27-£28k so I went to WBAC who could only offer £24k.

Ended up selling privately for £29.5k. I did have to spend 2 frustrating weeks dealing with the “best price” brigade, but it wasn’t too much extra hassle for an extra couple of grand.

When was that?


In the last 12 months I sold a mini to them for £13200, a Mini that I would going to ask £12k privately for and BMW were selling for £12950.

Citreon C1 for £5680, which I had been advertising for £4950. The WBAC price went up considerably.

BMW X3 that BMW offered £10400 on and Land Rover said they would top up to £11k they paid £13k and something for.


My old man just looked at swapping his X6 and was offered £22k for it from BMW, and they are offering £26k.

I totally get that some people have different experiences, what I have found is WBAC like to buy cars that are run of the mill.
So X6 30d M-Sport is great, X6M will get hammered as they don't really want it, same with the Mini, they paid well above book on the Copper Cabriolet, yet my mate with his GP3 the offer was laughable.


All I was saying is don't presume the offer is going to be pants, some cars they can't get enough of.

[DonkeyApple]

Sheepshanks said:

DonkeyApple said:

GR_WILL said:

It doesn’t sound like Carol have that high standards to me.

https://www.cazoo.co.uk/car-promise/reconditioning...

It's a really smart way to sell cars. All the stock gets brought to a cheap central depot staffed with cheap labour who carry out worknon a strict formula that has been designed to keep time spent to an absolute minimum. The car then goes to sit in a cheap, non retail carpark, again saving money against the normal vendor who has to pay a premium for his land to be where retail consumers are.

It then gets sold online so much lower costs to having a human sitting in a retail building.

That's great. But apparently they're not happy at how much BCA charge them for prep and storage so they've started buying up premises, inlcuding a car supermarket chain. And BCA have launched Cinch.

What they actually bought was a storage and distribution network, with a load of potential stock at distressed Covid prices. They will sell the stock for a nice turn through their website, retain a few strategic physical destinations and sell the rear off at higher prices in the post vaccination market.

It's a land and stock deal rather than a used car lot deal.

WBAC's rush to create a new trendy brand around a made up name shows the value and also the threat to them. Having started out supplying back end admin services to them they have seen first hand how rapidly it has grown and had to deal with them growing large enough to step out and away and do it themselves, if that is how they started.

This model was on its way already but Covid has turbocharged it by supplying cheap, distressed assets and amplifying client demand.

I suspect that the next phase will be 'club' memberships whereby they shift as many customers as possiblenonto an endless monthly subscription and cycle cars through them every 6/12 months thus insteadnof taking a turn on transactions that happen once every 2 to 3 years on the asset they can massively ramp it up by taking that turn every 6 months. Who wouldn't like a new car every 6 months with all paperwork taken care of just for one easy, simple monthly fee? Thatnis afterall the definition of winning, spending more money than you need to or have to get as many new chattels as often as possible. Losers have to wait 3 years before they get that winning event of a new car. Nor, just by being invited to be a special member you can win 6 times more than those wieners.

Plus, with the ever growing number of Britons too terrified to physical speak to other humans or not knowing how to the selling of cars has to go online and completely faceless or people just won't be able to cope with the archaic horror of having to face a fellow human.

[nunpuncher]

This was an inevitable progression to shift the excess of 3-4 year old used cars created by the lease/PCP revolution. The forecourts would be stacking them 3 high otherwise.

The timing is brilliant what with so many folk working from home, possibly staying that way and realising they don't need to be leasing a brand new car.

[Richard-390a0]

Bonzo1930 said:

They are aimed at people who want to buy a car but have absolutely no interest in cars or any idea at what they are looking at just as long as they can afford the monthly payment and they think it makes them look good on faceache

I've probably purchased 10 - 15 car online over the years without seeing them first. It's bliss not having to jump through the hoops of do you want lifeshine, finance etc etc. See the car you like, pay for it & it's delivered a few days later.

The most recent car I've purchased (last month actually) the only verbal communication between the retailer & I was to confirm bank details & the make sure the car had a new MOT as it was advertised as such but actually only had a month remaining, which was duely done & delivered.

Just now need to get through the ballache of selling my old car privately lol.