Valutation query

[vRSAnt]

Alright mate.
I think we'll call this thread quits if thats all you have in mind, thanks ( unless someone else wants to get a chance to get a comment in ). Cheers

[teescom09]

I did a WBAC on a 18 plate RS Focus on autotrader currently, I always do that on used cars.  The trade offer was slightly higher than the retail asking price from the selling dealer!! Niw theres a car holding its value amazingly, only £3k trade less than new retail over a year ago. So much for this “you lose the vat immediately you drive out bull****” 

Truth hurts 🥵

[Nikonite]

You would think it's a buyer's market but it isn't. So many people sitting on cars trying to get too much as there are some on eBay for £xxxxx 

The value is what they are selling for not what people are trying to sell them for.

I have 10 to 12k cash here for an honest car but can't find one, even main dealer used cars have sketchy history. I'm sick of looking now, too many sellers don't  realise that used warranty-less use cars have a limited amount of buyers much over £7k

[vRSAnt]

You wouldn't have a hope in hell of anything as low as £7k, even cat crash damaged cars aren't that cheap mate ( whether you want to pay that much or not).

I don't even need to change this car, I'm just shuffling my cards a bit, trying to work out whether its what is  best for me longer term.
Its an amazing car that I would struggle to replace bang for buck.
but, could be tempted by something a bit more sporty/purposeful ( only need 2 seats) - or future focussed fuel wise ( I was interested by the news of the MG emotion meant to be released next year).

The history is all electronic which is perhaps why you are having issues.
I insisted on having it printed and it has records at 9k, 21k, 34k and also serviced by me at Unit 18 and vRS northampton since then ( I changed the plugs myself since dealer servicing neglected this).

 

Edited 28 July, 2019 by vRSAnt

[vRSAnt]

I also have too many cars and need to rationalise I think lol

Bought my wifes citigo last year, but also have my Fabia 1 and a MGF VVC my dad gave me   ( most fun of all my cars, but also the slowest - just).

[Nikonite]

2 hours ago, vRSAnt said:

You wouldn't have a hope in hell of anything as low as £7k, even cat crash damaged cars aren't that cheap mate ( whether you want to pay that much or not).
 

 

 

I think you misunderstand me, not suggesting I would get any car in particular. Im saying that once you get to around 7k people feel more comfortable buying from a dealer as private sales are riskier. 

[maffyou]

Worth remembering that the value anywhere online gives you should be taken with a large pinch of salt, especially WBAC. Personal experience has shown me that they rarely get anywhere near the Internet price when you actually get the car to them, regardless of the condition of your car. I’ve always found Evans Halshaw to be a more reliable indication for a valuation. 

[teescom09]

1 hour ago, maffyou said:

Worth remembering that the value anywhere online gives you should be taken with a large pinch of salt, especially WBAC. Personal experience has shown me that they rarely get anywhere near the Internet price when you actually get the car to them, regardless of the condition of your car. I’ve always found Evans Halshaw to be a more reliable indication for a valuation. 

Not in my experience. My wife took her fathers Suzuki car and got full amount. Infact £200 more because I guessed the mileage and it was a few k lower. My daughters Q7 was reduced by £200 because all 4 alloys were wrecked, offer was over £20k. My Galaxy was reduced but only £150 for for 3 larger than 2p sized dents, which was £750 more than highest Ford dealer offer. If you don’t get what is offered it is because if damage you are in denial off, simple as that. 

[Ootohere]

WBAC is giving £1,000-£1,500 less sometimes even more below what the Dealerships / traders the cars a going to if they are not away to BCA to go through at more than WBAC paid for them.

 

If you can get a Trader / Dealer that will buy your car cash they can pay you what WBAC would and a little more because they cut out the middle man.

 

BCA give CREDIT / finance to Dealers / Traders to buy cars for their Trade Stock.

 

Main Dealers and traders often offer a few hundred or more less than WBAC do in the knowledge they can punt them off to WBAC.

Edited 28 July, 2019 by Roottootemoot

[maffyou]

1 hour ago, Roottootemoot said:

Main Dealers and traders often offer a few hundred or more less than WBAC do in the knowledge they can punt them off to WBAC.

Exactly this, especially if your car is more than about 3 years old because main dealers don’t want to flog older cars, only new and nearly new so they just get passed on, at a loss to you. 

 

 

1 hour ago, teescom09 said:

Not in my experience. My wife took her fathers Suzuki car and got full amount. Infact £200 more because I guessed the mileage and it was a few k lower. My daughters Q7 was reduced by £200 because all 4 alloys were wrecked, offer was over £20k. My Galaxy was reduced but only £150 for for 3 larger than 2p sized dents, which was £750 more than highest Ford dealer offer. If you don’t get what is offered it is because if damage you are in denial off, simple as that. 

Well if the car was damaged, why would Evans Halshaw offer more and pay what they offered?

 

I know what the conditions of the cars involved were, why would I be in denial about anything? I’m not sulking, I got a decent price for one of them, just not from WBAC who offered nearly £900 less than the Internet quote for a small alloy scuff and small scratch less than 2cm on a 5 year old C1 with under 18k Miles on it. Another was a car which was declared a non runner and they offered £400 but when it arrived they said it would just be scrap so gave me £90 for it and then 3 months later my old car which they were allegedly scrapping nearly drove into me on a roundabout. They’re rip off merchants, in my experience. 

Edited 28 July, 2019 by maffyou

[Ootohere]

They are a huge highly funded financial organisation that really in the end HMRC will need to deal with.

It is Pyramid Selling and Financing and the 'Online Price Guides' are all part of the cheating on valuations that currently has the UK motor trade as it is.

Lots of 'Money Laundering' going on and the UK Government know it as do The Bank Of England.

Money out on tick and the vehicles that money is borrowed on are not worth what they are supposed to be.

[vRSAnt]

6 hours ago, Nikonite said:

I think you misunderstand me, not suggesting I would get any car in particular. Im saying that once you get to around 7k people feel more comfortable buying from a dealer as private sales are riskier. 

Ah far enough mate I agree and yes I understand how many prefer to buy trade.

I think the margin of difference has to be significant, if its up to £2k difference then that can't be ignored to be balanced with history on the car etc too. Some dealers don't even have any history to sell with a car

 

[teescom09]

Done two valuations today on the Galaxy, over 100k now so taken a hit. 

 

Evans Halshaw = £2734

 

WBAC = £3000

 

 

[Guest]

23 hours ago, maffyou said:

Another was a car which was declared a non runner and they offered £400 but when it arrived they said it would just be scrap so gave me £90 for it and then 3 months later my old car which they were allegedly scrapping nearly drove into me on a roundabout. They’re rip off merchants, in my experience. 

 

Sorry but they didn't hold a gun to your head and forced you to sell did they?  Why did you accept £90 when they originally said £400 - why not sell elsewhere?

 

They may well have sold it for scrap but perhaps the scrappy had enough parts on-site to fix it - plently of scrap merchants I've gone to have cars for sale.

 

I've always had quotes from WBAC but never found them as compeditive as others. Rip-off merchant going a bit far tho.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, teescom09 said:

Done two valuations today on the Galaxy, over 100k now so taken a hit. 

 

Evans Halshaw = £2734

 

WBAC = £3000

 

 

 

Theres another dealer few seem to know about WWAC - WeWantAnyCar - give them a go. In my experience they've provided better quotes. ArnoldClark direct is another one who's come out trumps, in fact they offered me more to buy the car outright than they were offering me as a trade-in against another - work that one out!  ( I couldn't nor could the Arnold Clark salesman - very impressed by their service tho. )

 

Evans Halshaw have consistantly been bottom of the pile whenever I've tried them -  I was even offering a car that I'd purchased and had serviced at their garage.

[flash222004]

When MY19 VRS 245 was dropped off earlier in Mar I took my 62plate V60 R-Design to Evans Halshaw Ipswich after using the various car buying sites they offered a decent price, minus 150 for some minor kerbing on one wheel and a small split on the leather seat which I thought was not unreasonable.

 

Will be interesting to see what I’m offered for my year old VRS from them when it comes to selling next Mar as I can imagine selling a year old car privately could take a while.

[J.R.]

My UK  neighbours son is quite switched on, he regularly changes vehicles and always gets a WBAC quote on the old one then puts it on E-bay with that price as his reserve, he has always managed to get more, not significantly more but enough to make it worthwhile, if it didn't reach reserve on E-bay he would have the fallback position of selling it to WBAC although he might have got a surprise regarding deductions.

 

His conclusion over several vehicles is that their valuations are realistic and not opportunistic, you can do better privately but they have to make a profit, the advantage that they have is nobody knows the market better, they can sell at effectively just their overhead cost at their own auctions, they wont be stuck with stock and it keeps their auctions bouyant.

 

A good business idea and a win-win for buyers and sellers.

 

a

[maffyou]

1 hour ago, Scot5 said:

 

Sorry but they didn't hold a gun to your head and forced you to sell did they?  Why did you accept £90 when they originally said £400 - why not sell elsewhere?

Thats ok, you don’t need to apologise (unless it was you who ripped me off ). I accepted £90 because the car was unmovable without towing it and my dad and I had already had a harrowing enough journey transporting a few miles through Coventry, and we didn’t fancy towing it back to my house and then back somewhere else again another time.

 

1 hour ago, Scot5 said:

They may well have sold it for scrap but perhaps the scrappy had enough parts on-site to fix it - plently of scrap merchants I've gone to have cars for sale.

I highly doubt this although I guess it’s not impossible. The engine needed replacing. It had already had a reconditioned engine replacement 13 months previously, which had cost about £1500 and was going to cost at least that again. My biggest gripe is that when I’d gotten the online quote which just allowed an unspecified “non runner” category, I had phoned them to give details of why it was a non runner to clarify a price and was told there was no reason why it should change significantly. I don’t know about you but I consider 400 to 90 a pretty significant change. As far as I was concerned the car was probably scrap anyway. My guess is they knew full well what they were going to do. 

1 hour ago, Scot5 said:

Rip-off merchant going a bit far tho.

I can only speak of my own personal experience, and of a couple of friends/work colleagues, none of whom had anything good to say about them. Remember the tax disc refund they used to pull as well to lower their payouts to customers? I stand by my statement: rip-off merchants. 

[maffyou]

1 hour ago, Scot5 said:

 

Theres another dealer few seem to know about WWAC - WeWantAnyCar - give them a go. 

 

I didn’t have a great experience with them either, unfortunately. The guy actually got quite aggressive and started shouting at us and getting out posters from a cupboard and pointing at them while having a go at us, all because we said we were going to go elsewhere as Evans Halshaw were offering a much better (over £700) price and they refused to budge. I can only speak of my own personal experience, but I would advise no one goes to the Coventry branch of WWAC. 

 

Evans Halshaw used to guarantee to beat WBAC prices, not sure if they still do? EH paid us exactly the value of the quote from online and didn’t deduct a penny for the two minor bits of damage I mentioned previously.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, maffyou said:

 I don’t know about you but I consider 400 to 90 a pretty significant change.

 

What reason did they give? If they generated a price ( which is guaranteed for 7 days) and the description of the car was accurate, then how come they changed the price?  If there was no reason given, then I hope you reported it because it's they who've broken the contract.

 

That aside, I'm intregued why did you decided to sell a car in that condition (non-runner) to a dealer like that. Why no just take it to the scrapyard?

[SashaGrace]

If you know anything about how WBAC work you will understand why people’s experiences vary so much. They are a part of BCA but the people who buy the cars work on commission and they are paid a very large percentage of the deductions they can make from the original quote so they are very likely to try it on and become intimidating if needed to make the sale. 
 

To the OP I think you should generate a WBAC, WWAC  and Evans Halshaw price, enter a free 10 minute mail account and any 11 digits you can think of in the phone number box and they will never contact you. That gives you an idea of the cars trade value. What you choose to add on top is up to you. I think it would be quite naive to assume that the car buying public will come to you to spend cash on a modified car with no warranty when they can go to a dealer and buy with finance, trade in, negative equity if they have it and feel more secure. That is not to say it’s better to buy from a dealer, but most of the general public think that way. Over about £4k it’s really hard to sell cars privately unless they are very special and even then people will pay more from a dealer. Once people are in the showroom it’s easy to gloss over gaps in the history or things that require repair as most people fall for the sales patter and the free coffee. If a wheel is scuffed on a dealer car it’ll be sorted in the price before collection, you may have factored that into your asking price but that kerbed wheel could be what puts a buyer off and they will leave the car because they don’t want the hassle of getting it repaired themselves. Most people wouldn’t know where to go for such a repair. We all know a dealer repair is a cheap smart repair in a tent in the car park and it’ll fail within months but by that time Joe Public has already kerbed it anyway and the repair is moot.
 

Most car buyers aren’t cash buyers, if you can’t offer finance and a trade in you have lost the sale to the vast majority of people. The people that will have saved the money or be willing to call a bank up and get an unsecured loan and come in with no trade in will want to pay less for the inconvenience and substantial loss of buyers rights as large amounts of the Consumer Rights Act don’t apply to private sales. Even taking the map off might not help you. If you sold it and didn’t declare it was mapped and the engine died, the new owner could sue you for false representation as you have openly admitted the car was remapped on a public forum, and the car would have a TD1 flag in the engine ECU; this section of consumer rights does apply to private sales. 
 

If you price the car right in relation to dealer prices and write a good advert you will surely sell it but you may be waiting a while, on the other hand you may have exactly what someone wants and they may come round the next day with all of the money. The days of cash being king are gone, cars are depreciating faster than ever as model life cycles get shorter and the landscape surrounding ICE cars changes. Cars are just a way to sell loans these days, most people don’t care about the car itself, only that it looks nice and can be bought for £xxx per month. Selling my car is going to be an almighty pain when the time comes as it has too many mods to list, nobody would finance it and a dealer won’t value it over a standard one so I’ll be keeping it some time yet. Good luck with whatever you choose to do, but beware you will get chancers offering you stupid money and only about 10% of enquiries will actually be people asking coherent questions and leading to real interest.

[Alex-W]

Just to contradict a little of what's been said, I don't think the limit for private sales is as low as it's suggested.

 

When looking for cars myself I was open to dealer, trade or private options.  

It was only above about £10k I thought private sales may be a bit risky, but tbh I also have an attitude that a car salesman is literally a professional liar, while a private seller is not.

 

I spent £8k cash on my wife's car as a private sale without even questioning it, it was a really good deal at £1500 less than I could find in a garage.

I think I paid something like £500 more than wbac price as he'd got a quote and chose to sell it himself as that price was so low.  Worked for me and him.

 

If the right car had come up when looking for my car is have still considered private at ~15k tbh.   

However, what I find were there weren't many private cars and most were modified....  And I just wouldn't buy a modified car as there's just too much risk there IMO.  It's like buying an older house, you know you're going to uncover other people's bodges.

 

I work with a number of people who have got new cars recently and some of them have also bought/looked privately.   If it's the right car, for the right money, it just makes sense.  It's a case of risk management, save the money up front and have a slight risk of problems, but that risk is pretty low of the car is in good condition.

Edited 30 July, 2019 by Alex-W

[Alex-W]

It's probably also going to depend on the individual's budget too.

A person shopping for a 10 year old supercar car is likely to think nothing of paying £30k or so on a private sale bargain, while somebody looking for a nearly new hatchback wouldn't touch a private sale with a barge pole.

[maffyou]

11 hours ago, Scot5 said:

 

What reason did they give? If they generated a price ( which is guaranteed for 7 days) and the description of the car was accurate, then how come they changed the price?  If there was no reason given, then I hope you reported it because it's they who've broken the contract.

The price was generated online by putting in the details as a non-runner, but you couldn’t/can’t give specific reasons online. I was surprised at a quote of £400 as I was under the impression it was only worth scrap (my independent garage had said the choices were really scrap or replace with a reconditioned engine) so I called to ask if this would alter the price offered, giving them this info, and was told that it shouldn’t as I’d indicated it was a non-runner and the system had given the quote. It was all verbal, nothing in writing except the online quote. When I got there and the guy inspected it (walked around it for 15 seconds) and he asked why it was a non-runner, I told him and he said, oh well that’s going to effect the price then, I can only really give scrap for it. He wasn’t interested in the phone conversation I’d had. I remember his exact words were “listen a non-runner could mean so many things”. He didn’t break any contract because he offered me a revised price and I didn’t have to accept. But he had me over a barrel and he knew it and I’ve already explained my reasons for not taking it away. Also, why bother? Extra hassle for me to tow to a scrapyard etc. 

 

The thing he did wrong was lie about scrapping it but to be honest there was sod all I could do about that because it was the sold to trade section of the v5 document. I could’ve tried to kick up a fuss about it, I suppose, but frankly I couldn’t be bothered (too much else to worry about in life) and didn’t think I had a leg to stand on. 🤷🏻‍♂️

11 hours ago, Scot5 said:

That aside, I'm intregued why did you decided to sell a car in that condition (non-runner) to a dealer like that. Why no just take it to the scrapyard?

Because they offered a much higher price? I’d have thought that was obvious! Why did I try them? Because their advertising campaign at the time made a point of saying they’d even take non-runners. I wonder why that was...?

[vRSAnt]

In answer to Sacha.
Wear - If I decided to go ahead and list an ad ( which I might) then I'd aim to detail and tidy the car same as anyone should
Certainly not selling with scratched up wheels.
( Its already a very clean car given the age and mileage but any car can benefit from attention). It had refubed Geminis when I had it so won't have diamond cuts but still, its clean.

The stage 1 tuning to make it a "highly modified car" hehe , well it was done towards end of last year.
You will always get naysayers and nitpickers but I'd tend to think someone buying a petrol vRS will roughly know what to expect and not be a total newb to car buying or freakish/paranoid, not all cars buyers are as forementioned
In terms of mileage this has had since well I passed  MOT no adviseries on 55858 miles, at 10 April 2019 since same 52978 miles at 20 April 2018, so I've probably done 1k ish on the map and as a more mature 45 year old driving about our motoroways sensibly not as a race car.

Honestly though, the trouble with detailing is you became aware of what's so good about it. I'm picking holes in my paper alternative choices

I think might throw up a ad anyway and some decent pics over weekend if I can be bothered with proceeding with that, but, you know rationalising a perfect replacement if I was to get rid of the Octy next is even more difficult, I'm not sure I'm even there yet now I took a long harder look at possible alternatives
So if I do that I might just be tidying my car for myself and many more years

There are a few possibles ( someone here recently went the Kia Stinger route which is interesting but I'm not about to follow that 30k direction myself).
There are many downsides of some of the others, for a non battery direction but better longer term on value maybe vx220, 350Z GT, XKR (horrible running costs tho)....
less good long term on value 370z, gt86 turbo, that sort of thing.
(Not sure what is interesting in the world of aspiring classics but "everyday reliable" for limited number of miles use)... Many of those have awful running costs compared to the Octy tho.

Edited 31 July, 2019 by vRSAnt