WBAC Values

Scania said:
Not surprised to see the Cazoo situation, they recently bought my nephews M240i off him despite him crashing it twice (once fixed via insurance so a logged claim you’d surmise) he’d taken it from 15 to 28k miles and basically lost about £3k off its purchase price which was around £26k a year or so back iirc…

Having driven it after he’s got it back the second time, I wouldn’t be wanting to buy it at half the price, it now drives terribly compared to when he first got it, it’s suffered suspension damage and despite its supposed repair, you can very much tell.

I’d have thought they’d be thoroughly checking purchases, but having seen his experience, it appears not….
Click to expand...

Well, it explains a lot of the trust pilot reviews with unhappy customers saying their cars have more “imperfections” than what’s shown and, some have issues running etc

I can still see my car on the app, they’ve taken it to a place not far from me. It’s a massive airfield like area judging by google maps, and loads of cars are parked there. It’s apparently their preparation facility. They also have jobs where you test drive cars and highlight any issues etc

I do think they should be more thorough, and charge a little more for “mint” cars as even the ones listed at 40-50k have some questionable body scars; which wouldn’t cost a lot to fix.
 
Are motorway, wbac not in a similar boat as cazoo .. not sure the independant dealers or franchised manufacturer garages will be shedding a tear for these supposed disruptors;
unlike the former they have some mechanical expertise in house to bring to the party, which is why I'd prefer them.
 
Motorway don't sell the cars, they are a marketplace for dealers to bid one cars that get sent to the platform. It's basically just an alternative action house where owners can sell directly to dealers.

WBAC is owned by BCA, they'll be making a profit either way whether that is via Cinch(?) or back out to a dealer.
 
HangTime said:
You can't infer that from those stats. Profit per car might be better than half what it was but they may still want to cut costs.
Click to expand...
no but it is interesting to strawman and establish what is going wrong. ... seems to be in that direction

www.thisismoney.co.uk

Cazoo car sales double amid surging demand but margins shrink

Gross profits per car sold in the UK declined by 19% to £124, as limited supply continued to be outstripped by demand, with overall gross profit halving to £2m.
www.thisismoney.co.uk www.thisismoney.co.uk
The company, which buys used cars and reconditions them using its refurbishment centres to then sell them online through its website, said it sold almost 10,000 more vehicles than last year - a total of 19,713.
...
However, gross profits per car sold (GPU) in the UK declined by 19 per cent to £124, as limited supply continued to be outstripped by demand, with overall gross profit halving to £2million.
..
Demand for used cars has risen so much that Cazoo last year was unable to refurbish used cars fast enough for sale.
Click to expand...

such an insidious term
 
lol £124 per car gross profit

Not hard to see what went wrong there.

If your business model is based on having low overheads because you aren't paying for loads of showrooms and staff then you should be making a lot more per car
 
chanjy said:
lol £124 per car gross profit

Not hard to see what went wrong there.

If your business model is based on having low overheads because you aren't paying for loads of showrooms and staff then you should be making a lot more per car
Click to expand...

They are knocking them out on 9.9%Apr plans. They need to be making serious commission on that if they aren't already.
 
chanjy said:
Gross profit will include commission revenue!
Click to expand...
Na it'll be split books. Look at most car companies and you'll see the main car business makes naff all but the Financial Services arm makes a fortune.

Edit: altho you might be right as it looks like they just use Blackhorse!
 
Last edited:
cazoo lists itself as an insurance broker , so I thought chanjy's comment is correct
... just the commission, unless like energy comparison sites they recommend their preferred company, that the cazoo ceo, also has fingers in.
 
tangey said:
Down another £650, currently £47075
Click to expand...
That was the last price to purchase (about £1700 less what they paid me when I sold the car to them). They stopped listing a buy price and put it on £849 a month subscription only some months ago, and someone took it, as I still have access to the nav history/tracker. It went down to some place North of London.

The recent announcement about Cazoo explains why they are now offering £31.5K for the car today if I pretend to want to sell it to them, whereas they paid me £49.5K back in Nov.

WBAC offering 43K today, but I guess that would come down to £41-42K in reality.

I'm still waiting for my EV6 to actually get built, latest estimate is delivery Q3/Q4, so I'm still driving around in a 2020 petrol low mileage Sportage from the dealer on a month by month basis at £320 a month. They did the first 6 months tax, but I had to renew that. They did recently service it FOC.

As it stands the deal has worked for me, I have an agreed price on the new car, £49.5K from the cazoo sale in Chase savings doing 1.5%, and allowing for 12 months "rental", will have paid £3.8K to drive the Sportage.

The only bit that doesn't work is that i'd obviously prefer to have the EV6.
 
Last edited:
Cazoo were arguably overpaying back in early Q4. They were offering £8450 for my wife's car which was about £1k more than other buyers. Now 8 months later they are offering £6350 which is a bit on the low side. In reality they probably should have been more around the £7700 range and dropping to £6600 today, it's like they are one extreme or the other rather than having a smoothed price curve.
 
blueboy2001 said:
Sold my 2017 E220d Estate to Cazoo. It was a very high spec with a lot of desirable options, but they offered me £1000 more than a Mercedes’ dealer and £1500 more than WBAC. I dropped it off at their service centre which was a painless experience - cash was in my bank account within 10 seconds of the guy hitting the OK button on his tablet.

I knowingly paid about £2000 over market price for it 3 years ago due to the spec, condition and low mileage. Cazoo gave me £3000 less than what I paid for it, I’d put 30K miles on it, about half of which I’d expensed at 45p a mile so I’ve actually made a profit!

It appeared on Cazoo about 3 weeks later for £100 less than I bought it for in 2019. It’s still on there, now reduced by £500. I think it’s still about £1500 overpriced even for todays market, there’s plenty of E classes of that vintage on the market because MB were knocking them out on cheap lease deals right, left and centre back then.

Their marketing of vehicles is quite poor - for example on Mercs they don’t list Premium or Premium Plus in their model descriptions, yet they’re listed on the V5. Mine had the Driving Assistance Pack fitted but they’ve only shown standard cruise control but with a photo of the adaptive controls, they’ve listed reversing camera when it’s got the 360 surround cameras. The pictures are sufficient to see all the options it has but you have to know what your looking for.

There’s a C Class on there listed with “Premium Audio”, but I’m sure it hasn’t got it because it’s not a Premium Plus and it was never available separately. It’s got the plastic stick on Burmester speaker grilles you can buy on Alibaba for a few quid!
Click to expand...

Still not sold, reduced by £1125 since they first listed it. It’s still £1500 overpriced for me.

It’s sat on Normanton airfield with 52PSI in one of the front tyres! They’ve put about £25 worth of diesel in it too.
 
HangTime said:
Cazoo were arguably overpaying back in early Q4. They were offering £8450 for my wife's car which was about £1k more than other buyers. Now 8 months later they are offering £6350 which is a bit on the low side. In reality they probably should have been more around the £7700 range and dropping to £6600 today, it's like they are one extreme or the other rather than having a smoothed price curve.
Click to expand...

They were trying to win the market by buying up stock, simple as that, but its backfired on them as they have been over paying too much, still sometimes with startup companies it is all in the business plan to potentially make losses or no profits, so for all we know all could be proceeding as planned, risky game though in such a competitive market to operating on such low margins, as the result is what has happened, redundancies and potentially failing.
 
pugheaven said:
Mine's dropped down quite a bit then again it's going to being a 6.1ltr... however, also they're not selling on ebay right now, anything big, is literally dropping like a stone :-(
Click to expand...
Cars I had been tracking that had been going down have relatively large engines too - although not that big! I guess it's related to fuel costs.
 
EvilRob said:
Cars I had been tracking that had been going down have relatively large engines too - although not that big! I guess it's related to fuel costs.
Click to expand...
100%, I mean even I wouldn't buy one right now the way the worl is, it would be foolish so therefore, the prices will take a serious nosedive unless using one for say 1-2k miles per year i.e. a show or weekend car. And I have a horrible feeling nothing is going to change...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom