[Closed] Kazoo and WeBuyAnyCar stock piling cars m

Well Google earth isn't live for starters.

My house showed my previous owners caravan up until recently and I've been here over a decade.

My house showed my previous owners caravan up until recently and I’ve been here over a decade.

*goes off to see if red neck garden is on google earth

goes off to see if red neck garden is on google earth

It is....sofa and all ..

But Street view still shows the previous owner..... Guess Google sensored my version of the garden

Well Google earth isn’t live for starters.

Several years old in most cases.

Most of the huge stacks of cars, near the ports, are new ones fresh off the ferries waiting to be distributed to dealers.

Google Street View can be ten years out of date but Google earth is rarely less than 12 months old - you can get more up to date imagery but you have to pay!

Here's a BCA (who owns WBAC) storage area & they've got loads more.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @51.4310957,0.7425753,1662m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1

Have I missed something?

Evidence?

It’s nothing new, those car storage areas will have all sorts of vehicles there for different reasons.

BCA collect people’s lease cars when the leases come to an end, then the vehicles will need to be processed and then sent to auction, cars have to sit somewhere between auctions and processing.

Wbac are still paying top money for cars atm.

recently had a quote of WBAC on the wifes auto toyota aygo and was properly shocked to see they offered us over 1k more than we bought it for 3 years ago !!
Understand they will knock us down etc , but still , thats not bad ... Just waiting for the new car to turn up and then off it goes 🙂

I work on the Isle of Sheppey- lots of sites here for unloading & storing new cars. If you look on google, most are full but they were pretty empty when I was in the office Tuesday.

I’d always assumed they just parked them all on the streets around Phillip Scholfields house

I think the thing with high prices is simply that used prices are high because new cars are in short supply due to chip shortage.

As I suspected this sounds like a none-story.
Didn't know Google earth was so dated though.

We buy any van offered me £300 more for my van than i paid for it 16 months ago . With 15k on the clock.
Bonkers

I paid 20k for a car last July and sold it a month ago to WBAC for nearly 23k. According to the tracking app which I'm still connected to the car was moved to an industrial estate near Banbury and hasn't moved since.

So from my experience, yes they're both paying high prices for cars and they're not in a hurry to sell them.

Blimey my van has lost only £2k in 3 years and 45,000 miles! Hmm, 🤔 *ponders electric van leases.

Google earth is rarely less than 12 months old

Over 3 years old at my folks house, 2 years for central Glasgow and Clermiston (Edinburgh) last updated 2016.

Guess it depends where you are.

They offered my girlfriend a good bit more than the local Ford delaer for her 10 year old tatty Corsa. £1800 with WBAC and £1300 at the dealer. Dealer matched in the end.

I'll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard 😉

Never mind cars, where are all the flipping vans?

I’ll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard

Best humblebrag EVER.

I’ll ask my Aunt, she owns part of Sheerness Dockyard 😉

If it's the bit in between the high and low tide marks, we need to start being a bit more deferential to Benji.

My car is worth £100 less than it was the last time I had it valued (about 6 months ago).

But it is a 14 year old banger.

My Focus only owes me £1500 after 3 year of driving and 30k miles. Thats the Cazoo price, if I sold it privately i'd probably break even.

Its a false economy though, because any car I bought to replace it will have gone up too.

Have I missed something?

Yep, a kazoo can't stockpile anything except spit

This seems completely counter to their business model

it wouldn't be if they were certain that the value of used cars was going to continue to rise. Buy an asset "cheaply" when you can (which might still mean paying more for it than others would) and hold it till the demand rises so you can charge a higher price. Even better if the "world" gets to know that WBAC offer far better prices than dealers - this feeds the incoming supply, and in fact means the dealers have less of their own supply pushing up the auction price! You need plenty of cash and patience to play that game (and probably enough market insight on when to sell - but I suspect through the auctions and their website they'll have a very good idea when to sell). In fact you possibly don't apply this philosophy on all vehicles the same - if you have enough granular data on different models then why auction say all your Honda CRV's the same week - that dilutes the value; drip feed one a week so people are fighting over them...

Speaking to somebody in the second hand trade, their margins on cars from auction have been squeezed. End of lease cars are going straight to businesses like Cazoo, so there aren't as many cars going to auction. He was also nervous about holding too many cars at inflated prices, fearing a drop in prices.

Here’s a BCA (who owns WBAC) storage area & they’ve got loads more.

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/ @51.4310957,0.7425753,1662m/data=!3m1!1e3!5m1!1e1

That's interesting. The next-door Tesco Superstore carpark looks minuscule by comparison! I also appreciate that they've spelled out 'NH-' presumably to be visible on aerial imaging. WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong - someone needs to have a word!... 🙂

[img] [/img]

WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

It means Neil Harris had some time on his hands and fancied seeing his initials in cars when he looked on Google maps 🙂

Doesn't seem likely to me.

Stock is hard to come by at the moment, but the auctions are still busy (client owns a couple of Car Supermarket type outlets) and prices are high because of it.

When I worked at Lombard Vehicle Finance / RBS we disposed of all of our returns via BCA, the commercial arm of WBAC, their storage facilities are vast but so is the throughput.

That said, I get the 'theory'. High demand for used cars means higher prices so it's easy to think that it would be worth stockpiling thousands of cars hoping for the price to rise, the problem with that is the sheer amount of money involved. BCA's 2020 accounts show they hold no cash, or cash like assets (aka no money in the bank), they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don't 'own' many of the cars they sell. They also had £147m of credit to pay in the following 12 months.

Even if values of used cars continue to rise, individual cars are still likely to be depreciating assets, I.E. a 5 year old car, becomes less valuable when it turns into a 6 year old car, even if the value of 6 year old cars rise slightly and with all their stock financed with credit, the quicker they can move stock on, the better and more profitable.

This might just work out good timing for me. On the strength of this thread I checked my car and it's an unbelievably high offer. I run it as a car for work, claiming the allowance to pay the loan on it. Work have just issued the new car list and they have hybrids on there, which look very good from a BIK position. So I'm very much thinking now, sell the car, pay the loan off and pocket the equity I didn't think I would have. The only spanner in that particular plan is if the new cars are OOS or super long lead times as mine will be depreciating more (finance balance decreasing though) and maybe these sky high offers are short term.

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong – someone needs to have a word!… 🙂

That has me itching....!

The only spanner in that particular plan is if the new cars are OOS or super long lead times as mine will be depreciating more (finance balance decreasing though) and maybe these sky high offers are short term.

it is highly likely that there will be long lead times for any new car - this is why second hand price are high right now.

The lady wife works for British Car Auctions in their recruitment/HR dept.

Based on what she has told me there is a massive shortage of 2nd hand cars at the moment, hence the inflated prices, i forget what the metric is called but pre Covid it was at 80% and now it's at 110% average sell price or something.  It's completely daft and unsustainable but if you have a car you don't use, now would be the time to sell it.

Kazoo are buying the stuff not good enough for BCA's own Online Consumer Facing Brand Cinch.  You know the one that appears to be keeping Rylen in fake tan.

They also have about 1800 (yes, really) jobs to fill as they are in the midst of expanding/changing business models (Dealers going to Auction Houses -> Basically Online Only) and a source of skilled labour just to the East has dried up...

Just zoomed into that Google Maps link has this is just wrong – someone needs to have a word!…

I wish I hadn't looked at that

Why would anyone do that? WHY?!!!

they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don’t ‘own’ many of the cars they sell.

My understanding is that they don't own any of the cars, they are just a service provider.

That said, I get the ‘theory’. High demand for used cars means higher prices so it’s easy to think that it would be worth stockpiling thousands of cars hoping for the price to rise, the problem with that is the sheer amount of money involved. BCA’s 2020 accounts show they hold no cash, or cash like assets (aka no money in the bank), they had around £5m worth of inventory that they owned (probably stock from WBAC) and £248m worth of trade so I guess they don’t ‘own’ many of the cars they sell. They also had £147m of credit to pay in the following 12 months.

Even if values of used cars continue to rise, individual cars are still likely to be depreciating assets, I.E. a 5 year old car, becomes less valuable when it turns into a 6 year old car, even if the value of 6 year old cars rise slightly and with all their stock financed with credit, the quicker they can move stock on, the better and more profitable.

Now I'm intrigued as to how the finances work, if the whole business is operated on credit, and therefore the vehicles are just assets... Is someone (a lender) just tying up cash in a growing stockpile of used cars to try and insulate it from tax?

Who supplies their credit?

I thought dealers should generally send trade ins to auction anyway so are WBAC just cutting out the middle man and hence can offer a higher price.

I'm not far from a huge BCA storage site but the signage seems to suggest people buying pick up from there too.

We sold our car to WBAC this afternoon. They emailed me saying the valuation had increased, so I looked into it and it had increased by about £3k since a couple of weeks earlier. I took it along, fully expecting to be smashed down by a fair chunk, but no, they paid pretty much what they'd offered. Saving me a trip to the bodywork guy for touching up and a load of hassle, and it was some way above what I'd anticipated getting privately. Possibly could have held out for more but I'm very happy to take it. What a weird market currently.

The WBAC guy was describing how vast the set-up is. Incredible really. He has return customers, buying themselves Porsches and stuff, deciding after a few weeks that they don't like them, and chopping them in to WBAC.

I think I got lucky with the algorithms ultimately, but it's a pretty straightforward way to sell the car. I'd be really interested to know what they get for mine when they do shift it on.

That’s interesting. The next-door Tesco Superstore carpark looks minuscule by comparison! I also appreciate that they’ve spelled out ‘NH-‘ presumably to be visible on aerial imaging. WHAT DOES IT MEAN THOUGH?

NHS......Work in progress?

Don’t run like most UK businesses…

In Cazoo’s case subsidised by VC money through to going public on US market via SPAC. More than happy to play long game with ridiculous amounts of capital behind them. In terms of long game and scale think of Amazon running at loss to drive up growth and kill off competition over 20yrs. More money, tech data and better team than any similar co from back in the day. Their founder was behind what is now Amazon Prime and Zoopla. If they are holding cars their is a good financial benefit for them to do so. My guess would be maybe all the supply chain issues we are experiencing are going to last another 3yrs rather than 6 months or simply they are not doing so at all, just operating at scale beyond what people are used to seeing.

Motorway website says my car is worth 13k. I paid 11k for it in April

Obviously, they'll eventually offer less, then any other car bought will also be inflated a similar amount, negating any profit I make

I'll just keep it

Dunno, they offered £525 for my Berlingo before upping it to £575 12 months ago

They're now offering £150.

WBAC says our 6 year old Skoda Yeti is now worth £8800. That's 800 more than a month ago.

I'd snap their hands off if I could think of a better replacement for a fair price.

Kazoo are buying the stuff not good enough for BCA’s own Online Consumer Facing Brand Cinch. You know the one that appears to be keeping Rylen in fake tan.

Really? That’s interesting, ‘cos I work for Cazoo, at a repair and refurbishment site, and the cars that come in that get rejected as not up to scratch, (pun intended), go off to auction, often picked up by BCA transporters, or by individual drivers when the cars are bought privately through trade auction. As I see the cars that Cazoo have going through our place, (one of four they took over), I can say that the standards are very high indeed, certainly the Mustangs, Teslas, Porsche, Maserati, Range Rover and high-end BMW’s I’ve seen don’t strike me as being “ stuff not good enough for BCA’s own Online Consumer Facing Brand Cinch”: quite the opposite. I also worked for BCA Logistics actually picking up cars from customers, most of which were Motability and ordinary fleet/lease cars and vans/commercial vehicles, including an ambulance once.

WBAC says my Fiat Panda is worth £900, which is at least £1k less than similar ones are going for on eBay :-/

Hopefully the madness continues for a few more months...
Just as COVID was kicking off in March 2020 I was thinking of a new van, and WBAC were offering £10K for my 17 plate Expert with about 45k miles. Dealer trade in was slightly less.
With the uncertainty, I hung on and kept it.
Fast forward to now and they are hassling me twice a week, with the latest offer at £15.5K with the van at 65K miles. Bonkers.
New van ordered this week, but won't be here till February or March next year.

Motorway website says my car is worth 13k. I paid 11k for it in April

Obviously, they’ll eventually offer less, then any other car bought will also be inflated a similar amount, negating any profit I make

Depends, I sold an admittedly new car (2.5k on the clock) with only minor kerb rash, the final price was 500 quid more than their estimate. It paid off the finance owing plus 150 quid.

Hopefully the madness continues for a few more months…

It's an interesting one how this will play out in the longer term.

You buy a car today at an inflated price. Let's say it was worth 20k, you buy at 25k.

In two years time you look to sell, pre inflated prices its devaluation would have dropped to 15k, 5k hit isn't so bad but 10k is a lot. Will second hand cars now hold their value for longer as folk may not be as willing to lose more because they bought at inflated prices.

Hmmm....

My son is in the process of buying through one of these online sites. He wants a particular model/extras and it was the only one currently available he could find.
They are claiming it has 18" wheels (confirmed verbally) when the pictures show 19" so it will be interesting to see what turns up.
Only downside so far is that they want you to be available all day for delivery and he cant do that so not sure what they are going to agree on.

WBAC says our 6 year old Skoda Yeti is now worth £8800. That’s 800 more than a month ago.

I’d snap their hands off if I could think of a better replacement for a fair price.

As someone who has recently returned a company car and spending lots of time looking for a replacement, Yetis are going for crazy money at the moment. £10000 for a 2012, saw a 2016 recently for £16k. Dealer said some of them are coming in at trade at not far off what people would have paid for them new!

Worst time ever to be trying to get a good value used car

New BCA site in Avonmouth on the old Honda Export site is scraping staff from everywhere and driving up wages. Talking to a customer who owns a body shop locally and struggling to keep staff. As mentioned above BCA model is changing to a more down stream offering. All online auctions less dealers involved more care about maximising value ( tarting up) of stock.

So I've just quickly looked at 2 random private sale cars on Autotrader and the WBAC value for them is £700 more on a £19K car. 🤷‍♂️

How much do WBAC try to knock off the quoted value when you turn up with the car?

So people are making a coin by buying private and flogging to wbac?

How much do WBAC try to knock off the quoted value when you turn up with the car?

In my case none. He couldn't get it done fast enough and there was 2 more appointments queued up behind us.

So people are making a coin by buying private and flogging to wbac?

This time next year Rodney…..!!!!

Yea, I was thinking about the driveway “traders” that were a total pita when we sold the Golf that we had. My god that was tiresome!

£700 difference on a £19k vehicle is not enough for me to risk buying and hopefully selling at a profit!

The demand is coming from people who ‘would have’ bought new, so prices for 3 yr old cars with under 50k miles are going up most imo.

It’s daft really because the uk has suffered chronic oversupply of vehicles for years. There are enough to go around, just don’t be picky about make/model/colour.

WBAC will want to sell stock asap. No way they are intentionally stockpiling.

Short term, i think prices will keep going up.

After reading this thread I went onto Cazoo to get a value of my 21 Mercedes c300, I’ve had nothing but trouble with Mercedes. This was a replacement for a dodgy E63 they sold me. This one broke down on day 1 of ownership. It’s been fine since but tinged with a bad taste…

Cazoo offered me over what was left to pay, so I’ve just “traded” it in for a nice Peugeot 508 SW half engine/half electric thing

So people are making a coin by buying private and flogging to wbac?

You might get away with it, but WBAC won't buy from you if they believe you're a trader. Presumably to stop them having an easy route to dispose of rubbish cars.

So if you turn up having only owned it for a few days/weeks you might end up stuck with it.

Just out of interest sparked by this thread, I checked what WBAC would offer for my car. I bought it in April 2019 at six months old from a VW dealer. Their valuation after two and a half years and 12000 miles…. £250 less than I paid for it then. Now I know it is likely to be less even though it is in excellent condition but even so..

I checked what WBAC would offer for my car. I bought it in April 2019 at six months old from a VW dealer. Their valuation after two and a half years and 12000 miles…. £250 less than I paid for it then.

Similar here, we bought a Ford kuga at Christmas 2018, according to wbac its now worth around 800 quid less than we paid for it back then, even though it now has 15000 more miles.

So Google Earth is being offered up as proof to a claim that they are stock piling cars? I don't know if they are or not...doesn't make sense if they are, but there may be some clever and devious scam going on that is not obvious but come one. Even IF Google Earth is updated regularly - it isn't 1 - 3 years in terms of average refresh rate of individual images even though updates are made every month...the surface of the Earth is quite large and satellites only travel in straight lines so are limited to their orbital routes - but ignoring that very practical fact who's checking to see if all the cars in one image are the same as the cars in the next image??? what's the turn over rate??

Mate got rid of his car via WBAC recently and they offered a very good price for it and held their quote...but it all depends on how accurately and honestly you declare your cars condition on their website...in my experience they check everything including the paperwork and will deduct heavily anything that deviate from what you declare. That was my experience but my mates...becasue his car had less than 6k miles on it and was showroom condition, they didn't deduct anything after their inspection.

What was interesting was that the app for his car was not disconnected form his old car for about three weeks (the ability was not there in the app to disconnect a car from it) and in that three weeks the car was being driven and parked in different places almost every night. After about three weeks the car disappeared from his app, so he assumed that that was the point the car was sold onto someone else. So for three weeks it appears the WBAC employees probably get almost free access to hoon around in the cars they buy so it doesn't appear they are parked somewhere on a big lot and sit there until they are sold on.

This thread also piqued my interest and has caused a first world problem. My diesel Volvo V90 is apparently worth a grand more than it cost to buy 2 years ago. Had I known about the pandemic, lockdowns, etc, I wouldn't have bought it as the wife is WFH long term and I can use hers. Do I capitalise and sell mine, at zero cost for 2 years motoring in the hope that she will continue WFH for the next few years? If she goes back to office and needs her car to commute, I'd be stuffed as I'd then need to buy one at silly prices. OTOH, longer term, diesel cars will devalue heavily towards the end of this decade as punters shy away from ICEs and towards electric. This may be the only time to get rid without taking a hit. Genuinely undecided.

For that Sheerness site referenced above, going back in the google earth time line shows its been rammed with parked up vehicles for several years. Theres's a small extension, but not unreasonable if wbac brings in more stock.
Where does all the wbac stock go? Through BCA auctions or do they cream off the er, cream, for their direct to consumer sales channels? And what are those channels, someone mentioned Cinch?

The madness still seems to continue, I’ve had an alert from WBAC today that their offer has increased again, so £19,500 to £23,000 in a month. Now entering the realms of what I paid for it 18 months ago.

Is this sustainable, as the company car option now looks a no-brainier?

Flip me, on the back of this thread I just checked the value of my wife's Disco Sport on WBAC. £30500 before deductions which is a good 4/5k more than they were offering 6 months ago! Seriously tempted at that.

Another one with my interest piqued by this thread. Checked my Cupra R estate on WBAC. Bought new a little over two years ago, 25,000 miles done since and the offer is slightly higher than what I payed new! Almost tempted if I Knew of an equally good car new for the same sort of price.

Mine has gone up too! They originally offered something like £750 a month ago - now it's £850.

Party time.

Flip me, on the back of this thread I just checked the value of my wife’s Disco Sport on WBAC. £30500 before deductions which is a good 4/5k more than they were offering 6 months ago! Seriously tempted at that.

That will hold for a while. They aren't making any new ones at the moment ( and not for the foreseeable either). Cancelled my order recently and got full refund with no quibbles.

Those who have got offer prices today, see what happens in a month, they might go up further!!!

Wonderw where al the cheap vans have gone, non with low mileage available locally but buy a new one an they offer thousands off for your old van, WBAV offered a large amount for my old van but it wouldnt drive, so they said get it to them and claim the cash.

This one broke down on day 1 of ownership. It’s been fine since but tinged with a bad taste…

My own personal experience with Mercedes cars over the last five years would preclude me ever buying one.
I’m not too fond of BMW’s, for that matter, but for different reasons.
Using online satellite imagery to try to ascertain whether the likes of BCA or Cazoo is doomed to fail, unless you’re prepared to pay for up-to-date images - there is an organisation who can provide images within hours of them being taken. If you pay.
If you were to look at the various parts of the site I work at, on Apple Maps and Google Maps, you’ll see startling differences between them, the Apple images are at least four or five years old, and show our biggest area empty, while the Google images show it crammed full, but those images are still at least a year old, possibly eighteen months, because they still show the old entrance into the site. An up-to-date image of the same area would show it half empty.
You can’t prove anything that’s taking place now by referring to Google or Apple satellite views.
I used to visit a BCA site at Royal Portbury Dock, which only stored a couple of hundred cars, as it shared the area with cars being unloaded from the big transporter ships, but you wouldn’t be able to tell by looking at a satellite view which was which. Cazoo now have a site there, but I’m not sure where, there’s huge areas covered in cars and vans down there.
They’re also moving into commercials as well.

Just sold my car to Mercedes. They offered me £200 less than WBAC

They said that WBAC are owned by BCA, and BCA are going to open their own showroom/online network and are offering over top dollar for cars at the minute to build their stock

Not sure if it was true or not

Where do all the low price cars go that WBAC buy? I'm looking for a £1K small first car for my 17yo daughter and these larger Cazoo, etc. don't seem to go below £5K

Wbac offered me £4000 more then my local dealer for my van a year ago.crazy.

I got a text message saying my offer had increased for the Yeti. It's now 9700.

That's 900 more then when I last posted and about 2 grand more than when I first checked. I'd sell it now 100% but I bought it for the Mrs and she loves it. I also have no idea what we'd replace it with.

Can believe this! Dealer quoted £1.5k part ex, WBAC were similar…2months later WBAC is £2.2k!

Only reason I’ve not done it is finding it hard to find next car (and I’m fussy)
Audi A3 2l TDI 150 around 64 reg and 5dr, Sport under 70k, with cruise, rear park and ideally nav (used to drive the same for work on installs and lovely cars)!

WBAC keep sending me updates on their valuation the latest that I was given compared to a month ago has dropped by £750, so perhaps their buying has peaked? Or perhaps my car is becoming less attractive

Only reason I’ve not done it is finding it hard to find next car (and I’m fussy)

Same here. The Octavia VRS wagons I wanted originally have shot up in price.

Where do all the low price cars go that WBAC buy? I’m looking for a £1K small first car for my 17yo daughter and these larger Cazoo, etc. don’t seem to go below £5K

I imagine straight to auction, where they're picked up by one-man-band type dealers.