Scottish Elises

Picking up the Volvo was the pleasant part of the day. Then I had the second part which everybody should try out just for the experience.....NOT. Posted this on Whats yesterday.

WBAC are going to be a complete waste of fukcing time. Every little blemish is marked down even to a stone chip and a dent that was invisible so already told him that he is wasting his time and he has only just started. Just waiting for his joke price. £3,150 was the online price.

£2,300 the lookalike Tommy Cooper came out with, and as you guessed Don I walked away. The only defect on the body was a small 1" crack under the back light, that was a £189 deduction. I could barely see a stone chip, but they count them per square foot. Stupid thing is an HID is out, the SatNav does not work, the clutch needs replacing, and for all he knows as he did not drive it, the gearbox could be knackered and the engine on its last legs. The mileage I gave was 112,900, it was 113,012 when I got there, so that was marked down. He said it had the best service record that he had seen, but in 2009 it went 1K over its 12K interval so lets knock off a few more quid. Even he was embarrassed, but he works off a computer screen with dozens of squares on it for each part of the car and puts down the defects in the boxes, but Mission Control decides what to take off.

However the Volvo Manager told me that the agents work off commission based on the difference between the quoted price and how much they can knock it down to. Will start off by putting it on Gumtree.

Moral of the story is if you have a car that is in decent nick that you can drive there but which is mechanically knackered, engine, gearbox, transmission etc which would cost you a bomb, the take it along and tell them that you had a recommendation from tut.

We had quite a positive experience with WBAC - we needed to get rid of Mrs S's corsa a few years ago. At the time is was 6 yrs old, with 50K ish miles on it. It was mechanically good, and clean inside, but covered in scrapes and dents on the outside. We knew it was not worth much and would struggle to sell privately as it was so tatty looking. I went round the car and made a list of all the marks, and put them in on line. The valuation came up as around £1050. Thought that was fair enough, so went to do the deal. The guy came out and checked over the car. Quite a few of the marks I listed were on one panel, so instead of deducting £80 x 3 for one panel, he said he would just deduct £150 / £200 for replacement of the entire panel - which meant that we ended up getting £1200 for the car, more than the on line valuation!!

I think it's very much dependent on the car and whether they think they will sell it on. I checked their price when selling the mini just to get a reference, it was £800 below what I got for it in a privates sale. They emailed and called several times over a couple of weeks and increased the offer by £100 when I eventually took a call.

I wouldn't be surprised if they do a bit more research before visiting a car and aim to adjust the original quote to align with an auction price. They obviously provide a better option in some cases or they and other similar companies wouldn't bother.

Tut - sounds like you were quite right to hobble off - it's got to be worth more than that to someone. You are a bit remote to attract passing trade though - maybe you need an Aberdeen branch of Tut Car sales.

Good idea Kerry, for starters I could store it at my local garage in Newmill, good old school guy, that would cut out trying to get to Tut End, and put it initially on GumTree.

tut

A mate of mine took a V10 Touareg to them a few weeks ago that had a leaking caliper and needed both turbos replaced (engine dropped and £££); got the advertised online price (£3500) and was happy to see the back of it