Open Letter from the Managing Director
Throughout the world car dealers have an unacceptable reputation for integrity, professionalism and transparency. Each member of our team is therefore required to sign our Code of Ethics Statement, a 10 point commitment to our customers of our honest, organised, reliable and straightforward approach. Please understand, this is not a sales gimmick, it’s our commitment to you of the minimum standard you can expect when you deal with us.
There has been a great deal of negative publicity about one of our main competitors over the last few weeks, highlighting astoundingly poor service levels ("you will be kept waiting...and waiting...and waiting until a young man with spots and a clipboard scrutinises your eight year old Mondeo to the standards of Rolls-Royce owners club") and apparently artificial online valuations ("the purchaser is under strict instructions to offer the lowest price they can – up to 30 per cent LESS than the website price"..."Sales records show that in the first week of March the firm's top-performing purchaser paid sellers an average 47 per cent less for their cars than the online quote").
It is fair to say that the main risk with this business model is that car buying companies can only value what they are made aware of. However, if the car is going to be collected from the customer, there is absolutely no point making an offer that we have no intention of honouring, subject to the car being as described to us, of course. I would therefore like to explain our process as thoroughly as I can to you, as well as provide you with some of our own Quarter 1 2014 performance statistics.
The Process
1. You enter your car details online, albeit we only ask you to estimate the condition at this point. The reason for this is that we discovered many people are not actually with their cars when entering the details online. We found that many people when asked to enter more precise details on condition actually suspended their enquiry. So we removed the need for precise condition details at this stage of the enquiry.
2. Once we have received the initial online enquiry, if we are interested in purchasing your car we will contact you for more information. This is the stage where we need to obtain a more detailed and objective description of your car, including service history, specification and condition. Ideally, you will have your service books to hand and we will ask you to walk round your car, telling you what to look for. We will update the enquiry form to record all the information you have provided us with and we will then provide you with our quote to buy your car.
3. Should you accept our purchase offer for your car, a member of our administration team will contact you, to confirm all the details once again and to arrange a mutually convenient collection date. We will send you, via the website, a purchase contract for you to sign. This purchase contract will effectively formalise everything you have told us and everything we have told you. Effectively, prior to collection, you will have been asked the key questions about service history, specification and condition on 4 separate occasions: Online initial enquiry; conversation with whoever you deal with in purchasing; conversation with whoever you deal with in administration and formally via the purchase contract.
4. At the point of vehicle inspection (remember, we come to you not you to us), our vehicle inspector will have a copy of the purchase contract and he or she will inspect your vehicle thoroughly to ensure everything is as expected, including a short test-drive. If it is, then you will be asked to telephone your bank details through to someone in our Accounts department who will arrange an instant transfer of fund from our bank account to yours. Once you have confirmed receipt of the funds with your bank, you will give us the keys to your car and we will depart. If your car is not as described, our vehicle inspector will price up the areas requiring attention (this will be done as transparently as possible) and provide an amended offer for your car, which you can either accept or decline, the choice is yours!
I hope the above serves to highlight our "prevention is better than cure" method for achieving genuine offers for your car as well as serving to illustrate our honest, thorough and transparent approach and ethos.
Statistics
Quarter 1 2014 Actual Transaction Prices Vs Initial Offer Price: 96.13%.
What does this statistic mean? For example, if we had agreed an online offer of £5000, once viewed we are achieving an average actual transaction price of £4806, a statistic that we are extremely pleased with when you consider we are effectively agreeing to buy cars “blind”. Compare and contrast this statistic with the reported 30% reduction objective of one of our main competitors (referred to above).
Furture Initiatives
We are constantly striving to improve our "customer proposition", in terms of convenience and reliability of service, accuracy of purchase offers, overall experience for our customers. Our testimonial page is full of genuine customer feedback.
One initiative that is to commence immediately is the provision of road fund licence refund forms, to save you the time of going to the post office yourself. Our vehicle inspectors will help you complete these forms at the point of collection (where applicable).
We have also recently introduced a live-chat facility, so you can see we are real people in a real office...a genuine business, as opposed to a one man band working from his living room at home.
Finally, for now, we are also looking to provide a facility for those customers who require further reassurances whereby we provide them with the contact details of people who have previously had dealings with us. We realise that any online transaction requires a leap of faith, especially for "high value goods" such as cars and anything we can do to improve our credibility, to enable our customers to trust in us, is going to be welcomed.
If you have any suggestions that you feel would be beneficial to us, please email them to me at mark.rogers@sellcar.co.uk.
Yours sincerely,
Mark Rogers