Apart from the obvious physical checks. How closely do they look? Disc / pad wear, check oil and filters etc. Do they test drive?

They just put them straight in the auction so only really look at it cosmetically. They won’t care or look at oil, brake pads etc, but will try and knock you down for dents, scuffed alloys etc. I don’t think they test drive.

As a friend of mine once said after talking to them, “we buy any car… so do I at that price, ****”

They basically take £50 off the book price for each blemish, stone chip, dink or minor imperfection in the bodywork, wheel scuffs etc. They also check service history / every receipt etc and reduce the price accordingly. The guy was so thorough he missed the crease in my roof due to a car park height restriction ‘incident’ with a roof rack.

They give it a right good going over and will knock the offer price down with every single blemish they find. They use one of those devices that measure the paint thickness to look for signs of body work having been done, go through the paperwork with a fine tooth comb and any documents missing or incomplete history or anomalies and they hit you. So the price you get quoted on the web page no matter how accurate you think you’ve described it the’ll still find something to knock the price down a bit more. Having said that I think it’s all fair game and I’m not really sure how much you are missing out on vs. selling privately or PX’ing – not a huge amount by the time you taken the cost of advertising into account and dealing with assorts of undesirable tyre kickers and eejits with ridiculous offers, so might very well be worth the convenience.

I put my old SMax through their check and they were pretty fair and the headline price they agreed was, I thought, not bad and certainly worthy of consideration vs. selling privately and easily comparable to PX. However they found an error a mechanic made in recording the milage a few MOT’s before and even though it was obvious it was an error (a significantly higher mileage than the previous year and higher than the following year) they couldn’t/wouldn’t accept it and the offer price plummeted. I did contact the DVLA to enquire about correcting the milage, but since I couldn’t offer up any decent evidence of what the milage was on the day of the MOT, they couldn’t do anything.

Was given a price of £4500 on their website, went along and the guy just took the mick, said my car had been resprayed and one side was a different shades of grey to the other(it had not, and it wasn’t). He also missed some recent bodywork that had been completed just 3 weeks earlier above a wheel arch. He knocked £1100 off the website price. Said no thanks and walked away.
Took it to Evan Halshaw that afternoon, same price offered on their website – had to make an appointment, booked it in, guy took about 30 photos of the car, uploaded them to head office where they agreed the original website price of £4500, money was in my account 2 days later

We had a 3008 which was cosmetically fine but periodically gave a ‘gearbox fault’ (automated manual box) when you started it up. The local Pug dealer was claiming £3K to fix a car that we bought a year before for £7K (and matching that with an equally low part-ex value), but We Buy Any Car counted the scratches (almost none) asked us to demonstrate that the car started fine (it did that time, luckily) and promptly paid the price they stated in the quote.

I’d feel like we ripped them off if we didn’t repeatedly state the gearbox problem, but as you say, they just shift them fast. They didn’t go through the paperwork with us overly bad, just checked it had a full service history.

They took £100 per panel off mine where they saw stone chips or minor marks on a 160k mile car. End price was bigger all really, bit I needed to shift the car and was just about enough cash to make it ok. As others have said, cosmetic checks only and check it starts.

I’d not bother with them again though.

They knock money off for anything cosmetic but they definitely don’t check the cars properly for mechanical issues.

We did ours through Evan Halshaw who stuck with the quoted price. However it took several weeks for the money to appear and I had to keep chasing.

I’ve had mine quoted through there. The guy who called on the back of the online quote was pretty honest. We’ll take something off for every ding, knock and chip that makes it less than showroom. Well it’s a 7 year old 100k car so can pretty much guarantee some serious attrition. The headline prices are higher than trade in values though so you do start from a different base. Estimate from a dealer to trade mine was 4200 last week WBAC before inspection was 5000….800 to play with.

I’ve only looked at it where I’ve considered buying a car where I can’t trade in.

We used them last October to shift our Ford Focus as we were moving to Spain and I needed the car right up until the day we left so no time for a private sale. They offered us £500 more than any local garages and the final price wasn’t too far off the Parker’s guide for a private sale.

To be honest they didn’t do a particularly thorough check and missed quite a few major issues other garages knocked us down for i.e. the car needing 4 new tyres and the rear wiper arm being held together with epoxy resin and electrical tape. We just got knocked down by £200 for minor cosmetic bits.

They wouldn’t buy my mighty Rover 214.

They knock money off for anything cosmetic but they definitely don’t check the cars properly for mechanical issues

True, which is why they are so harsh if you have any holes in your service history.

They obviously have a cost model they’re using. They know how much they can hand the car off at based upon condition, so starting price is based on good condition with no cosmetic blemishes, then subtract for everything they find. Without putting the car through a proper mechanical inspection on a ramp with qualified mechanics rather than yoof’s on minimum wage then they can’t establish the mechanical condition….but then the people that buy them at auction are not doing the same.

My experience of buying and selling cars privately is that the sellers overestimate their cars worth and buyers underestimate it and the whole process is generally unpleasant. So this is an option that might suit some people…depends if you value convenience or not. If you do then I think its actually a viable option, but again most people don’t value their time or convenience so they’ll never get it.

Sold my TT through them. To be honest, it was sad doing it and I got waaaay less than I had hoped for because of some scuffed alloys and a few interior marks, but it did mean i did not have to tax, insure or fuel it. It also stopped time wasters not buying it.

Our local branch were fantastic.

Got online price, took it in knowing there was a scratch on it that we had been quoted £750 to repair (keyed side of car)

They knocked £500 off their web quote.

They just did visual check and started engine, that was it

I used them not long after they started to sell on old van. They sent a guy with a flatbed to collect it, they didn’t even check it over for dents or anything. The money was in the same day it wasn’t a huge amount as it was an mot failure.

They wouldn’t buy my mighty Rover 214.

Understandable.

They offered me £50 for my last car. Then wanted to add a £50 admin fee. That was online so their automated system then kept emailling me saying what a great deal it was.
I got £200 trade in for it elsewhere.

Sold a Focus to them a few years back. Exhaust had a big hole in it so I spent that morning with a £3 tape repair kit on the drive. Luckily it held up enough at the time of checking. Don’t think they even took it for a drive, just checked it started OK and there were no warning lights. I’d been brutally honest on the online forms, but they still managed to find a couple of stone chips on the bonnet and knocked another £50 off.

I found them pretty fair. They gave me the advertised price and didn’t chip anything off. The car was tidy, though.

The only thing they tried on was the paint thickness tester. The geezer was convinced my bonnet had been sprayed. It hadn’t, it was aluminium. Once that was sorted they paid me and off I went.

Like a lot of tings it will depend where you are and who you get to do the assessment. When we px’d the wife’s car the dealer did a very similar checklist; no doubt they go down the same pipeline.

I sold a car to them in December, they did all the outside checks mentioned above and turned the ignition on to check for any warning lights. The price they gave me was no worse than I was being offered in trade in against something newer.

Arnold clark have been the best in my experience. Higher offers on line than WBAC. Sold two cars this way, both with finance to clear which they took care of with no issues.
Last car i sold to them, after car was inspected (10min walkround car in the car park), Salesman told me he noticed a couple of extras that I hadn’t highlighted in the on line valuation form. He made a quick call and increased the on line offer by £500. The money (minus the outstanding finance) due was in my account couple of days later.

Used them for my Dad’s car. I was totally honest about condition with the online estimate, and the guy at WBAC was very keen to give me the price I’d been quoted. Checked the paintwork with the magnetic thing, checked it started and the money was in the account a couple of days later. The woman in before me didn’t have the same experience, as the magnetic thing picked up some shoddy bodywork that she hadn’t admitted.

They’d go over my 3 year old Skoda thats worth about 11k and say “Faulty DSG box… thats now worth about 7K. Electrical faults every time you press the horn, now its worth 6K. Starting issues, 5k. Oh its a VAG group car, £500.

Personally I’d bite their arm off for the £500.

They halved the initial offer for our Galaxy. Not because it was any worse than we had described, or even that it had a fault.
Because the delivering dealer when new hadn’t stamped the service schedule for the first post delivery inspection (I think at 1k miles).
This was on a 12 year old car with a fully stamped service schedule from 12k all the way to 180k, a folder of receipts in date order for every tyre, service and part ever….

Thankfully Arnold Shark offered more.

Depends on who you get i think, but the bloke who did mine hardly checked anything, offered me £50 which i then haggled him up to £180. Pretty pleased a it was a proper shitbox car.

If wbac send then to auction why not just put it in auction yourself? I did this once though it was a few years ago, was pretty painless made an ok amount considering I needed it gone.

Last year We got approached by someone wanting to buy our 12yo Land Cruiser, so we took it to WBAC to get an idea of a price. They found a few extra things to knock down the online price, but as that was more than I was expecting it wasn’t a problem.

Ended up selling it to the builder who originally approached us for the same as the WBAC price, with payment in a big wedge of £50s

The WBAC guy said their price varies depending on how many of the same cars they have already bought and are due in the next auction?