WEBUYCARS; WHERE SECONDHAND CAR SALES IS NEXT LEVEL
A morning at the WeBuyCars (WBC) Dome in Northgate is enough to make you dizzy. The Northgate Dome was originally built to be a secondhand vehicle sales point, but that vision was 30 years too early. Finally, this has come to pass. The venue is enormous and the numbers of vehicles on display and the stats, are mindboggling to say the least.
WBC have 17 vehicle supermarkets, with a further three branches opening soon. Overall, they sell approximately 16 000 vehicles a month – this equates to 190 000 units a year! Quite astounding numbers for a single company – which accounts for 12% of this market. The Dome sells around 2 300 units a month on its own and on the day, we were there, there were 1 943 vehicles under the roof at any given time.
A used-car salesperson would normally be doing well selling five units a month at a dealer. However, at the Dome, it’s an average of 27. It’s car sales on steroids and more!
The premises can process 100 cars a day, and that’s before lunchtime. With a new carwash designed for their site, the goal is 400 a day. The vehicle comes in and is washed. It is then put on a lift to clean it underneath so as to make it easier for a thorough inspection to be done.
Once it has been cleaned inside, the unit is driven into one of three uniquely designed circular photo booths. An internal camera is mounted onto the headrests, and an iPhone is placed outside the booth. As the booth rotates, interior and exterior images are captured delivering a 360° view of the unit inside and out. This enables every vehicle to be seen in the same way by buyers as there is total unison in the way each car appears in its digital profile.
The vehicle then enters the critical inspection phase. Dekra is an independent company on site that handles this part of the vehicle’s journey. Each vehicle that WBC buys is already registered on the National Traffic Information System (NaTIS) in one of the legislated vehicle categories:
New/Used (commonly referred to as Code 2)/Built-up (commonly referred to as Code 3).
During the condition inspection, should a vehicle be identified by a technician as having structural damage that may affect its ability to be made roadworthy, it is referred to a registered vehicle testing station for an examiner of vehicles to inspect it and provide a roadworthy test sheet with the findings. Should the examiner of vehicles indicate that it should not be made roadworthy, WBC will then deregister the vehicle.
Once the checklist has been completed and uploaded, the vehicle history is complete. Each car receives a QR code which can be scanned on the showroom floor with a mobile phone and all the information you need is at your fingertips.
WBC are unique in the fact that they offer secondhand vehicles across the market. You can purchase a car for under R50 000 up to and over R1 million.
Vehicles are divided into two categories; A = vehicles under 10 years old and B = for vehicles older than 10 years of age. There are three sub-categories to be found – platinum, where the vehicle has already undergone a roadworthy test, gold, where the vehicle is guaranteed to get a roadworthy, but it hasn’t been done yet, and green, which is where a vehicle will need work – and spares could well be needed before roadworthiness can be finally achieved.
The recent bad press that WBC had faced should be put into perspective. Complaints were received on 600 units out of the 190 000 units sold last year – that’s 0.3% overall. As you’re buying a mechanical product, things may well fail at some point, but that’s a very low number considering all the moving parts in play.
WBC have a well-trained team of over 30 members in the customer care unit to resolve queries quickly and with as little friction as possible for the consumer.
WBC have also been involved with proposed legislation amendments to local National Road Traffic Regulations to cover grey areas regarding vehicle write-offs.
As a company they have a dynamic, passionate, and well-informed team who understand the business. Each person knows what their job is, how it fits into the bigger picture and how important each part of the journey is. WBC have somehow managed to keep that ‘family feel’ despite the pace and enormity of its business.
By Claire Macfie
