Carwow Reviews 6

Carwow got me a price for my car that was well better than Autotrader valuation and any trade in offered.
You have to take lots of photos of the car and documents, but it's worth it for the money. Be honest with photos and service history etc. If you don't you'll be offered a lower price on collection.
Customer service at Carwow were excellent and dealt with any glitches immediately.

Great job sold my car above reserve in less than a day

I wasted a lot of time getting the sale price for my car and sadly only finished as the trade in price at a car dealer. The initial valuations to tempt you in to selling to them appear to be all fictitious, an bear no relationship to the price you will be offered. They say the procedure to get the price is easy and simple. Not my experience. The app on your phone produces an outline of a car to position yours in. It dulls the picture so much you can't see your car through it. When you try to replace the bad picture it doesn't remove it to allow the new photo into it's place. This goes on for ages till the app collapses and you have to log in and start again And so on. In the end they said they had the pictures and progressed with the next stage. What had actually happened is that they had taken my pervious car pictures from my computer, via my phone, and used these without my permission. Is this legal?
I then had to photograph my invoices for all my services because being a BMW my service schedule is contained within the car software. More messing for in the end no benefit.
My initial offer from Carwow was £10,471, more than a trade in but not what I expected so I didn't progress it.
On the 26 May they told me my value was now £10,596
so I decided to go with this . The day after the 27th is when I tried to do the Photos and service details etc.
These were submitted and they confirmed everything was all OK. The value now decreased to £9939 even though all my details were the same as before. I asked how I lost £657 in one day. Received just waffle no facts. Now not at all happy but they progressed the sale, when hundreds of dealers would bid on my car. Later that day the winning bidder was £9566 some £1030 less than the valuation I moved on. His bid was closely around the valuations I had received and refused on various cars I had viewed. So the tight monopoly the motor trade have on car used prices remains unbroken. The dealers are bidding against each other but obviously within the trade guidelines as produced by CAP, HPi and Autotrader so the car owner looses again to the dealer network, and they again can make thousands of pounds profit on your car.
The only way I see to break this is to sell your car privately, which I now will do . On Autotrader private sale price I am informed it should be £11100. Quite a considerable more than £9566, some £1500 more. I benefit and the seller gets a £13000 retail value car. We both win and the dealer looses.
THe only way

Great from start to finish.
The lady that collected the car was an asset to the driveme team.
And because of her I’ve given them 5 stars.
So, phots of car was easy, valuation was what i expected, auction sale was done and i was emailed the highest bid. Only then was it accepted.

I would recommend

The staff, on the whole, were very polite and respectful...when you can get hold of them!

The process only works when you get a garage with integrity that wins the bid for your car. In my case, I had made sure there every little scratch and bump was listed and everything was exactly as listed (in fact, as my car was almost fully spec'ed, I actually missed off a number of features, meaning it was actually more then listed). The winning bidder was actually over 10% higher than the next highest bidder. When the "collection" was arranged, someone turned up to inspect the car, absolutely no problems with that. It was only after that that the message came through that, as it's an expensive car to fix if there's something wrong, therefore they would then only be able to pay 25% less (less than we buy any car was quoting!). Obviously, in this case, the garage was hoping that, as the car was due to be collected, you would feel pressured to just take any offer he made (I didn't!).

I managed to speak to staff at Car Wow that evening, and arranged to speak to them the next day, to work our the next steps. Here's where the next problem came. Having called at 9am, it was nearly 2pm before I manage to actually speak to someone (and that was only through being much pushier than I really like to be!). All this when I trying to re-arrange getting my car sold and trying to pick up my new car! When I did then talk to someone, things then went back to being polite, understanding and respectful, and we eventually accepted the offer from the second highest bidder, who then turned up on time, inspected the car and paid.

In short, would I use them again? No, I don't think so. It sounds so tempting as you seem to be offered a higher value for your car, but are you really going to get that? You have to accept that it might not happen and when, like in my case, I had arranged to pick up my new car the following day, using the money I got for mine, it completely screwed me up. It's too high a risk, and Car Wow have little or no sway over the garages, and the chance of getting another unscrupulous garage trying to rip you off is too high. Other sites may offer you less, but it's guaranteed and instant, so I think my option will be choose that route in future.

I was very sceptical about this method of selling cars but I thought I’d give it a try after the garage I was purchasing from offered a derisory amount for my car. I have to say I was vey pleasantly surprised. The whole process was very easy and I got a far better price for my car than previously offered. You must declare and photo all the faults- every little ding and scratch so the bidder knows what they are bidding for. I thought I had but even so when the purchaser came to collect the car he managed to find some more dints- so small I wasn’t even aware of them. He ran the engine through a diagnostics scan which came out at 100% ok and was generally very thorough. Because of the extra dints he renegotiated the price down by£122 which I thought quite fair. After the sale was agreed the money was sent straight to my bank and my car driven off by the purchasing garage. I have no complaints about the whole process and would certainly use it again in future.