Autotrade-mail warns that fleet, leasing and contract hire operators who only use auctions to dispose of their vehicles may be compromising the values achieved.
Autotrade-mail believes that if an ex-fleet car is offered to the much wider audience provided by a used car trading network the demand for that vehicle and likely wholesale value can be determined, and a potential buyer identified, before the vehicle is even taken off the road. This will save both time and money.
Kevin Watson, operations director at Autotrade-mail said: “By limiting the disposal of an ex-fleet car to an auction an operator may be compromising the value of that vehicle. Buyer attendance numbers at auction, both physical and online, rarely exceed 500 while Autotrade-mail, for example has over 5,000 franchised and independent dealers looking for stock on a daily basis. Using complementary remarketing channels will provide a much larger buyer audience to help maximise the value of the ex-fleet vehicle.”
Richard Jones - 07/01/2013 15:27
There may be less than 500 buyers in the auction hall / biddimg on line at the time of the sale, but auction houses have thousands of potential buyers browsing their stock every day in the same way that Autotrade-mail claim that they have. Based on what buyers are looking for / what stock is available they will then make an informed decsion as to which auction to attend or which online lots to bid on. It would be interesting to test the validity or otherwise of Kevin Watson's claim that using an auction a seller may be limiting a vehicle's exposure to potential buyers, by enquiring of the major auction houses how many 'visits' to their websites they receive each week. I am certain that collectively they will at least equal the 5000 buyers that Autotrade-mail has interested in their stock. My views may sound pro-auction, and I will openly admit that I used to work for one of the large auction companies. However the majority of my career has been as a fleet manager whose range of responsibilities includes, but is not solely disposal of used vehicles. I feel I need to write this comment as it is easy to skew or spin a story to make it sound more plausible than it may really be, and this article has that feel about it.