scam

We Buy Any Car Scam Update

Posted on by Matthew Green

Damage control.

Whilst I am happy to see as much pain as possible inflicted upon these miscreant charlatans, please remember that WBAC leased many of the properties it operated from. Although you feel you are taking your frustrations out on WBAC by damaging their premises, you are in fact hurting the livelihood of other innocent parties and perhaps putting yourself at risk of litigation.

“Not Happy” commented on my other WBAC article that windows had been smashed in the buildings on her premises. This person was the landlord of a property rented to WBAC and not affiliated with WBAC themselves. Hopefully her insurance will cover her losses, however if the liquidators have to pay for the damage it will mean less money will be available for those that have lost their cars.

Jason M posted on the Product Review site:

The liquidators Worrell’s advise:

“We understand that there are a number of people who have sold cars to the company and have not been paid. With the liquidation of the company, your claim will be a ‘unsecured debt’ in the company. Please note that regrettably you do not have the right to reclaim your car, only an entitlement to a dividend in the liquidation”

Vehicle owners arent legally able to retrieve their vehicles, although this hasnt stopped some people entering some dealerships and removing their vehicles on a tow truck. (As owners would have surrendered their keys upon “sale”.)

While by the letter of the law, this is illegal, I would assume the liquidator (who has no money due to the insolvency of the company) will be unable to commence any proceedings to get those vehicles back. While the liquidator would have the option of calling the police and reporting the vehicle stolen, it is unclear if the police would regard the matter a civil matter as well.

I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know what the legal ramifications are with repossessing your vehicle and I would certainly never advocate illegal behaviour. So if your car is sitting on a lot somewhere and you know where it is, think very very carefully about your next course of action. You may end up liable for prosecution.

Too many people have been hurt by the reckless, criminal activities of the people in charge of WBAC. Let’s not add to the list.

Positive steps you can take include:

Contact Worrells and register your claim. This is top priority for everyone owed money by WBAC.

If you are in NSW then the NSW Department of Fair Trading have said:

Customers owed money by Kar Land Pty Ltd, trading as Webuyanycars (licence number MD038189), or who have handed their car to the business and have not yet lodged a complaint should contact NSW Fair Trading on 133 220.

Consumer Affairs – Victoria, have also urged people to contact them on 1300 55 81 81. The released this statement the other day:

Kar Land Pty Ltd, which traded as WeBuyAnyCar and operated car yards in Dandenong and Altona, has gone into voluntary liquidation.

The company has appointed liquidators Rajendra Kumar Khatri and Morgan Lane of Worrells Solvency and Forensic Accountants.

If you have sold your car to WeBuyAnyCar and have yet to receive payment, contact the liquidator immediately on 07 3225 4300 to advise that you are a creditor of the company.

You can also consider making a claim on the Motor Car Trader Guarantee Fund. Customers who have not been paid for their cars are urged to contact Consumer Affairs Victoria on 1300 55 81 81.

For more information on the fund, including who is eligible to claim and what claims are covered, view our Compensation claims – motor cars section.

In a statement, the liquidator has advised that:

  • your claim will be an ‘unsecured debt’ in the company
  • customers do not have the right to reclaim their car, only an entitlement to a dividend in the liquidation
  • creditors should note that WeBuyAnyCar has ceased trading and are advised not to deal with the company.

We have been contacted by more than 30 people regarding this company, and have issued a public warning to consumers not to trade with them. WeBuyAnyCar’s business model is based on obtaining cars from private customers but not paying for them until after the cars have been sold.

In many cases, customers have not been paid for their cars until many weeks afterwards – and sometimes not at all – despite being told they would be paid within 10 days of WeBuyAnyCar taking possession of the vehicle.

The company also operates in New South Wales and Queensland. Consumer Affairs Victoria is working closely with these jurisdictions.

The Creditor Watch website has indicated that there is a creditors meeting to be held on the 16th August (click the button that says View Document Images) . The Insolvency Appointments website confirms the meeting. If you are a creditor, you may want to attend.

The Intellectual Property register has listed several website addresses (trademarks) owned by Kar Land. Trademarkify has images of the proposed logos. Check it out and be aware that they may try and pop up as a ‘different’ business.

Libby Beaumont provided the following details on the Stuff Review website regarding a potential class action she was preparing against WBAC.

Libby Beaumont July 18, 2012 at 8:45 pm
I am in contact with many other people writing blogs and information on the internet about WBAC, I have also complained to ACCC and never had returned emails or phone calls from all at WBAC, if you would be happy to provide me with your details, I plan to colate them as I have a similar experience to you. If you would like to join forces and launch a Civil Class Action claim on webuyanycar.com.au I would be happy to hear from you directly on 0414585607 or willandlibby@netspeed.com.au. Regards- Libby Beaumont

I corresponded with Libby over the weekend and she would be very happy to hear from you.

Good luck everyone. I truly hope we see a happy ending in all this.

Life Lesson Well Learnt

Posted on by Matthew Green

In my opinion webuyanycar.com.au should be shut down and deregistered.

Sorry readers but I’m about to go on a little rant here. Read on though, as it may just prove to be worth your while.

Mask worn by the infamous Australian bush ranger – Ned Kelly, and the sales team at webuyanycar.

You’ve all heard that annoying jingle on late night television promoting the web site webuyanycar.com.au. Well the song is NOT the most horrendous part of doing business with this company. On the 22nd June I sold my Mazda 3 to the people at their Strathfield branch and the experience has been less than satisfactory.

I am a divorced dad and I only get to have my children every second weekend. With that in mind I really did not want to sell my car privately and waste precious time with my kids by taking potential purchasers out on test drives. I had done my research online and knew what the car was worth to a private buyer and what the dealers were selling them for, so I arrived at the outlet with a figure in mind that I wanted and another figure that was the lowest price I would accept.

They offered me less than half of the minimum figure.

This should have sent the alarm bells ringing, but I figured they were salespeople and they were just indicating their starting point. Let the negotiations begin. After a bit of bartering the sales guy went out the back to talk to his boss. He came back with another sub-standard offer and tried to convince me that the car wasn’t worth my price. He showed me a search on carsguide.com.au to prove his point. Unfortunately for him, he used the wrong year model.

More haggling ensued.

After another trip to his boss’s office, which resembled a shipping container with a desk inside and could well have been a pickup truck with the engine running, our super sales rep came back and said they probably wouldn’t up their offer because of the damage on the side of the car.

WHAT DAMAGE?

Upon closer inspection there was a white scuff mark on the drivers’ side rear door. I licked my thumb and washed it off.

This was another sign that I should have driven away and never mentioned it again. But alas, I kept playing the game. Eventually his boss got involved and we agreed to a figure that neither of us was entirely impressed with. Good negotiations always leave both sides unhappy 😉 I signed the deal and was promised payment within ten business days.

DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB, DUMB!

When the money failed to appear in my account I contacted their office only to be told that I couldn’t talk to anyone in accounts payable because they were too busy, and that I had to send an email to customer support. I did that, and kept calling. Eventually I got an email back on Friday the 6th July saying that they would be in touch with me within 48 business hours. This just bought them four more days with my money, however I did manage to get the direct number of someone to speak to in Customer Relations. Progress at last!

After emailing and placing several calls to a busy land line on the 10th July, I was getting riled.

My car was gone.

I had no money.

And the company was ignoring me.

Finally I managed to get in contact with Ms. Bonnie Elizabeth Parker in Customer Relations, who informed me that their director was overseas and all transactions were waiting for approval. Apparently they were being done one at a time for some reason that made absolutely no sense.

I’ve run my own business.

I’ve done electronic payments.

These can be batch-processed guys.

Don’t give me that shit!

Enjoy the song, whilst reading on.

Bonnie Parker promised to call me back within 48 hours with either a receipt number for the payment or a date that it would go through. That’s another two days they get to keep my money. These guys must be making a killing on the short-term money market.

I called them again on the 12th July and would you believe, Bonnie Parker was off sick. I’m not surprised. Covering for the incompetence of the management must be a highly stressful job. Answering Bonnie’s phone in her absence was Clyde Chestnut Barrow, who was struggling not to stutter his words as he spouted the farcical reasoning behind their inability to pay on time. Obviously he didn’t believe the directions from ‘management’ or had had enough dealing with irate clients all day and was suffering an adrenalin rush. Clyde couldn’t do anything except get his supervisor to call me back. At 4:23pm approximately three hours after I lodged my as yet unreturned call with Clyde Barrow, I had to phone wedontpayforanycar back again. Poor fellow was incredibly apologetic and I get the feeling that he was quietly searching for a new job on seek.com.au as he spoke to me. Clyde promised wholeheartedly that his supervisor would call me back “before close of business today.”

At 4:54pm, too late for a bank transfer, supervisor John Herbert Dillinger called my mobile. The story I got told was one of woe and hard times.

They had received a glut of cars in May and were struggling to process them all. (Lucky sods.)

They’d had a glitch in their system whereby a whole slew of clients got paid twice for the same car and they had only just fixed the glitch and retrieved the funds. (Wish that was me.)

Their admin person responsible for creating payments had been removed from the system. (Hmm, that’s a telling reaction.)

Their Director responsible for approving payments was overseas. (Tax haven?)

Poor Dillinger could not deliver a line without his voice wavering. Clearly he too did not believe the tripe he was feeding me. Seriously, if your business is struggling to meet it financial obligations, you have computer glitches that pay double, your admin people are being removed from the payment processing system, and you have to approve payments one by one, YOU COME BACK FROM YOUR HOLIDAY AND DEAL WITH IT!!! At least that’s what a competent and ethical company Director would do.

I kept my cool though and managed to extract a promise that I would be paid within the next 72 hours, including the weekend. This meant that I should have received my money by Sunday night. Yeah, right! Thinking back on it, as I sat in the waiting room I recall a conversation that one of the sales team, had with a client who had not been paid. He told the caller that payments always arrive within ten business days unless there was a problem with the car. He suggested that the reason they had not received their money as yet was because there had been a public holiday in early June and therefore the required ten-day period had not actually lapsed. This discussion occurred in the background and hardly even registered in my mind, until now, so I went online over the weekend and found this site:

http://www.productreview.com.au/p/we-buy-any-car.html

Lots of unhappy people experiencing the wedontpayforanycar level of support.

Then, on Sunday evening as I curled up on my couch, I saw an ad on television for an upcoming exposé on A Current Affair. They were about to run a sting on a national used car dealer – tune in on Monday night. Oh no, there goes my car and my money. (Interesting point re A Current Affair, if you look up Used Car Outrage in their story archives you will see that there have been 95 comments – image below. Once you open the article, or use the link above, you will see that all the comments have been removed except for Wedontpayforanycar’s letter of explanation. Hmm….)

On Monday morning 16th July I telephoned them yet again. Bonnie Parker promised to call me back by 6:00pm. Not good enough, so I sent them a legal Letter of Demand. They had until midday to deposit the funds into my account or I would report my car as stolen and inform the Department of Fair Trading. Nothing was done – of course.

I did a search on the number plate and found that the car had been sold to Anthony Motors at Rockdale. I called the dealer in the hope that I could prevent them from selling the car until I had a chance to inform the police. Tony – the boss – told me he had bought the car at auction. Manheim Auctions I believe is the place that handled the transaction. Unfortunately he had already sold the car to a private buyer. To his credit, Tony called the auction house and relayed my story. They said they would look into it from their end. Tony called me back to let me know.

After several calls to Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger and Ned Kelly, I was finally given a whole new person to speak with. Ali Baba was jovial and making small talk and offered to take on my case personally. He said he would call me back in 48 hours. I told him he had ten minutes. He said he would call back whether he had an answer or not. I never heard from him again.

Anyway, I got paid eventually then the funniest thing happened. A staff member called me and asked whether I would recommend their services, HELL NO!

In my opinion do not, under any circumstances whatsoever, do business with webuyanycar.com.au!

You will regret it.

Images from Wikipedia and the ACA website. Song by Claude Hay. Only the names have been changed.