CarFling vs South Africa’s car selling alternatives: why you can be confident in CarFling
The mass influx of specialist car buying businesses in South Africa has been heavily influenced by the realisation that most car buying journeys begin with car selling.
This understanding is what has allowed WeBuyCars, WeeLee and the likes to build and shape new business models to achieve their goals, which has laid the foundations for many others to follow.
Every seller has their own unique set of circumstances, desires and expectations when it comes time to say farewell to their car(s). But underpinning all of those lies a singular human need that we all are either consciously or unconsciously trying to meet:
Surprisingly, most people aren’t actually after the highest price, the quickest form of payment or the most convenient process. For sure, those are important factors that do alter the final choice, but this absolute need goes deeper than that.
We believe that what people want more than anything is to be confident in the decisions that we’re making. Be that selling a car, buying a car, or keeping their current one - we just want to know that we’re doing the wise thing.
But with so many options and places to go, people to trust and mechanisms to sell (or buy), how on earth do we filter our choices and feel confident in our decisions before we have to make them?
Having spent more than two decades in the automotive industry, we built CarFling off the backs of what we’ve seen, learnt and experienced first-hand within the trade. The old ways often tilted the scales away from the consumer and a large part of our reason for being was born from the need to change this dynamic.
We pride ourselves on promising objectivity; from our inspectors to our auctions. This article is no different. We’ve collected and compiled multiple professional perspectives - all to help explain the facts that anyone could essentially find out for themselves when looking for their best option. But no one has time to do that much digging…
And so in true CarFling style, we’ve done the homework and hard work for you. Here is our lay of the car selling land.
Who are the alternatives?
Ok, so what’s CarFling?
In short, CarFling turns the market around. It opens up what was once a very close-knit circle to the public through an online auction marketplace that over 6500 professional car buyers use everyday. That’s a lot of eyes! And all of them have the chance to look and bid on your car.
How do they all stack up against each other?
In order to understand what is going to make you car confident, you have to understand a few key things about the business and businesses of buying cars. This isn’t an exhaustive list, and everyone has unique considerations, but at the very least you should always be thinking about the following…
Potential for profit
How is money made?
We have to remember that these are all businesses, not non-profits. Businesses that are looking to make a margin on the sale of your vehicle. Even if you’re not the one fronting the explicit cost of this margin, it inevitably affects you. Because it doesn’t matter who is on the other side of the deal making the offer - whoever they are, they’re already thinking about the potential to profit off your vehicle.
👉🏻 Every business and every buyer will have a different approach, business model and value capture mechanism, but the result is the same.
So what does it cost?
Comparing the explicit financial cost of taking any of these routes to selling your car is fairly straightforward. But the hidden costs are the one that rack up the fastest and leave you feeling as though you didn’t get the best deal.
Your precious time is probably the factor that we consider the least. Adding in the greatest hidden cost of them all - opportunity - and suddenly the calculation goes from looking like a simple sum to a complex algebra equation.
Unfortunately we can’t profess to having the exact formula to account for your opportunity costs, but we can tell you that this is what’s involved, whether paid explicitly by the seller, or factored into the price the buyer pays.
How do they determine the value of a car?
Most businesses determine a car’s value using datasets that focus only on what has happened in the market, rather than also considering what IS HAPPENING in the market. It’s kind of like trying to drive a car by only looking in the rearview mirror.
If we all agree that a car is only worth what someone is willing to pay at that moment in time, then historic datasets are of little to no use.
How is value defined?
The hard truth is that a car is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it.
This means that the value of your car is actually pretty subjective. When you’re selling your car to a dealership, a car buying service or to someone you found online, the price(s) that they offer you is the price you have to work from.
One person wanting your car
=
One person making an offer
=
One perception of the value of your vehicle
It’s you and your perception of value vs. them and their offer.
Auctions are the only way of truly determining what the market is willing to pay for the car, at that very moment in time.
How long does this all take?
Everyone says that time is money, sure we get it - but we argue that how that time is spent matters more than the length of it.
That’s not to say that speed doesn’t matter because when time is of the essence, we all understand its importance. But as humans we are aware of the need to spend our time on the right things - it’s our scarcest resource.
Car Buying Businesses
They’ll make an offer pretty much immediately (or at least you’ll think it’s an offer). It’s more of an estimate and it’s usually subject to multiple hurdles that could cause your “offer” to tumble.
Offer Platforms
You’ll receive an offer (sometimes in disguise) within 48 hours in most cases. We say “in disguise” because these offers are often just signals of intent. You see, there are many conditions that your vehicle will need to meet to actually turn that offer into cash in your account - that’s why the final sale can take up to 14 days.
Online Classifieds
You’re looking at anything from minutes to months. This is a waiting game, and a painful one at that. If you’re willing to wait, you could find yourself in a good spot - but if not, you could be left frustrated. That’s because there are never any guarantees and you can find yourself sitting for days, if not weeks and months to conclude a sale with an online stranger.
CarFling
CarFling runs your vehicle on our auction platform for 3 days, giving your car the best chance of reaching its maximum bid amount. Within 72 hours you’ll have a firm offer for your car, where the buyer is committed to the deal and all that’s left is for us to take care of the painful paperwork.
If all things run smoothly, you’re looking at a 7 day window from registration, through to inspection and the closing of the sale.
This leads us nicely onto our final point…
Who does the work?
Most people don’t quite realise how much work goes into trying to sell their car. Once you know what’s actually needed, you have to think about how many times you potentially have to perform each of these tasks for all the different paths you could take.
First you have to get your car inspected in order to know the condition of it and for someone to place a value on it.
You’d expect a third party to be involved in this (you need an objective viewpoint of the vehicle right?) but that’s not always the case for a lot of our industry players, as you can see below:
Once all of the niceties are out of the way and a value has been determined, it’s time to get your car sold. That involves dressing it up for the market, getting it to market and finally dealing with all of that awful admin afterwards.
It’s a harsh reality that you’ll probably find yourself performing these same activities multiple times at different places, and it’s likely that visiting each spot once just isn’t enough.
This article isn’t trying to preach that CarFling is the best solution to some of the frustrations that the market is feeling - that’s for you to decide. We’re simply trying to play our part in painting a clear picture of South Africa’s automotive landscape.
We know the market has changed before and the industry is on the verge of a new revolution now. It isn’t all happening in one fell swoop, this will take time. We want to remain at the forefront of this movement and because of that, we encourage the whole industry to play fair and pay fairly.
We hope you can use this information and these insights to your full advantage and be more confident in your car selling or buying decisions before you make them.
