Autoquake in Admin

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jase1 wrote: »

Hmmm, that's surprising. Guess all the arguments are pretty much academic now lol.

Just hope there aren't too many customers caught in the middle of this.

I did notice that their prices had shot up of late. When I bought from them, the reason I did so was that they were cheap -- very cheap. But that didn't seem to be the case more recently. Presumably they were trying to increase profit margins in a last-gasp effort to sort themselves out.

Given their apparent inclination towards making reviews up, it's probably no great loss in the grand scheme of things.

I was following a few cars and the emails just stopped but not before a few cars had some quite huge reductions on them albeit from ridiculous starting prices.

I thought their reverse auction process quite a novel idea in the car market actually but other bits gave me no confidence.

jase1

I think we're all being a bit premature here.

This model is a good one IMO. And I'm sure that a company of Autoquake's size can be resurrected in some form -- the number of hits the site was getting (5.5m per year according to What Car) indicates that the idea at the very least was great. I know they have taken some stick on here but I'd still buy from a company like this without hesitation. If you can get a car cheaper than a dealer but with more comeback than an auction that suits me, and it'll suit a lot of people who use the internet for shopping.

Seems to me that with new management, and in injection of cash (perhaps as an offshoot of one of the established companies) the company, or something like it will be back soon enough.

motorguy

jase1 wrote: »

I think we're all being a bit premature here.

This model is a good one IMO. And I'm sure that a company of Autoquake's size can be resurrected in some form -- the number of hits the site was getting (5.5m per year according to What Car) indicates that the idea at the very least was great. I know they have taken some stick on here but I'd still buy from a company like this without hesitation. If you can get a car cheaper than a dealer but with more comeback than an auction that suits me, and it'll suit a lot of people who use the internet for shopping.

Seems to me that with new management, and in injection of cash (perhaps as an offshoot of one of the established companies) the company, or something like it will be back soon enough.

I read somewhere though that they had got a £6m from venture capitalists last year, so if they've burned through that in a year....:eek:

exautoquake

Well most can post claiming to be an ex employee / worker etc......I was in the days of Garry Hobson / Gary Nicholas / Ali Kenyani / Jamil Raziq etc (The real AQ Staff will know these names).
The people who purchased from AQ really did get a superb deal...Ok there was portocabins / long waiting times etc trust me there were people there who gave 14 hours a day 7 days a week of their life trying to make it work.
In the early days before the call centre all calls were diverted to a mobile which you had to answer all hours of the night terrible customer service that.
Like every business there was problems but i for one can assure you every member of the branch staff (not head office ) branch staff gave everything possible, Some good people have lost their jobs in really bad times right now........Above everything they deserve some credit right now.....AQ had the right idea just the wrong people at the very top.

EX AQ EMPLOYEE FROM BIRMINGHAM BRANCH

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pgilc1 wrote: »

I read somewhere though that they had got a £6m from venture capitalists last year, so if they've burned through that in a year....:eek:

If you go buy 600 vehicles at £10,000 each then you have "burned" through £6m in 20 minutes.

For this business, how much was taken out in salaries and commissions would be interesting.

Stu666

Bought a car off them at the beginning of this month and honestly couldn't really fault them. Beautiful car at a nice price.

Just glad I didn't take out a warranty with them. Received a letter from the administrators today (who think I have got a warranty ) pretty much saying any warranty claims will not be honoured, but to submit a claims form for consideration. Had I taken the warranty out I would have been fuming at this point.

Shame it didn't work out for them because the model seemed to be a good one and I would have purchased off them again.

freddie65

exautoquake wrote: »

Well most can post claiming to be an ex employee / worker etc......I was in the days of Garry Hobson / Gary Nicholas / Ali Kenyani / Jamil Raziq etc (The real AQ Staff will know these names).
The people who purchased from AQ really did get a superb deal...Ok there was portocabins / long waiting times etc trust me there were people there who gave 14 hours a day 7 days a week of their life trying to make it work.
In the early days before the call centre all calls were diverted to a mobile which you had to answer all hours of the night terrible customer service that.
Like every business there was problems but i for one can assure you every member of the branch staff (not head office ) branch staff gave everything possible, Some good people have lost their jobs in really bad times right now........Above everything they deserve some credit right now.....AQ had the right idea just the wrong people at the very top.

EX AQ EMPLOYEE FROM BIRMINGHAM BRANCH

Yes, I agree with you!

I also worked for them in the early days up north!

They had a great idea and were very successful at first, however they expanded far too quickly as a result of some very poor decisions made by senior management.

Boy, they spent some cash and should have preserved some of it for a rainy day!

Oh well, they aren't the first to make mistakes and won't be the last!

Real shame really as they had something unique at the time.

Bad news also for all the people left as redundancy is not a good place to be at present!

zerocool

any idea where they passed their stock to?

seen a car in a thread that I was hoping still exists somewhere for sale

vikingaero

The website and name seems to have been bought by The Car Shop Megastore: http://www.carshop.co.uk/