We Buy Any Bus Dot Com

I recently had the dubious pleasure of engaging with the modern-day automotive juggernaut that has single-handedly revolutionised the second-hand car market. We Buy Any Car, founded in March 2006, has become an omnipresent force in the industry, its jaunty radio jingles and daytime TV adverts reinforcing its purportedly seamless customer experience. The premise is beguilingly simple: enter your registration number, and within 60 seconds, receive an ostensibly fair valuation for your vehicle. What’s not to love?

Being something of a cynic—a predisposition I consider both necessary and advantageous—I had, until recently, exercised a healthy scepticism towards the company’s digital dominion. I had deftly sidestepped its webuyanycar.com portal for nearly two decades, preferring the more traditional, albeit flawed, route of part-exchanging my vehicles when upgrading. However, January 2025 marked a departure from my usual modus operandi when I chose to forgo the part-exchange process for my outgoing Nissan Qashqai in favour of a straight sale, having opted for a Peugeot 3008 as its replacement.

My reluctance to engage with the second-hand car market is born of bitter experience. The used car trade, particularly among small dealerships, remains a veritable minefield of deception. The time-worn assurances of "comprehensive service histories" and "meticulously maintained vehicles" are frequently nothing more than hollow platitudes, designed to obfuscate the reality of auction-sourced stock subjected to the barest minimum of refurbishment. Dealers, by necessity, are engaged in a relentless pursuit of profit margins, which invariably means investing as little as possible in a vehicle’s presentation while maximising its resale value.

This entire ordeal—an existential reckoning, if you will—inevitably forces me to ask myself, yet again, whether I truly need a car at all. The fiscal burden of ownership is eye-watering. Newer vehicles haemorrhage value at an alarming rate, whereas older models become a Sisyphean exercise in perpetual repair. Theoretically, public transport should offer a viable alternative. In reality, my circumstances dictate otherwise. The bus company local to me, while probably regarded at the zenith of it industry, simply does not align with my professional commitments, and the nearest railway station is an impractical 12 miles away.

My recent experience with We Buy Any Car recalled an intriguing initiative once proffered by Southern Vectis, the Isle of Wight’s principal bus operator. In what can only be described as an ambitious experiment in modal shift, the company briefly assumed the role of We Buy Any Car, purchasing prospective passengers' vehicles and issuing them with an annual season ticket in exchange. This initiative was partly subsidised by the residual scrap or resale value of the acquired vehicles. Of course, economic realities dictated that most participants would likely be trading in bangers or near-end-of-life vehicles worth less than or roughly equivalent to a year’s worth of unrestricted bus travel. After all, who would willingly relinquish a car worth £10,000 in exchange for a £1,000 bus pass?

I always found this strategy fascinating. On paper, it was almost certainly a loss-making venture, given the logistical complexities and administrative costs involved. Yet, it had the potential to generate long-term revenue if even a fraction of participants, having acclimatised to life without a car, opted to renew their annual bus pass once the gratis period expired. It was speculative investment in its purest form—the public transport equivalent of prescribing weight-loss injections to pre-empt the far costlier health complications associated with obesity.

Contrast this with the underhanded machinations of We Buy Any Car. My high-mileage Qashqai was valued at £828 on 28 January. By 11 February, that figure had inexplicably plummeted to £526. A precipitous drop, given that the vehicle had not spontaneously combusted in the intervening weeks. With two keys, a respectable service history, and a mere three previous owners, one would assume it had retained at least some semblance of worth. But the true pièce de résistance came during my in-person appointment. Despite all my vehicle’s attributes being validated, the sales representative coolly informed me that, owing to the presence of perfectly ordinary stone chips on the paintwork, the best she could offer was £283. This sum was only marginally above scrap value, clearly engineered to compel me into accepting rather than endure the hassle of returning home and disposing of the car myself. The entire valuation process, in my view, is nothing more than a well-orchestrated bait-and-switch. The online quote exists solely to lure customers through the door, whereupon the real negotiations begin.

To me, this is like Southern Vectis unilaterally deciding to issue its new pass holders a ticket valid for nine months instead of twelve.

Of course, We Buy Any Car operates within the confines of the law, and its practices are, strictly speaking, transparent—buried within the labyrinthine fine print of its terms and conditions. But there is no escaping the feeling of having been conned, however legally sanctioned the deception may be. Adding insult to injury, a £49.99 “administration fee” was deducted from the final offer, leaving me with a paltry £233.01. Had I known the eventual sum would be so derisory, I might have simply part-exchanged the Qashqai and hired a car for the ten days it took for the Peugeot’s inevitable clutch failure to be rectified.

And herein lies the fundamental distinction between the bus industry and the world of second-hand car sales. However imperfect the bus network may be, it does not engage in such subterfuge. One may lament unreliable timetables or grumble about occasional service disruptions, but by and large, public transport delivers precisely what it promises. A bus arrives, broadly in accordance with the published timetable, and conveys passengers to their intended destination without hidden caveats or sudden, unilateral devaluation.

I would genuinely embrace the opportunity to dispense with car ownership entirely and place my full trust in public transport. Alas, the exigencies of my circumstances render this an impossibility. Nevertheless, I envy those for whom the bus is a viable primary mode of transport. For all its perceived shortcomings, it remains an industry predicated on reliability and transparency—qualities that, as my foray into the murky world of car resales has demonstrated, are in woefully short supply elsewhere.