Stressful Experience

The true telltale sign of a good business is how they respond when things go pear-shaped. Here is my experience with Weelee.

If you are a first time customer, how Weelee works is that you, as the seller, upload the specs of your vehicle, then weelee will place your vehicle on an online auction and all the dealerships (the buyer) bid for it. Once the bid closes, Weelee will get in contact with you with the highest bid and then you need to take your vehicle into the dealership for an assessment, for them to evaluate if your vehicle is as you indicated before finalising the purchase. Fair enough, right?

I followed the process outlined above. I took my car into the dealership, they assessed it, were completely happy with it, and I arranged with them to finalise the sale at the end of the month.

In the interim, as per the weelee process, I was supposed to email them all the required documents so that they could prep everything on their side and make payment when I dropped my car off. The dealership said they would send me an email with their contact details and I could respond with all my docs. Waiting, waiting…next day follow up, next day nothing, next follow up, apparently they had load shedding so they couldn’t send me their email details …next day same story. Eventually after a few days and many follow ups I managed to track their email address myself and I emailed them all my documents. #Redflag1 Now, during this whole process, Weelee kept in touch, checked if I met the dealer, if they were happy with the agreed bid price, I gave them the details on when I would drop my car off etc etc. As it was getting closer to the date to drop off my car at the dealership in order to finalise the deal, they were not responding to me about signing a purchase agreement or making payment. #Redflag2 I then got in touch with Weelee and explained the situation to them as well as my hesitation to drop my car off with this dealer without getting paid or signing anything. The response from Weelee was “Yes! Please go ahead, we do business with this dealer all the time and you will get paid first thing on Monday”. They also assured me that they have a liaison who will follow up with the dealer and a liaison who will follow up with me until I receive payment, then they will close my profile. After receiving this reassurance from Weelee, I dropped my car off at the dealership as scheduled. They said they will email me a copy of the purchase agreement to complete but luckily I insisted on completing it whilst I was there.

Now, this is where it all went wrong. The next Monday was a public holiday, so I didn’t expect payment. Tuesday, Weelee called me to find out if the dealership made payment and they hadn’t, so they said they will follow up with the dealer and get back to me. The next day, Weelee called back and I still hadn’t received payment, and they said that the dealer is still “assessing the car” and they will get back with a “final offer”. This is completely against what was initially communicated to me, and now the dealership had my car for a couple of days and was tinkering around in it with their mechanics, all my warranties and insurance were cancelled, so I couldn’t even consider taking the car back. Now a few days later, I get a call from the dealership saying that the car has issues, things aren’t working etc, but I know that when I dropped my car off the previous week that everything was in good working order. I called Weelee with the feedback and they started becoming very unresponsive. They kept saying they would contact the dealer and call me back with feedback, yet everyday, I had to call them and ask for an update. Eventually about 12 days after I dropped my car off and still hadn’t received payment, Weelee said they were going to have a meeting with the dealership and get back to me. I didn’t receive any feedback the next day, so I called and the liaison said she would call me back in 10 minutes. Another day passed and I then decided to get a lawyer involved. The lawyer called Weelee and they said they would call her back. In the afternoon, when she still had not heard back from Weelee, she called the dealership and they then only made payment with no explanation about the delay or what the issue was.

To date, I have not heard back from Weelee. They have not followed the process where they were supposed to call me to find out if all was in order before closing my file. They have not gotten back to me to explain what occurred. Nor have they gotten back to me to apologise.

This was a very stressful process, requiring so much time and effort from my side. Based on my experience, I would certainly not recommend Weelee without having the willpower or a good lawyer on hand.