“At first, in order to give my newborn child medical treatment, I gave the car to CarStore for auction, but I didn’t expect that this was the beginning of my nightmare. I didn’t expect it to be the beginning of my nightmare. I didn’t receive the money for the sale of the car, and my Life was greatly affected because my child needed money for medical treatment.” A few days ago, Li Ping, a CarStore user from Qinghai, told reporters.
According to the reporter, Li Ping completed the process of delivering the car and signing the contract in early December 2019 in Car Buyer, and the two sides agreed to sell the car for 56,500 yuan, but the money failed to fall into Li Ping’s pocket as it should.
In fact, there are not a few car owners like Li Ping. Recently, the reporter interviewed more than 10 users of CarStore. According to the accounts of these users, after they signed a contract with CarStore to deliver the car, CarStore promised to give 80% of the sale price within 3 to 10 working days, and the remaining balance would be paid after the transfer. However, the reality is that the vehicle was transferred long ago, but the money for the sale of the car was delayed.
The same car and money are also empty for buyers who have paid the full purchase price but are unable to pick up the car or get a refund.
“At the end of 2019, I bought two cars on CarStore and paid more than 170,000 for the purchase, but the vehicles were not received and the money disappeared.” Guo Lin, a used car dealer in Inner Mongolia, told reporters that after he paid in full, CarStore staff informed him that the seller owner had canceled the transaction and would enter the refund process. However, within the agreed Time frame, Guo Lin did not receive the refund, and there has been no news from CarStore, which has been delayed again and again.
“The company is no more.” A former employee of the company told reporters that as early as mid-2020, the company has been “empty”.
The company’s main goal is to provide a solution to the problem of the problem.
The buyer and seller suffered “car and money”
In November 2019, Liu Zhen submitted the information of selling the car on the car purchase platform, the vehicle offer 126,000 yuan. The company’s main business is to sell cars on the market, and the company’s previous experience in selling cars has made her trust in this platform.
After signing a contract of intent to close, Liu Zhen received a deposit of $1,000 to sell the car, but the car payment did not arrive. “Since then, I have been calling and asking at stores, but the response is always to wait.” Liu Zhen said.
During the process, an employee of CarStore had contacted her to re-sign the Vehicle Fiduciary Acquisition Contract, giving the reason that the previous buyer had cancelled the deal. At the same time, the employee said that after this agreement was signed, Liu Zhen would be able to receive the money owed. So, Liu Zhen chose to sign a new contract, but she still had not received the money for the sale of the car.
After several unsuccessful negotiations, Liu Zhen asked for the return of the vehicle, but was told by CarStore that the vehicle was in the process of being transferred and could not be returned for the time being. “After several months of waiting, I had to go to the DMV to lose the Shanghai license plate and then replace it, but the vehicle could not be recovered.” Liu Zhen said, after that she began to complain through a variety of channels such as the Consumer Association, the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, but none of them have gained substantial progress.
In February 2020, Liu Zhen was contacted by a CarStore staff member who said that she could pay in installments, but the premise of the repayment was that Liu Zhen had to sign a repayment agreement. According to the repayment agreement, Liu Zhen had to commit to a number of terms. For example, “not to interfere in any way with the normal operation of Party B’s headquarters and stores nationwide, and not to disseminate negative news about Party B in any form. If Party A has complained to the relevant government departments or released negative news through the online platform, it should take the initiative to withdraw the complaint or delete the post within three days from the date of signing this agreement”. This time, Liu Zhen chose to refuse to sign.
“I insisted on complaining and also had gone to Nanjing with several car owners selling their cars in Shanghai to defend their rights, and Zhang Wei, co-founder and CTO of CarStore, came out that day and promised to pay us in installments.” Liu Zhen said she did receive a few payments one after another after that, but to date there is still 35,000 yuan in car payments that have not been recovered. Liu Zhen has repeatedly told reporters that she has been considered a relatively lucky user because of the initial close attention to this matter.
Zhao Ming from Jiangxi, on the other hand, is a buyer who won a bid for a Rongwei ei6 hybrid car at an auction in CarStore Shanghai on Oct. 18, 2019. “On that day, I paid a total of 71,900 yuan for the car and handling fees, but I have been unable to pick up the car and the purchase price cannot be returned.” Zhao Ming said.
In addition, the reporter also got a form from a used car dealer, the specific content of the form is the statistics of some of the users of the car purchase of their own and the car purchase information. The form showed that 706 people had registered their personal details with CarStore, involving amounts owed ranging from a $1,000 deposit to hundreds of thousands of yuan.
“There are car dealers with more than 2 million yuan of purchase money that cannot be recovered, and there are owners with 300,000 to 400,000 yuan of unsettled money for the sale of their cars, which are not small amounts. Together with the impact of the Epidemic last year, everyone has been hit hard.” Guo Lin said.
The “scheme” of CarStore
According to Guo Lin’s recollection, CarStore began to have problems around November 2019. “CarStore modified the rules for shooting cars at that time. In the past, the winning rate was very low when the car was auctioned on Car Buyer. But from then on, as long as buyers auctioned a car they would definitely win.” The company’s main goal is to provide a comprehensive range of products and services to the market.
The company’s main goal is to provide a solution to the problem of the problem. Many of our car dealers have encountered this situation.”
Zhao Ming, the owner of the car, believes that beyond the “scheme”, CarStore has cheated its users. “Later, I found the original owner through the vehicle information. The other party had already delivered the vehicle to Car Buyer and received my purchase price, but Car Buyer did not go through the transfer process. I even learned from the original owner that CarStore had re-sold the vehicle to another buyer, isn’t that fraud?” Zhao Ming said.
Back then, CarStore had already started to receive negative information, with frequent comments and videos on the Internet about CarStore’s “unpaid wages”, “fraud” and “rights”.
According to Huang Le, founder and CEO of Chebao at the time, “Chebao has always had a very healthy and stable cash flow, but between late September and October 2019, it encountered a massive bank loan draw. This was supposed to be a routine event, but because of the time lag caused by the bank’s year-end policies and other reasons, the subsequent loans failed to arrive in time, making CarStore’s capital chain tight in the short term.”
“At that time, CarStore’s company was already having problems with its operations and was still using various ways to get us to make payments. After we reviewed the situation, we thought the money might have been taken to cover corporate finance loans and other operating losses.” Guo Lin said.
In order to defend their rights, in January 2020, car sellers, car buyers and used car dealers who demanded money owed to them came from all over the country to the headquarters of CarStore in Nanjing’s Pukou district to defend their rights, but did not get a satisfactory result.
The reporter learned that some car buyers or sellers had gone to court and were found to be in a contract dispute rather than contract fraud, and were unable to actually enforce the law after winning the case.
A legal professional told reporters that if the perpetrator has the motive and purpose of cheating from the time of signing the contract, this situation belongs to the more typical contract fraud. In addition, if the perpetrator did not intend to defraud when signing the contract, but in the process of performing the contract, or due to difficulties in performance or for other reasons, the perpetrator wants to illegally possess or own the property or other objects of the contracting party without compensation, at this time, the perpetrator already has the purpose of illegal ownership or possession. If the company finally assumes the liability for breach of contract, it is not considered contract fraud, depending on the specific circumstances of each case.
The flow of funds is a mystery
Both car buyers and sellers have been left with no money, and even CarStore employees are experiencing a payroll slowdown at the end of 2019. So, where did all the money from CarStore go?
An internal email received by CarStore’s internal staff about the “Notice of Slow Payment of December 2019 Wages” (Source: Photo by interviewee)
According to 2020 CarStore PR staff, the company did not negotiate a financing in October 2019. “The company’s offline stores are more expensive to self-operate and market, and after the financing did not go well, our capital chain became more strained.” The PR person said.
Before getting caught in the whirlpool, Chezhi Bao was once a star company in Nanjing. Qixinbao data shows that Chebao had a total of seven financing rounds. The last financing was in January 2019, in the “Point Gold Program” sponsored by Bank of Nanjing (10.01 +1.73%, consulting shares) and Zijin Investment Group, Chelipo had received 200 million yuan of debt financing.
At the end of 2019, in the “2019 Hurun Global Unicorn List” released by Hurun Research Institute, Chezhi Bao even entered the list with a valuation of 7 billion yuan, and was selected as a Hurun global unicorn company together with companies such as Drip, Airbnb and Little Red Book.
“Before selling the car, I had specifically searched for CarStore on the internet. I didn’t see any negative information at that time, so I chose to sell my car on CarStore.” Li Ping said.
But in just a few months, the aura surrounding the head of the company CarStore has gradually dimmed. The Qixinbao data shows that Jiangsu Chebao Information Technology Co. in its own risk column, involving 123 adjudication documents, 30 restrictions on high consumption, 28 unenforced breach of trust, 4 executee, 4 equity freeze and other multiple risks, while Huang Le personally has 314 restrictions on high consumption risk.
In an interview in March last year, Huang Le said that when Chebao encountered a crisis, the relevant departments were involved in the investigation, proving that there was no problem in the operation of Chebao, only the delayed payment of arrears due to short-term financial constraints, there was no external rumors of “fraud”, “false car source There are no rumors of “fraud” or “fake car listings”.
“The company is committed to not owing a single penny to car dealers and car owners.” Huang Le had made such a statement. However, a year later, car owners and car dealers are still on the road to collect their debts.
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