8:15 am, July 17, 2026
Carwow CEO John Veichmanis has defended the firm’s controversial decision to remove reserve prices from its daily auctions, insisting the move has been designed to generate more bids.
Car Dealer reported earlier this week that dealers had been left ‘perplexed’ by the firm’s revamped auction platform, which now displays an Autotrader retail valuation instead of a seller’s reserve price.
The changes have led some retailers to complain that they are being forced to bid ‘blind’, without being aware of sellers’ expectations.
Rival firm Motorway yesterday confirmed it would not be removing reserve prices, following concern from customers, but Carwow bosses insist that they will be holding firm on their decision.
Appearing on the latest episode of the Car Dealer Podcast, Veichmanis addressed criticism and said that Carwow’s own testing showed reserve prices were actually discouraging bidding activity.
‘Ultimately what we have definitely seen in testing is that often the reserve price has somewhat of an impact on the motivation to bid on a car,’ he told hosts James Baggott and Jon Reay.
‘We are not trying to make additional margin or increase our fees. But what we found is that when it’s not there, dealers are more likely to bid on more cars because it doesn’t become a distraction.
‘That helps us get more bids on cars, helps dealers source more stock on our platform.’
Veichmanis went on to explain that the move to ditch reserve prices was in the best interest of Carwow customers.
‘The whole point of having an auction is that we can determine what the market thinks the car’s worth,’ he said.
‘We believe that it’s in the customer’s interest to have a conversation around the value of the car at the end of the auction, not at the beginning.’
He also added that Carwow’s customer service team would use bidding data to persuade sellers to accept realistic offers after an auction closes.
‘We have a huge team at the end of the auction that will try and make sure that we use the auction behaviours to get an appropriate deal for both parties,’ he said.
‘Definitely mixed feedback’
While remaining steadfast in his support for the changes to Carwow’s auctions, Veichmanis did admit that feedback has been mixed.
Among the biggest concerns from dealers has been around alterations to Carwow’s downloadable CSV files, which many retailers use to upload auction data into their own systems. This has since been fixed.
Veichmanis admitted that communications around the issue could have been better and did apologise for ‘messing up people’s processes’.
Adressing the reaction, he said: ‘Definitely mixed feedback.
‘I apologise to dealers. We did send out communication, but I think on the CSV file we needed to be better at communicating that the fields had changed. I think that messed up people’s processes when they uploaded it.’
Addressing the response to the reserve price issue specifically, Veichmanis insisted that many of Carwow’s larger dealer partners were already relying on their own retail-back pricing models when deciding how much to bid.
And despite criticism from some quarters, he insisted that the initial results from the new format had been encouraging.
‘Many of our large accounts are very sophisticated in terms of how they actually determine prices,’ he said.
‘Many of them are saying, “We don’t actually use it. We might look at it, but we’re not using it in terms of determining a price that we want to bid.
‘I totally accept that change is challenging. Yesterday we had a really, really good day in the auction. We had a record number of bids, record number of sales.
‘Broadly, it’s definitely working.’
You can listen to the full episode on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.