John Lewis dumps its returns and end-of-line stock there, often at rock-bottom prices. It’s where 3,500 crates of brand new and ex-display mobile phones – all from the collapse of the Phones 4u chain – were sold off, with some handsets going for under £5. Cars seized by the DVLA and stolen goods recovered by the police – but where the owner can’t be traced – often end up there. Yet the John Pye Auctions website remains relatively unknown: is it a secret eBay where canny buyers can pick up real bargains, or the fag-end of retail, piled high with junk? Seven years ago, when Guardian Money first featured John Pye, it was a single warehouse in Nottingham, handling bankrupt and liquidation stock – and you had to turn up in person and bid. But the recession, and technology, have been kind to the business. It is now Britain’s biggest firm of commercial auctioneers with 14 warehouses across the UK, including an 11-acre site in the West Midlands. Driving its growth has been the string of bankruptcies during the recession that have supplied its stock - and the fact that buyers no longer have to turn up in person, bidding instead over the internet at johnpye.co.uk.
Oddly, the website is sometimes busier in China than in Britain. In March, after Phones 4u went belly up and £10m of its stock was passing through John Pye, it got 400,000 visits from China and only 200,000 from the UK. Rather more grimly, goods that appeared to have been destined for Greece (“please note a European plug is attached”) went under the hammer last week in a warehouse in Derby. But are they really bargains? We checked the final auction prices paid last week at John Pye’s west London branch for sealed, untouched iPad minis. The cheapest went for £192.96, saving £100 on the £299 price the same model sells for on Amazon. For some people that will be enough of a saving to warrant giving up any consumer rights – if you buy at auction, you can’t return the goods later. But oddly, we found that some of the iPads had been bid up to as much as £273 once VAT (20%) and the buyers premium (20%) were added, which makes little sense compared with buying at the Apple Store.
The site is not just electricals and phones – we found everything from parasols and plant pots to Paddington toys and paddling pools. Over the past year it has also started to sell luxury items – Rolex watches appear to be a speciality – and is planning to offload £8m in gemstones from one of the UK’s biggest private collections. If you are doing up a home, we found new sinks, taps, shower trays, ready-made curtains, sofas and chairs and kitchen appliances at a fraction of high street prices. Some of the John Lewis goods appeared to be real bargains: a Naples bistro set with chairs and parasol went for £46.08 all in. The same set sells in the stores for £178. What we can’t tell you is why it was at auction – was it ex-display? Or, more worryingly, returned by a customer? Unfortunately, buyers over the internet won’t know, as we discovered when we purchased some John Lewis items– and were sorely disappointed (see below). A remarkable number of Dyson vacuum cleaners are going through John Pye, following a retailer’s trade-in deal;
the cheapest last week went for just £6. This week there were heaps of Sony Cybershot cameras (they sold for £8-£12), Logik portable DVD players (£25-£30), and rack after rack of Epson, Canon and HP inkjet printers, some of which went for just 40p each. One thing we particularly noted was that, shortly after, remarkably similar items to those sold at John Pye turned up on Gumtree with sellers marketing them as “hardly used” or “unwanted gift”. John Pye is like an online Ikea bargain corner or TK Maxx with all its attractions – and frustrations. Who cares about a barely noticeable scratch if it’s going for a fraction of the usual price? But what’s the point paying half price for an electrical item that doesn’t work, or a mattress so badly made no one can get a night’s sleep – and where the buyer effectively loses all their consumer rights to complain and return? You only need to take a look at reviews of John Pye on Trustpilot.co.uk to see the frustrations that some customers have had – although the number of complaints is relatively trivial compared with the 1m auction lots John Pye has sold over the past four years.
John Pye says it has many repeat buyers, which proves that it is hardly just selling junk. Guardian Money visited its west London auction rooms on a public viewing day – and to our surprise we were almost the only people there. It is housed in a less than glamorous set of warehouses in Acton, and when we asked for directions at another warehouse nearby, no one had even heard of the company. The layout is about as far away from a John Lewis store as you can get. Dozens of shiny new mobile phones and iPads, still in their packaging and all from Phones 4u, were laid out alongside other iPads and iPhones with screens so smashed it was difficult to make out anything. Further along were bathroom products – sinks, taps, panels etc – that mostly appeared to be new and untouched. Other items had signs that they were refurbished, returned or ex-display. Weirdly, a black Bentley stood in the middle of the warehouse with a starting price of just £85 next to a binbag of old clothes.
Was the lack of other viewers a positive sign that the final auction price would be low? The warehouse rep told us only one in 10 bidders actually comes to the public viewing. Generally, they are people who have not bid at a John Pye auction before. The rest, he said, take their chances with the pictures online. And you do take your chances. It is not like eBay – when you look online, each item comes with just one photograph, and virtually no information bar a one-line description. Next to that is a blunt warning: “All lots are sold as seen with no warranties or guarantees.” This is “buyer beware” with bells on. Delivery is also an issue. John Pye does not deliver, but it can connect buyers with a courier service, which charges according to size. While a small and light item such as a phone might be worth buying, heavy goods only work if you can collect. Not all the goods are aimed at the general public. Large amounts of liquidation stock are bagged up into lots that no member of the public would want.
Last week you could buy seven boxes of “Best Teacher” ribbons (they fetched £10), box after box of “Best Teacher” mugs, and a pallet load of “High School Musical” napkins (£20). Evidently, the educational supplies market hasn’t been good for someone. John Pye is rather like popping into Lidl every month or so – you head in for some carrots but somehow walk out with a sunbed cylinder pump and a shoe carousel – and you’re convinced you’ve landed a bargain. There is a problem, though, for all those reading this article. It means more people know about the site, so prices are likely to rise as more bidders join. We don’t know whether to tell you to get your skates on – or that we have saved you from buying junk. Additional reporting by Isabel Baylis We were a little giddy here in the Guardian Money office when we bid for a number of John Lewis-branded digital radios – normally selling for £49.99 or £55.99 in the store – on the John Pye site, and, to our delight, got them for just £4 each.
They looked in near-mint condition. Maybe they had been returned by a fussy customer because of a minor scratch. What could possibly go wrong?We bought eight (yes, we went a bit mad) for a total of £31.68. What, we wondered, were we going to do with them all? They arrived in the office a few days later but after carefully testing each one, we knew the answer: chuck most of them in the bin. The first one just kept saying “insert iPod” and despite lots of button pressing, we couldn’t get it to do anything else. The second was so bashed up (open wires etc) we didn’t even try. The third looked perfect, and, promisingly, turned on normally. But we could not get any sound to come out. Interestingly, in each case the John Lewis label had been scratched out (it turns out that is something John Lewis demands. We can understand why).The fourth one we opened was in good nick and worked perfectly well. We had one bargain, at least. But sadly that was it – the other four radios either wouldn’t switch on, or lit up but no sound would come out.