Ghana No.1, Fraudulent-Free Car Website Launched

'The activities of fraudulent deals is not peculiar to some commercial websites but what we have done is that we have been able to identify certain loopholes, and through our quality assurance effort we make sure that those fraudulent cars are deleted from our website immediately or in a better option block and blacklist those fraudsters,' Eric Amoako Twum, the country manager of Cheki website, has said.

The Country Manager of Cheki website(cheki.com.gh), the No.1 car marketplace for car dealers noted that the major challenge of commercial websites are the fraudulent activities which are mostly perpetuated by some un-recognized individuals just to extort monies from customers who visit the websites.

According to him, the authenticity of global online marketplace particularly, the car dealer websites have been ill repute because many people do not trust these websites anymore hence collapsing the online business in Ghana.

Mr.Twum, however reiterated that Cheki website have instituted an online safety buying tips toalert their customers on guidelines leading to the correct purchasing of vehicles on cheki.com.gh website.

He said normally what these fraudsters do is that, they have a car which is over GH100,000 but then they will put GH10,000 or GH12,000 as the price tag, they then ask customers to pay part of the price in advance before they can bring the car to them.

In that sense, he encouraged customers to constantly examine the vehicle and take the mechanic details before making any payment.

He said this during an interaction with about 40 car dealers to demonstrate and present to them how Cheki platform works, discussing the challenges of the dealers by suggesting solutions and physical mechanisms to improve on their services.

During the first official launch ceremony, Mr. Twum stated, 'we are trying to strengthen our relationship with our car dealers and of course because we are an online company, once we get the opportunity to interact with our car dealers then it makes it easier for us to iron out certain difficulties that they are facing us.'

The car dealers, he said includes dealers of brand new cars such as kia, Rana Motors, Hundia but currently engaging Nissan and Toyota to join the platform.

Since its inception, cheki.com.gh has been offering its services for free in order to solicit feedback from users and car dealers for quality improvement and standardization.

They have about 1300 vehicles on site, operating in 22 African countries with over 70,000 visits a month.

According to the country manager, Cheki is a one stop shop for cars, 'when you are talking about cars the logical thing to do is to visit checki.com.gh.'

He explained that their concept is quiet different because they do not enter into direct negotiations with customers however, they encourage their car dealers to posts their cars regularly on the website.

However, customers are charged an introductory fee of GH50 a month for unlimited uploads.

'The website is build with Google analytics, and an average of 70,000 regular visitors at a month, and between 1.2 and 1.3 million KGOs a month. We are improving our organic search and direct search have increased over the period,' the country manager indicated.

He revealed that Cheki website, which operates a company, is bringing on board some banks-they, through the website, will provide car loans to customers to enable them buy vehicle of their choice.

'I can say that the ones that are proactive are actually engaging us and very soon they will launch these products,' he maintained.

Benjamin Bekoe, sales manager of Cheki Company, during a presentation added that the major reason for the monetization was to provide our car dealers added services by bring on board financial institutions to enable customers to get easy access to loans to buy their cars of their choice.

He stated, 'we are also engaging the insurance companies, after buying a car on our website,clients can get insurance policies to protect their cars.'

According to the sales manager, the uniqueness of Cheki-Ghana is that there is no other car website that have partnered financial institutions and insurance companies to give clients the opportunity to secure loans to buy cars and access information to insurance policy.

He added that they also provide car dealers with business advisory services on profit maximization.

According to him, the worry of falling prey to fraudulent deals is over because they know the root of these fraudulent people and their peculiar activities.