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Been to Autotrader Master class today at an amazing venue , if you want to take someone special away this is the place, its virtually on my door step but never realised - well worth a visit for a day if you're in the area :http://www.peckfortoncastle.co.uk/ They mentioned a company in the US offering the simplicity of buying a USED car on line , complete transaction and delivered to your door , which on the face of it doest seem amazing , as I'm sure we've all supplied cars like this - but they also offer a 7 day ' test drive period' - not only that they promote you to read their ' worst reviews ( Very cleaver idea - reverse psychology!) http://www.carvana.com/ here is one of their promotional videos : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YvDUf1ydGoo Thoughts ?

Had a couple of days thinking time and, originally, I wasn't going to bother, as their supercilious arrogance towards their customers shows no sign of waning. But then I thought as I'd been a little vociferous recently, perhaps I ought to contribute. So I've shortened the questions list down from a few dozen to just a few: So that we (your customers, remember?) can show due respect for your opinions and ideas, can either of the two gentleman give us an idea of their knowledge and experience within the Retail Motor Trade? (You know, years in Showrooms, workshops... finance dept... auction house...valeter...... anything?) You see, Management & IT Consultancy, Digital Marketing and other nebulous fripperies are all well and good in the City, but down here in the real world, at the pointy end, we buy, sell and fix Motor Cars. There is quite a large gap between us and whilst you get very irritated when uninformed smartar$es like me tell you what to do, the reverse of that is also very, very true.I seem to remember that, some time ago, an Open Letter was written to AT on this very forum. I know you saw it, so why did nobody in a senior position in your company have the decency to publicly respond to any of the points that were raised?You don't have to look very far to see that you have an awful lot of very dissatisfied customers. As the vast majority of your enormous profits is generated from your online offering (ie us), why do you persist in ignoring their complaints, or are you now only interested in keeping the Shareholders happy?How much did each of you make, personally, from the flotation of your Company?Finally, a quote from an article in Marketing Magazine 3 years ago:Jonathan Williams, Auto Trader's recently appointed director of consumer marketing, said: "With this campaign, we hope to strengthen the relationship we have with our customers and shift the consumer perception of Auto Trader as being just an online marketplace for buying and selling used and new cars. "We're proud of Auto Trader's rich heritage in helping people find the right car for them since 1977, but that's not all we do... But it is, however, all that we pay you to do. Why do you not get this?