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Not everyone on ebay is an idiot though. The way people post on here its like every single buyer that enquires from ebay is a time waster when from my own experience its not true. Yes you will get messers, thats part of the game, but how long does it take to reply to a message or email, maybe a couple of minutes and you have done everything possible to build confidence in your potential customer. This then either leads to a sale or it leads to nothing, at least you have done your bit. Just putting a barrier up telling people to ring only is not a good way to build initial confidence from a customer and more likely they will go somewhere else.

Reading some of these posts i cannot understand why you would want to put a barrier up for a potential customer. Yes a lot of email enquiries are no goes but a lot lead to sales. Not everybody wants to talk on the phone, some people get nervous or are worried that a dealer will try and talk them in to something, just because we are confident doing deals over the phone does not mean everyone is. I will always respond to an email and try and answer as many questions as possible, normally ending with "if you would like to discuss in more detail feel free to give me a call " I have sold many many cars off the back of email conversations so blocking people makes no sense to me.

definitely hate auctions full stop all the same

Unreal week for us so far. 7 sales out of 33 stock and got others simmering away too so may add 1 or 2 more fingers crossed.

We learned the hard way after buying online from BCA. We've had a few appraisals that were pretty bad. Bought an Vauxhall VXR online. Gearbox was whining really badly, but no mention of it. Parked it in the carpark and complained - got nowhere as it was 'sold as seen' and the vendor didn't mention any fault. Car came with no history/books/MOT, which was odd for a VXR with 1 owner for the last 10 years. After writing to the previous owner, found out the car was traded in with the owners booklet, MOT cert, Service Book full of main dealer history with an invoice detailing the gearbox failure - this paperwork was missing when we bought it. Called the dealer it was traded in at, must have got lucky and spoke to a newbie there who meant to put me on 'hold' but but me on 'mute' so I heard the whole conversation that he and the salesman who took the car in had. It wasn't pleasant. - I know it's the name of the game, but we've got to be honest with our customers, and the dealers still have to declare major faults with the cars, no just dispose of any paperwork that confirms any faults! Decided I wasn't going to allow the vendor to just plead ignorance to the fault, so wrote the the CEO. Got a response pretty quickly and the complaint resolved. When complaining, the branch manager told me that the mistake I made was driving it out of the compound and into the car park. Bought a Fiat 500, drove from Devon to Walsall to collect it - Appraisal, and Assured Report were naff. We took the advice from we got, and didn't take the car off the site and were offered £200 and take the car as is, or chip it back. £200 wouldn't touch the repairs, so we chipped it back. Done and dusted within 25 mins. Shame about the 4 hour wasted drive up there though. The manager there offered us a free delivery next time we buy online from that centre, which was very kind of him. We much prefer to go to auction to see the cars in person, but we are at a different end of the market to some dealers here. We can see it from their side though, the people doing the appraisals are only human and occasionally things can be missed - or are they on a set time per car and sometimes rushing? If we had customers who bought from us and arrived to find something not as described, they'd hit to roof. Why should dealers have to put up with cars not coming through auction being not as described. We pay enough in auction fees! Yes, we do have some comeback, but its a PITA to get listened to and the gestures offered to make the car 'as described' most often don't cover it. You live and learn, eh? That's a right moany old post We're happy car dealers really - the good buys more than make up for the bad eggs. Wouldn't change occupation, dealings in the blood!

Very true, had the same experience. What's starting to really wind me up now is since they can't charge for debit card payments, I've noticed more and more are asking for full money up front. Yeah right! Just imagine the hassle you'd go through to get reimbursed for a badly described or serious issue car! However, as previously mentioned, you do at least partly get to know who you can trust. Prices are insane anyway on there the last year, but you do pick up the odd few now and again.