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Wifes Uncle is called Mr Fairclough. They call him Mr Fuckoff in his local Chinese. I'll get me coat

Too many overly cautious people giving advice here and many thinking everything has to be minted-up & top money chased (I like to see some of your stock & see if it lives up to the big talk). As for the car, I’ve not looked but from what I’ve read an hour with the MOP & the touch up stick would help. From what you say you’ve got low £2Ks in it? If so don’t bother bulling it up & tipping £500 of paint into it just to mark it up for another £600 and then it sitting there at similar money to the rest on the Internet. Get the f***ing MOP out, get it at £2999 & get it gone. All this talk of Peugeot buyers being fussy on paintwork!?!! My arse, fussy on money more like!

I skimmed over this and WOW. The way I see it..... The car needs paint, mark Don't wanna paint it...... no big deal, he's clearly stated the car has paint defects. I'm not sure what all the rest of this noise is. I don't know how the hell trading standards have been brought in to this and how have pages have been written about faults, trading standards and all this other breeze?

To be fair, they held their hands up straight away, I did have to chase the cheque a couple of times. In life, I treat as I like to be treated myself. I had pushed for the cheque, so when it arrived, I emailed to thank them. I don't want to be known as the guy who "just" complains - I like to balance my responses where they are deserved.

30 seconds on google gives yours and Nicola's surnames

If its low miles, with good history and low ownership and the roof works OK I would sort the bodywork and give it a proper valet and sell it for full retail. As others have said here, you will just get wankers who will try to get it for nothing

Mark, are those pointy shoes you are wearing An hours mop and a bit of touching in would do it wonders... I would mop it, touch it the marks and re-video it with a positive but honest sales pitch.

So fast forward 5 years,business doing well.....question from HMRC inspector.’Do you pay all your business income into the company account’ ‘Yes of course’ you answer............Then the inspector produces the above......

I don't want to dampen the moment, but I hope your bank will accept a cheque made payable to Mr Mark..............

But selling it once painted, tidied and prepped is going to be so so much easier than dealing with a load of pretend traders offering you stupid cash deals or scummy punters thinking they can snap up a bargain. Aside from the moral/legal stuff that everyone's banging on about it'll just be an easier quicker deal. Your pitch is awkward because it's priced somewhere in between retail and trade money but won't appeal to a good buyer in either camp IMO. Get it prepped and sold properly would be my route, otherwise it's no different to those 'traders' buying from BCA and throwing a bucket of water and £200 onto their stock. (oh and stop buying Pug 308 CC's blind from the block...you've had a very lucky escape IMO)

Hi Mark Warranties..we started doing our own over 20 years ago,we throw them in.Upselling warranties,service contracts,Gap ins and other stuff is easier for main dealers.In the past,when we have done it,it just seems to cause bad feelings with the punters down the line.

I've only skimmed the above and don't really have an opinion. Would I buy it? No too much money. More importantly i'd just be asking 'why isn't he going with it himself...roof must be intermittently f***ed'. Why don't you just go with it yourself? Bit of paint and tidying is easy. Nice miles, looks pretty, perfect cheapo cab for the local Barratt/Council estate.

EPV is completely right here Mark. You 'may' well get away with it once, twice or whatever- but no matter what you say in your advert, the customer has all the rights and it will come back to bite you on the arse eventually if you do this. This game IS NOT LIKE THE OLD DAYS ;0) Also, I'm sure if Trading Standards etc. saw the ad, they could well protest your wording too. All unlikely maybe, but 'unlikely' has a habit of occurring in this game I've found.

Does it mean f*** all profit?

I’ve got a heap of shit or two in the compound. Shpock-wise I might dip my toe in the water selling as a ‘private’ as everyone else seems to be doing it. Now how much is a PAYG phone from Asda..........

A trader won’t turn up to buy that. Not a proper one anyway for reasons you mentioned. I suspect Mark is playing a dangerous game of trying to take a consumers rights away by getting them to sign a piece of paper and hoping trading standards accept he’s acted correctly. I could be wrong but that’s the vibe i’m getting. A few things would count against Mark in this instance, should the buyer turn screamer and call trading standards 1. He’s advertising the car via a classified on a platform that is clearly consumer based. It’s not a trade to trade site. 2. The description in the advert states the car drives without fault and it’s only cosmetic issues. This would be seen as misleading, or that you are suggesting the car is mechanically sound. 3. To ensure your arse is covered you should get proof that the person who turns up to buy the car is a trader. Copy of trade insurance would do. The onus is on you to prove they are a trader not the other way around. This will be impossible as we know, the person turning up to buy the car won’t be a trader but joe public wanting a trade price car but without the trade risk. Trading standards would look at all these things and see a bona fide trader selling a car on a public platform, for private money and attempting to use a little bit of clever wording to evade their responsibilities under the CRA. I can see why some people would go down this route with a £500 banger. You just make sure you’re selling to the right kind of person, that you are sure they know the score. Don’t ask them to sign anything, cash deal, see the car for what it is, a shitter etc. Even that is a risk but a small one. I think this is playing with fire, for little return in the grand scheme of things. I’ve been doing this only 4 months so I don’t want to sound like a condescending know it all but from what i’ve read on here, on Lawgistics website etc stuff like this can fuck you right up and is nowhere near worth the grief. Each to their own.

...that was kinda my point. In my book spreading your risk over multiple units is always the way to go. We work heavily on developing a chain which is where the real money is IMO. Put £1500 in a 5k car, sell it and hopefully give 1k for the chopper which you can resell for £2500, take another chopper against it for a few hundred that you can knock out for £1500 and maybe even a final chopper you can trade to the local breaker/trader for a couple of hundred. The more links in the chain the better. Cash flow is the important consideration because that original 5k can sit tied up for months but you get a healthy chunk out of each link in the chain. Point is with one 20k Merc you're only getting one part ex...with four 5k cars you're potentially getting loads of choppers you can resell and earn from.

Throw away the CAP guide as find its way too much of a distraction, know how much you can sell each car for before you bid then decide how much you want to pay. I started much the same way many years ago and now have a service centre as well as sales. My advice when moving to a premises is people are more likely to bring a car back to you if there is the slightest of problems. when selling from home people knew that's all I did and didn't expect the earth, with a professional premises they expect a hell of a lot more, better prep and you soon learn to up your aftercare levels. My advice is to to have a contingency, put something aside for the profit from each car because you'll need it sooner or later, invest in security, cameras etc, I found employing people at the beginning a real nightmare so don't be tempted to take anyone on unless you really need to, keep it within your means until you're confident in growth. have a stock plan of how long each car is going to cost you, how quickly do you sell your cars on average? whats this against the depreciation cost. and then of course there's the dreaded tax, keep records for everything and invest in a good accountant at least twice a year (year end was always a nightmare) - in some ways I'd prefer to be working on my own from home again, no people management worries, pensions, etc etc but good luck, always great to see new blood coming in