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put sold in advert and raise the price a grand, competion will follow, expecting a good profit, sheep bahhhhhhhh

Absolutely right. I wish there were forums with as much info as this back in the days when I was starting up. Would've saved me a million pounds. Literally a million. Expensive f***** education :-) If you take nothing else from this discussion at least take this: Buy a pack of £6 warranty booklets from Lawgistics and give one out with 3 months / 3000 miles warranty with a low claims limit (£300-£600). This gives you a very cost effective way to answer your customer's question about warranty. If your cars are half decent there will not be more than 1 in 20 valid claims which means you will be paying out or fixing stuff worth £300 (to £600) for every 20 sales you make or an average of £21 per sale when you include the £6 booklet cost.

Sounds like any insurance product these days, you have to have it (or pay for it), but it seems you're not supposed to use it?

Not really they will ring you anyway and ask if you have any others I've found.

Just thought I would update, I always find it frustrating when advice is requested and never followed up. Changed the crankshaft sensor and immobiliser antenna, problem has not returned since. So thank you for the tips!

The problem is that however enthusiastic/competent you are, if you're a one man band you can't be halfway through pulling a gearbox and the phone rings? And it is NOT a good thing to greet customers looking like you work in a scrapyard! A case can be made if/when you need something sorting quickly and you're confident of your diagnosis. My mechanic is efficient and cheap 'but' if I'm waiting for something simple like pads/disc and he's called out on a breakdown it quite frustrating. Or, as recently happened, I'm booked in for a 'belt' and he's still stuck on a BMW with stripped head bolts? Recently, in the last few years I've backed right off of DIY. It's not ability that stops me from working on cars, but my reluctance to spend any more money on specialist tools, which seem to be required for every job.

I find having less cars in stock makes you feel like everything is slower, I hold around 23 - 25 cars on my tod and if I do 3 - 4 a week with all the cars priced in the middle Im happy and I get a good pedigree of customer, like Rory says putting them all cheap is just going to attract the nutters....... bottom pickers that want the car even cheaper, the worst kind of customer!

Would just like to thank Umesh again, your contact Adrian did that job for me and saved me a lot of bother, just goes to show how useful forum's are, Thank you.

Yep we have all that in our terms and conditions but no matter what you put in writing an idiot will always be an idiot i rather get the car in do the job done no fuss back to them less chance of it blowing up into a full blown argument, However I am of the mindset that a problem solved quickly and without any fuss gives our garage the chance to shine, you can picture the story about the pub table, customer bought a car from xyz now its got this wrong and that wrong all the garage want me to do is drive it back i am not driving it back its not safe, well you unlucky i bought my car from justin (the crossdresser) it had a fault they collected it sorted the fault delivered it back and even cleaned it, best form of free advertising you can get imo. As in life what ever works well for you.