Mojo121

I don't think having a £50k boat is anything to ridicule, I'd suggest you went to check his credentials and discovered, actually, he's probably doing alright for himself and knows what he's talking about. Anyway, yeah, I'll take your Mum down the ship canal Look, just get on with it. You've had our advice and you've ignored it. Good luck. Update us in a year. Happy to eat humble pie.

"got any cheap seven seaters? Ours is knackered. We've never done anything to it in three years though"

I took pity and replied that finance is never available at that sort of level and, although none of my business, I'd avoid short term low value loans and other ways to raise finance. I suggested that maybe he could just save up a little and come back to me. He came back to me today to say he's got the balance... let's see if he shows on Monday and whether I'll regret my pity!

I think we have a few problems here. What do you mean by 'best deals'? We're not all selling the same colour, same brand, same flavour tin of beans? Not to mention that I can't see social media going mad for a 2014 'crazy low PCP' VX Astra either. Sure. If you ask nicely enough they'll probably let you have a go on their missus aswell. Where's the incentive to buy from you anyway? Buyers sift through every available platform as it is to find the cheapest car. You can't tell me they're not going to see you're banging a few hundred quid on top. I understand you're at the research stage of planning this but you need to understand the fundamentals a lot better. Anyway, I can't comment further because the Sultan of Brunei is on the other line. He wants a 2010 Bentley Continental in PowderPuff Purple before the weekend. No budget and all my expenses paid. Oh, the jolly life of a car broker!

Unsurprising; Amazon wants to be the 1 stop A-Z marketplace of everything you want to buy. I'd guess their aim would be to move towards a business model where you spec the car online, see a 3D representation of it before its delivered to your door and you pay your £300p/m. The fact car are more like appliances has been discussed on here already. I'd suggest that they would stay away from Prestige brands and stick to run of the mill cars though. Other than that I think they'll do well, they tend to do well at everything and with the budgets they have it'd be hard to see why they wouldn't. I always imagined John Lewis would be a good company to sell cars too. Reputation goes along way. Being in the heavily used side of the market it doesn't bother me.

We have a winner. Some of these responses are cracking me up

The world is pretty depressing sometimes and never more depressing than when you have a £995 part-ex Jaguar to sell and you get messages like this: Hi, I like the look of the x type you've got advertised. I have a 2003 Astra, full MOT and under 100000 miles in good condition. Would you take as part exchange? Secondly do you do any finance for the difference? I don't have sufficient on my cards to cover. ThanksNigel 50 points for the person who first guesses which platform it came through

The above is good advice. The best way to do what your suggesting is a full and final settlement letter - you sign and she signs. This means that your £600 would serve as completion to her complaint and any further issues arising from that car and the engine as it's been sourced elsewhere and a third party, not instructed by you, has fitted it.

Look to be honest you'll make some money doing it but it won't be enough when you take into account the time and worry. Trust me, if you want to retire in 20 years, buying and selling 6-10+ year old cars isn't the way to do it. Many of the guys on here have been trading cars for a long time and it's the only industry they know; they're not doing it because they're getting home to their mansion and 10 car supercar garage and if they are they made their real money a long time ago. I know, despite what everyone's saying, you'll start trading cars anyway because you'll think "they're all making loads of money - just look at the margins from when they're bought to what they're selling for. They're just putting me off. Greedy sods". Now, I don't mean to be condescending in anyway but you're not taking into account the prep, mechanical repairs, advertising, the 2 months it sits before it sells where you have to look at it and keep cleaning it, pitch rent, bills, vat, the list goes on and it's all higher than you think. I do wish you the best of luck but my point is that I just think they're are other more innovative and original ways to make money nowadays. If a good option came up I'd get out. I'm certainly looking into other businesses... recent worthwhile ones might have been Craft Beer bars, E-Cigarettes...

I never expected it but those and S types are pretty good sellers. Shame that they're put together like crap and you never hear the end of it after they're sold...

Sounds like some people are unfamiliar with the concepts of auctions and risk/ reward commerce... if auctions were fool proof the incentive to buy from dealers would be diminished and margins reduced. I've had some crackers out of UKCGR, I'm just more cautious than any other section.

Is that everything you've been sent? Seems a bit disjointed. I'd ask her outright what her point is and what she expects you to do about it considering you don't have a 90 mile long 10mm ratchet connection...

If you ask me the CRA and the 6 months right to repair or replacement is an absolute joke but from what I see and hear courts really aren't our friend. The best case is that a fair judge is likely to make you pay a proportion; an amount that would equate to what it could have cost prior to the further damage he created. Another judge may see that regardless of the situation a fault occurred within the first six months which rendered the car not fit for purpose and would have required a replacement anyway. Has he put many miles on it? It's always annoying that the punters don't sue the warranty companies... £4200 seems alot. Secondhand DSGs are £6-800 and probably another £200 to fit it.

Betginge are you on eBay? Apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs but eBay own Gumtree and as such you can just have all your eBay content uploaded straight onto Gumtree. We have 25 cars with eBay and Gumtree was an extra £140pm (12m min commit) at the time we were looking at it. It's now £200 and something having just logged into motorspro... but maybe negotiable?! When I've used it before it's been pretty good for sub £5k stuff. Quirky stock seems to work well.

Haha! Thing is, why bother when you can just take the BCA photos and stick them up on eBay, AT, wherever...

Badly. Peterborough is a no and Bedford is a no. Nottingham sometimes. It's been said before but "halfway mate" can either mean fine or knackered depending on which driver. I've taken to watching their feet now.

UPDATE: amazing scenes! We all got together and chanted no more bidding. Everyone out of the auction hall. Bonnets open again!

Here I am at BCA Bedford who have decided that you're no longer allowed to open a bonnet and the drivers aren't allowed to rev a car above 2,000 rpm. Apparently it'll be rolled out nationwide. On near new stock it wouldn't bother me so much but on the sub £5k that I buy there's no way I can risk it. May aswell go down the casino and gamble my money...

I was just thinking; does anyone here have a motor trader database? Ideally we need a marketing company who specialises in our industry with a big list of email addresses who will fire this off to 1,000s of dealers at a time. The impact would be much greater and we could add a footnote to centralise the discussion here, which allows us to organise. ... or the type of database that a huge industry leading magazine has that would do a mailshot to all of the dealers on it? A magazine I used to work at wouldn't sell the data but would target whoever you wanted. I'd certainly be willing to contribute towards the cost

Yes, very important to spread the word. I've done it and I'm not even on Autotrader

It's really annoying when people do this. If I bought a car and less than a month later there was something wrong with it the first person I'd call is the one who sold it to me to see where I stood. If you buy a laptop out of John Lewis and the screen falls off you don't take it to get repaired and bill them you return it.

All I can say is best of luck and definitely resurrect this thread to let us know how it turns out. In contrast I know of a car dealer who in the last few months was taken to court in his name rather than the LTD company and it was thrown out. If your invoice states your ltd company it's worth mentioning. My advice would be to make sure you stress the point that you have experience with these types of cars, you suspected the fault to be minor (it didn't affect the vehicle performing it's duty as an A-B car), you wanted to rectify it and that you refute their garage's "report". You say they're "backstreet" so I assume you could call into question their validity; are they VAT registered? Ltd company? I think you've a good chance. As I say, good luck.

Which lender/broker are you using? Is there a way of just referring the business? I would prefer not to be FCA regulated.

It's been okay. I'd like to have shifted a couple more pricey bits but it seems to be just the cheap stuff selling. We're only one weekend in though so lots of making up to do yet.

It's £1000 a month. I guess we're really lucky.