BHM

If you don’t do finance DON’T DO IT. You’ll be smoking it for the next 4 years

Are you really trading £23K+ Mercs from home?

I understand that psychology fully. It is an impossibility that you can please 100% of people 100% of the time. You’re correct about some reviewer ‘styles’, some reviews on AT I’ve looked at are laughable - certain traders I know selling cars up to, say, £4000 with 4.8-5.0 out of 5 stars and reviews written in a VERY similar fashion. Absolute bollocks, and it takes moments to open a new email address in order to leave yet another positive review. Mind you, more than 50% of the public are too thick to realise reviews can be so easily rigged.

I recall a couple of years ago I managed to offend one of the Sunday night ebay email brigade with some honesty on an absolutely filthy old Subaru Forester with a tragically soiled & damaged interior (the car was £999 when it booked retail at £2500ish - I only got in it once). No swearing, no deceit, nothing that could be misleading, just good old fashioned truth. He asked what was the mess on the seats, along with a statement of what he expected! (In other words, a greedy bastard). So I answered truthfully along the lines of I’m not 100% sure but I suspect it’s a mix of dog urine, vaginal juice & seminal fluid but at this price whatever’s there is for free. Yet another punter ungrateful for 100% honestly. Funnily enough the man who bought it sent a transport company but he didn’t give a stuff & emailed thanking me for his nice car I remember him saying it was to replace his knackered Morris Minor Traveller for his dogs!! His Minor must of been f***ing rough!!

Yes Sytner’s gone to pot for us, but not for Sytner. Strong reserves usually blown out of the water by even stronger bids. A few that don’t make the reserves are hawked around time & time again until some desperate twat eventually pays them what they want. Any car is only as good as the appraiser & they do differ in quality. I swim at the bottom end & even I’ve noticed a high number of re-auctions, the question is; Are the relistings due to poor appraisal OR non-paying bidders (rather like Mohammed etc. on eBay)? Tbh whenever I win something on-line I wonder by how much I’ve been bid up by some twat who had little intention of buying.

I’d hold fire until you’ve collected it from that lying little b*****d, a touch-up of its crusty wheelarches could be the least of its worries based on his descriptions. Good luck, I’ve given up on their p/xs nowadays.

Dead here, sales wise. Plenty of emails offering peanuts & phone call idiots asking “Any marks or scratches?” on 8 - 10 year old cars. Apparently my attitude is “Strange” for answering in the positive - I asked her if she’d prefer me to lie and tell her the car is immaculate.

Correct. Although they often seem to know an expert. Funnily enough this expert is usually of the ‘self-appointed Internet forum armchair’ variety and has a £10 Halfords socket set. Many seem only too keen to prove they have none of that either! As for punters coming with their ‘expert’ you can soon tell a genuine mechanic (or similar) from a f***ing idiot making out he knows the score and checking every last nut & bolt rather than a cursory glance and just getting in & driving the car.

+1 - classified only is the way to go. It’s been years since ebay auctions were any good, the private men have all had enough of the “spares or repair” game and have wisened up to the “just needs a few quid & a mornings work to get it 100%” . It was brutal (for the punters!) - you could sell absolutely any shit, no comebacks, “sold as seen” and the private punters would bid up everything to strong money. The African & Ireland export job was strong AND the Eastern Europeans (EE) had came online and were filling wagons with absolutely any shite they could get their hands on. I remember one EE exporter phoning me desperate to stop the eBay auction on a knackered (admittedly not advertised as knackered) Discovery that I’d purchased from the block - it stood me at £800 all and then the oil light started flickering (probably due to having about 200K miles on its back and about 8 owners - not my finest purchase ). Anyhow I could barely understand a word, I initially thought he was Asian with his “what’s best price” negotiation and jokingly offered him it at “36 pence and a bag of crisps”. Anyhow he said a few times “3, 6” and I just kept saying ok, and then he said “Ok, I give 3, 6, 0, 0, my truck with you this afternoon”. That afternoon a wagon turned up outside my house, the driver couldn’t speak a word of the queen’s, paid up, loaded up and headed off to somewhere near Russia. £2800 profit for an evening at the block & pulling out the oil pressure warning lamp and I knew the heap of shit wouldn’t be coming back for a warranty claim! At about the same time some idiot ebayer gave me another £2000 profit on a Smart on a Cat. D that looked like the panels had been thrown on by Stevie Wonder - he was chuffed to bits when he collected it cos “I’ve saved £400”, the car was a f***ing pig. Those were certainly the days, look at it now, penniless greedy twats wanting something for nowt, even if it’s got four new tyres, new MOT and a new clutch & flywheel they still want money off and about 5 years warranty. This job’s about f***ed at the moment, with no-one wanting to pay proper money for a proper car, the main reason being they haven’t got proper money, cars aren’t coveted anymore money and their money goes on Sky TV, McDonalds and eating out at shitty chain pubs twice a week - mind you, they don’t drink in pubs anymore, the greedy sods are down Tesco filling trolleys with cheap booze. Happy new year everyone, Roll on 2018!

I send ‘em electronically within a day or two so I get an email receipt. Quite why people are holding back log books in case of comebacks is beyond me. I thought I sell some shite but are your cars really that bad you expect them back?

Jobsworth Alert! Jobsworth Alert!

To be fair many punters want to handle the log book & see it for themselves. Tippex over it as tidily as possible and if the question arises tell them that the owner had incorrectly entered the dealership’s details instead of on the yellow slip. A white lie that no one’s going to get hurt over.

Thanks but no complaints here. Made in the UK (according to the sticker) but tbh it could be made in Timbuktu for all I care. Btw, plenty of good stuff comes out of China, not just shite.

Yep, tbh I don’t think I’d bother with a secondhand part nowadays unless it was an engine or gearbox. Last week I bought a brand new starter motor for a p/x Shitron C4. Delivered to my front door, £36.66+Vat (£44) - why on earth would I want to give £30 to some skiprat car breaker for another 10yr old item that’ll be little better than the knackered one I already had, won’t get a receipt and certainly won’t get a year’s warranty. Brake calipers are another example - buying a half seized one from an abused car at a breakers doesn’t make much sense to me when for £20 more you can get a new one. At least being VAT registered does have some benefits

I believe you only make real money in the music business if you’re on to your third, or more, successful album. The first two successful ones will be repaying record company charges which are front loaded. Mind you, it’s also the merchandising and endorsement fees that bring in the money.

Haha, they HATE used parts - years ago a chancer on a 10yr old Astra refused my initial offer because “an old alternator wouldn’t look nice in his engine bay”!!! When I pointed out his engine bay already had a 10yr old alternator he didn’t have a suitable response Anyhow he was given £50 & told not to contact me again. He got his alternator (or a drink depending upon the truth) and I got an arsehole off my back who I’d reluctantly sold the car too because at the time I thought he was a greedy awkward twat. As always, don’t sell to a twat.

Tbh half of them are failed or wannabe mechanics who are lazy blighters. If you’re trade you need to take them to a test station that knows they will NOT be doing any remedial work. ‘My’ MOT man gets the MOT inspections & nothing else. Mind you, in response to TWERP, blast it around the block & retest but if the exhaust is knackered just replace the exhaust components. Shop around but Fiesta exhaust bits are for pennies & there’s a limit to how much penny pinching you can do in this game - patching up £30 exhaust components makes you look a twat in my opinion.

The correct response is rules are the rules and it’s a pass or a fail. Simple. Mind you, it seems a shame to bother the gas analyser with an old Fiesta F*** me, your MOT tester either hates you or he’s a jobsworth.

I only every get a few comebacks per year but I properly mechanically prepare (if required) & test drive every car for at least 40 miles - usually more (I don’t have my own car & just use my stock). I also don’t promise punters the earth, when they leave me they are fully aware it’s not a new car & neither am I a new car showroom. As for the punters themselves you can usually tell those that may be trouble (although I normally chase away those during the buying process) and go off my gut feeling. Those that start demanding money or play the hard man are swiftly f***ed off. The one per year that politely phones with a complaint will be dealt with politely & the fault investigated. If I’m liable it’ll get fixed, if not it won’t. In the case of a battery, assuming it’s a proper retail sale & not a £300 shed, it’s easily diagnosed & £35-60 before VAT buys most new ones from the motor factors so that’s what I’d do.

ABSOLUTELY. As I wrote, I believe the vast variety of nationalities who’ve made the UK their home have “embraced our traditional values etc. etc.” and I’d like to add that I wholeheartedly welcome these people and have found they are an unalloyed joy to conduct business with due to their openhandedness and honesty. Indeed, I’d be more than happy to send someone else’s Granny to buy from them.

I don’t think anyone in (alleged) authority gives a stuff what Johnny Foreigner gets up to. There are easier targets. That means “US” if I need to spell it out.

I wouldn’t say 10% private with the remaining 90% being dodgy on eBay - there are plenty of genuine traders describing vehicles accurately. My car’s aren’t brand new but neither do I describe them as such. I trust you’re not holding up every advertiser on AT being whiter then white! I know of two “proper” pitches who advertise on there & they go through more Blu-Tak than me hiding dashboard bulbs. I’m not on Facebook but the couple of times my better half has shown me the ads many did look suspicious to me. Gumtree & Shpock. What do you expect from sites advertised as bargain basement & “Boot sale app”? On reading an advert & after a phone call I think if you trust your gut you’ll be fine. Personally I got sick years ago trying to source stock because every private seller I visited seemed to be a lying twat hiding faults hoping to shaft another private buyer - I trusted my gut & now only buy out of the trade unless it’s a p/x.

https://www.manheim.co.uk/campaigns/buyer-benefits

The trade’s changed quite a lot over the years, in addition to the reputable Asian dealers you’ll no doubt remember from years ago you’ll now find we have the pleasure of hosting many Eastern European dealers on these shores. You’ll find the Romanian, Polish & Lithuanians, not to mention the Bulgarians, Latvians & the occasional Belarusian - let me categorically assure you that all of these nationalities have keenly embraced our traditional values of fair play & common decency in business. You are virtually guaranteed a fair deal and they delight in offering first class cars at second class prices. They are particularly helpful to greedy, gullible trash expecting to ‘nick’ a cheap car & suddenly start trading for BIG BUCKS. However, due to language barriers occasionally you may find that a “Business” advertisement has been inadvertently uploaded as a “Private” advertisement. In order to circumvent this error you may find cars being sold on behalf of a friend/relative/neighbour/the-next-door’s-dog etc. and strange meeting places that look suspiciously like a knackered old unit on an industrial estate although, they are in fact the sellers private address (or should that be the other way round!?!!) I’ve confused myself now so I’m off for a lie down.

Yep, it’s getting harder & harder to buy stock and the days of absolutely nicking something (rather than just getting it a couple of hundred quid cheaper) are long gone. The main dealers are giving strong p/x bids to get business, half of the older trade-ins are well & truly knackered and anything with vaguely nice miles makes an absolute fortune. Those of you wanting to know where the ‘secret’ places to buy half price, mint, ready to retail stock are located shouldn’t hold your breaths.