Tony F

I use a Vodafone curve tracker. Worldwide tracking. £2 a month subscription. View from an app. Just hide in boot or elsewhere. ( the tracker not you). Can be used on dog collars etc too.

I have the same happen from an auction car. It was a main dealer px that they had put on a stocking plan.(8k car). I only found out as we sold the car within days and couldn’t get finance paid out until the unit stocking had been cleared. The most surprising thing was that the main dealer had even needed to use unit stocking as they are a fairly well know group and seemingly financially sound. Who knows what cash flow issues other may have

We are open as normal too...........however, the last 2 weeks no one seems to want to visit us anymore......tumbleweed here all of a sudden!

This. ^^^ Staff are biggest problem. I ran 2 sites of 35 cars each up to 3 years ago, both decent sites. I wouldn't recommend it. Could never get both places properly firing on all cylinders at the same time. They only seemed to alternatively have good months. Paying staff and a good manager to carry out what effectively would be your own job and salary does take the icing off the cake. Not always much left over each month and leaves you asking the question..is it worth the extra work, more buying, more prep, more expenses, more vat and tax, more running around, more ruckers(as you can't control who to sell to all the time), and all for not a lot more at the end of a year. The rule of diminishing returns applies. Good idea from Grant though. Use it as storage in order to expand your stock.

I have been accused of wearing a mask for years now David !!!

In the bad old days (20-25+ yrs ago) I know of a trader who got rid of his overheating Merc through the auction when he superglued the temperature guage needle on the halfway point. The car had less than a gallon of fuel in, but he was feeling generous and gave it 'a full tank' at the same time and glued the fuel guage needle on Full. Imagine trying to get away with something like that these days!! Joking aside, I think you are correct. The older we are the more we seem to over analyze stuff. I am guilty of it. And I certainly dont have the balls I once had. I think you could call it experiance or once bitten twice shy. Having said that the auction job has changed a lot past 10 yrs, what with half of Bca now being their own wbac cars for sale. And as we all know, there are a large percentage of these with hidden faults, which is why they were sold to wbac in the first place.

If he puts it back in the auction , then bca will insist on him declaring the fault now that they have been made aware of it. He will need to use a different auction house if he were to take that route.

6k engine rebuild is a big hit to take and yes we all take risks, but it’s no excuse for deception Following on from TVs post above. A vendor cannot use and hide behind the ‘sold as seen’ disclaimer to absolve them from liability when selling at auction. The key point here is that if you can 100% prove that the vendors knowingly withheld critical and adverse information about a known fault when offering the car for sale, then I believe you will have a pretty watertight case if you take the vendors to court. It is simply deception. In cases such as this, the auction is simply an agent and will not be held liable in a court. They may step in to mediate, but that depends who they favour most, you or the seller. Inform the auction that you have written evidence that the vendor witheld information, and that you now Intend to write directly to the vendor if auction is unable to help, putting the vendors on notice of your intention to issue a summons. In the meantime ask the auction for a copy of the Vendors entry form. Any emails you send it’s worth copying in lynn.knight at bca as she is their legal counsel. Also see if you can find out who the last owner was (old invoices?) before the present one was. The fault would have been present in their ownership and its possible they could have disposed of the car to Wbac.com, as this could mean bca may have had prior knowledge of the fault too. I have often been in the same situation over the years with main dealers or wbac, but never an Indy seller as I don’t buy multi vendor cars.

If its already in trade, then you dont have to do anything. But you will never have the V5 unless copart have it and send it to you a later date.

^^ This! I do the same, print, place in a perspex hanger and leave on dashboard.. However I do have lots of unused 'Diesel' windows stickers that I dare not use anymore. You can have them foc

On Monday, after much haggling I accepted £4100 for an 18,000 mile Hyundai i10 Auto that I would normally have got screen price for. Traded out 2 p/ex shitters for a combined total of £400. And that is my week. And everyone please all stay safe especially when dealing customers. I spoke on the phone at length, with my cousin in Italy yesterday. The conversation left me cold. His only advice to all in the UK is, do not ignore the medical advice, it is not exagerated, and do not under any circumstance underestimate this virus. It is frightening how easily and quickly it spreads. Going home and opening a few cold ones now.

I have been open today, but will close at 4.00, and I must admit, in view of whats happening, I do feel pretty stupid opening up and sitting here on my own staring at a forecourt of cars and no customers. Just the odd casual looker the past 2 weeks. No phone or email enquiries either for almost 10-12 days. (except for CG fake ones, you would think they would do the decent thing and stop sending them now. We all know their game anyway). I am sure 99.9% of peoples priorities do not involve buying a car at present, other than out of necessity. I noticed BCA Blackbushe are showing over 2500 cars and Bedford over 1500 cars for Mondays sale. These are unprecedented numbers. Wonder what the numbers will be up to by the end of week! Interestingly, there is no Covid news for any plans they may have, on their website that I could see, which I think is unusual for such a huge company. Playing their cards close to their chest. No buyer fee incentives, delivery incetives, whether they are closing at all, or going just online etc

I agree its a decent gesture, but lets not forget that their hand has been forced due to the high amount of cancellations that were coming through. Even they cant be that pig headed that they let their customers all leave. However its not really Free. Carefully thought out by AT, its the same as giving a 50%discount as you will still be tied to the 30 day cancellation notice once the offer ends. Lets hope for everyone that the free offer is extended

Already theres panic buying and panic selling, whether its food or stock markets. It will be people and the media that will be the architects of any chaos that follows more than the virus. And if there is world slump in the economy, it's the cash rich corporations that will benefit, buying up investments at low prices, and if I may add, that this is nothing new and has always historically been the case. Lets all hope it all fizzles out over the coming weeks/months.

30+ years in the trade may have sucked the laughter and humour out of me, but their statement and projections did make me genuinely laugh out. Its just bullshit PR for the investors. Overly ambitious and very naive. It will be interesting to read what excuses they will offer to investors in a year or 2, when it becomes apparent the financial projections are not going quite to plan.

The rep is asking you to do what they will not do themselves-----ADVERTISE-----. Great branding, but won't market themselves, and this is why we dropped them in Jan 2019 after many years on and off with them. It promises a lot and delivers nothing. Just a hanful of deals a year, and if anything it does sometimes attract the type of punter who thinks all the cars have been AA checked. You know the types...unrealistic expectations. And the standard of their 'Dealer Promise' is laughable. I think most dealers own standards far exceed the AA's.

That odd, because we have had the £2k limit for cheapies for about the last year. They just added it one day. No fancy package or anything here, just the standard.

I took all the high price markers off AT on the 5th Dec, but I know what you mean, its not an uncommon ocurrance to have to 'adjust' the online price in a hurry, and often when the customer is still on the premises viewing the hanger price in the window, I'm sure all the boys with open forecourts will know where i'm coming from

We sold one on Saturday for 3900 to passing customer. AT the wankers, reckoned it at 2800 retail.

I imagine a lot of dealers (myself included) waited and then cancelled autotrader on the day double stock offer expired in January. We will soon see if the numbers of cars for sale on AT drop dramatically after this weekend which will be after the 30 notice period. Although the car numbers for sale have already dropped from around 495k to 450k during Jan. I think that a fair amount of dealers will have signed up for the 2 months of half price stock offer on 24th Jan, and may have intentions of handing in their 30 day cancellation notice once this offer expires in March. We'll see how the numbers of cars for sale looks in the last week of April, which will at least give us an indication whether everyone is voting with their feet. As you said TV, they only care about the share price and the only language they understand is pounds and pence. Unfortunately not everyone is in a position to cancel AT, as many many business have sprung up the past 10 years who's complete business model pretty much relies on advertising with AT.

Spot on David. I agree with you. In fact Mr C Penny from Autotrader actually replied to me on car sales FB that the price markers are here to stay, and if you don't like or agree with them, simply leave.....So I took his advice and actually gave in my notice after 22+ years. Maybe if everyone did this they may sit up and take notice. As for the tide turning, this has definately been happening with us the past year or 2. Less and less from autotrader and more and more through google, organic searches etc. Fortunately we also have passing trade and repeat, but the passing trade is a big percentage of sales for us as there has been a site here for donkeys years which most locals know about. I beleive that this is the precise reason autotrader have introduced the price markers. Its to capture and retain all the younger generation (18-28) that they have been losing the past few years, by appealing to them and demonstrating with use of the price markers that somehow autotrader are 'The Go To Place' and are 'on their side guiding them through their car buying journey'.....All at the trades expense of course!

I still remember the car to this day. 1 vicar owner from new. The drivers carpet was loose when hoovering it. Lifted it up and there was a packet of condoms squashed underneath. He clearly wasn’t going on his afternoon teatime visits unprepared.

Nice intro Halfpenny and welcome. Early nineties and preparing an old Maestro to send down the block with a few other cars I had ready. Big rust hole in the sill, and running out of time to fix it properly, and had no wire/fibre glass to bridge the hole. My eyes rested on an out of date Glass's guide, which was then carefully rammed into the offending hole. Perfect fit!! Skim of p38, brush of underseal and jobs a good un!! At 3.30am the following night i suddenly woke up, remembering the glass's guide has my business name stamped on the spine of the pages....

What a pathetic excuse of an invoice/estimate. This bloke is trying is trying to have your pants down. Try calling Smiths Ford to ask if they object to a second opinion as you might have a mate passing through that area. I'll bet the car isn't even at their premises and thats if they have even see it all. If they know nothing about the car, maybe email them a copy of inv. Good luck anyway.

Nice spot. I’m a fucking twat. Next time I’ll make sure to check the dates.