D&M

I don't know why people call or expect a response at that sort of time? Crazy. Latest viewing we've done is 10:00PM as the guy was running very late. Could tell he was a buyer so didn't mind too much. He left a deposit to collect the next day. Showed up earlier, but done an online transfer which took ages to land in our account so he didn't leave with the car until gone 10:00PM again that night. Never again.

I set one up and put a video slideshow from youtube of the car. So far on eBay the car has had 1,100 views.... The video has had 22.

I can't stand the 'I'll have to go and think about it' brigade... If you aren't in the market to buy a car, why have you come all the way out to come and view the car if you have no intention of buying it? Or 'I'll have to go and speak to the wife/partner/husband/uncle/dog' about it - Why come out if you aren't the person with any authority to make a decision? We rarely offer discounts to buyers (and why should we, eh?) One buyer was mortified that we would let him walk away instead of knocking £90 off the price. Asked him why we should discount... no answer, so he paid in full! We've had a couple who have viewed and wanted to negotiate on the price, but to no avail... Almost all who have walked away have phoned within 2 hours and then paid in full via transfer. Do these buyers not think that we don't research the market before pricing the cars?

Further to my earlier post about Motors.co.uk When someone calls, they get played a recorded message... If they decide to hang up before they actually get through to you, you're still charged for the lead. You then get an email to say that you've had a missed call - and you get charged for that email as a lead too! When we signed up, we were promised a stop by from our rep once a month... Never saw her again after sign up.

Even with a cash sale we do choose our customers! We've now got our card machine - so just waiting for our first car payment customer... Typical that we have people asking about card payments when we don't have a machine... When we do, where are they?!

Had 1 yesterday evening and one this afternoon... Yesterday evening, came out to view a car we have with 174,000 on the clock... Didn't want it because it has stonechips on the bonnet A message on eBay this afternoon on the same car... with you take £500 per month, and I'll collect it once it's paid for. Why are £1,500 cars harder to sell than £15,000 ones?! You guys have got some crackers too - laughing away here

This thread could go on and on... Just thought of another one - Had so many people look under the bonnet and exclaim that the cambelt looks new! Wahay! They're looking at the auxiliary belt

Enjoying these little tales! The toilets - Yes, on more than one occasion we've had families of 5 or 6 in our house doing the paperwork and all of them need to use the toilet and need a drink too! We've had a customer call about a £690 P/X - asked for a £370 discount so he could get the cambelt replaced Cream in the filler cap - Corsa's are a nightmare for that. They just won't listen when you tell them it's just condensation. Let's not forget the people who come out and say 'It's a shame it has XX miles on it' - The mileage was in the advert... WHY BOTHER COMING OUT!?! When customers now ask for discount, I've started to ask why I should give them a discount - I expect to hear things like; a couple of kerb marks on the alloys, maybe an advisory on the MOT that may need attention. Instead, one woman recently decided to tell me all about her divorce to try a wangle a discount - she didn't get one!

We've had that a number of times with camchain engines We really can't stand when people bring their 'mechanic' friends with them. Years ago we had a young lad come out and view mk1 Golf cabrio - Lad was the 'mechanic' who came back with a list of issues. His Dad quietly told us that he had worked at Halfords for half a day! Had another father and son come and look at a Panda 100HP we had. Told us they knew these Pandas inside out. They were insistent that the car had been re-laquered from the waistline down (I thanked them for the huge compliment of our valeting job!) - car hadn't seen any paint in it's life. What it did have, that these 'experts' failed to notice was the front wing had been replaced and the stick on stripe was slightly thicker and darker than the stripe along the rest of the car.

The ashtray is too small Yes, that's right THE ASHTRAY IS TOO SMALL Some people Anyway, always nice to know that there isn't anything else they can try and pick at! Just had someone else come out - has done a lot of research into the car and is also a mechanic (sure pal!) Can't even find the bonnet release! Anyone else have a story to have a chuckle at?

Thank you all for taking the time to reply and offer your insight. It's very helpful - not just this post, we've picked up some very useful advice from here along the way! So, at this time, we are allowed to charge the customer the same % charge that we are charged? But that is due to change next year? We do our PDI's on the Lawgistics stationary, (so it's thorough!) to protect ourselves from any comeback anyway so will continue to do so. Also, I think we have a good eye and a good head... If a car comes in as Part EX, or we buy something iffy (i.e: Anti Pollution Peugeot Fault!) - we will either sell it as a faulty car or dispose of it at auction. No point selling a car at a good price then having to shell out £££ every month to an unhappy customer! We've been up and running from home since March, and have sold over 50 cars and have only had 2 complaints so I think we are doing well! 1st was a Focus C-Max with a corroded A/C pipe - not covered in any way but we paid for the part as goodwill (did we get any thanks?! - What do you think?) 2nd was a Golf FSI with an EGR Valve the went faulty - Again, this wasn't covered in the warranty paperwork but we covered the cost of the part (did we get any thanks?! Take a wild guess!)

Hello All, We've just decided to go for a card machine, we don't expect to take a huge amount of card payments so have gone for a Barclaycard Anywhere card machine so we don't pay a monthly fee, we just charge a fixed % on the amount. We initially thought to go for it to be able to accept a small deposit on a car in case the buyer is not able to make a bank transfer or has any cash, possibly to encourage a snap decision to leave a deposit. This deposit would hold the car for X days until the buyer could bank transfer the balance. But, we've now been thinking about accepting card payments for the entire balance. Just weighting up the pros and pitfalls to do this. Has anyone had any experience? Advice and opinions are gratefully received!

Are you sure it was stolen? Blackbushe probably put it back through the week after If you asked them about it, you'd probably get the same old excuse - 'Well sir, we have such a large volume of cars coming through, mistakes do happen!'

We are quite rural too, but so far have not found that any diesel car that we do get in has any more interest than a similar petrol car. Been finding recently that bigger petrol engines are selling well.

I have just been on eBay chat and it is still possible. Upload video to YouTube Go to this site and follow instructions here: http://www.isdntek.com/tagbot/YouTubeConverter.htm Website looks like a scam/virus, but that is the website eBay recommend to use! - And it works!

We tried Motors.co.uk 4 Months we were with them. Had 2 phone calls from it, and 1 email from a site that they feed to - all bought, so not all bad! They advertise out to over 200 different platforms I believe, if anything that makes it more frustrating that the phone isn't ringing as the cars are put out in a lot of different places!

How do you manage to embed your videos into your listings? When I try to do so, eBay complains that there is 'active content' so doesn't allow me to post it! Thanks

We've started up relatively recently too! (March 2017) - We've sold numerous cars as a hobby for years too. More modest than you're plan though - trading from our home with a maximum of 6 cars. Before we started, we worked on a commission based wage for a local used car sales yard with about 20 cars. Although it was only for 5 months, we learned a huge amount from that short time. Not all of what we learned was what we should be doing, we learned a lot of what we don't want to be doing! We did get legged over - we started on the understanding that we would be valeting a few cars and speaking to any customers that turned up and we'd earn commission if they bought. Within a month we were there full time and didn't see the owner for weeks at a time. We were opening the place, valeting, collecting cars, selling the cars, dealing with warranty complaints but still only for a pitiful commission! - We should have drawn up an agreement each time our duties increased. When we started for ourselves, we started with only 2 cars at a time as we had very little money. We were only earning little profit as we used a third party warranty company to protect ourselves against warranty claims from customers. Luckily we didn't have any catastrophes in the first couple of months so we had a little more money in the bank and slowly increased our stock levels from 2 to 4-6 cars. As we had a little more money in the bank, we started to offer our own warranty alongside the third party company so that saved us a little money. We advertise solely online, and have had to try a number of different platforms as we don't have our own website. We have found that certain cars sell better on different platforms. If you are borrowing money from someone, make sure you have it written down and have an agreement to pay it back - borrowing money does get messy if everyone doesn't know exactly where they stand. Make sure everyone involved knows their role in the business and sticks too it. We have found it hard to find a good mechanic that we can trust, and someone to do our bodywork. The information that has been given above is invaluable - take note of the advice offered. I wish we found this forum earlier! Wish you the best of luck, we love this business and we do run ours with both passion as well as for the profit!

Anything diesel. We've only ever bought 1 good diesel car - a Cat C 2003 MG ZR with 144k and no service history. Everything else we've ever bought that is diesel has not been right no matter what - old/new, high/low miles, full/little history.

So, we had a late handover this evening. Too late to cook, so thought we'll treat ourselves and get a chinese for dinner - why not?! Pulled into the supermarket petrol station to fuel up and was approached by a man with his arms full of shopping "Is this the one for sale on eBay?" "Yes, it is" I reply. "Can I have a test drive? - I haven't got me license on me so you'll have to drive me home to get it first" "No, I can't do that. It's 6:30 in the evening. If you'd like to arrange a viewing, give us a call and we can arrange an appointment" "But I can't get to you" - (We're a 15 min bus ride away) "What happened to the other 2 cars you had on eBay? I was watching those" - I sold them you idiot, I'm a car dealer "Tell you what, if I can get a pal to bring me over, I'll give you a call" £10 says I'll never hear from him again If you want a lift home, call a taxi! - Leave me alone whilst I'm on my way to get my dinner! Anyone else get anything like this? - Gotta laugh.

Hi Ben, We've got a similar set up to you - we do our trading from our home but rent some storage land close to home to keep and prep the cars we have. When we started, we were buying in cars that we could retail at less than £3k We tend to keep 4-6 cars in stock at any one time - August was quite good for us - we sold 6 so we were chuffed with that. So far we've sold 3 this month. We've only been trading since March, and at first we were pricing our cars the cheapest within 40ish miles from us. We were very busy, sometimes selling 12-15 cars a month but only earning little from them. Since June we started to buy slightly higher value cars and sell then for the price that we wanted too. Now, we do have a lower turnover than before but are making the same sort of profit on 4-6 cars a month that we were making on 12 cars a month! At the moment we are finding it hard to get good stock in! Selling fast and cheap made us feel really good, so busy all the time - but looking at the books we were just busy fools! Our phone hasn't been ringing off the hook for the past couple of months, but when it does ring it is worth putting the graft in! Since starting up we have very rarely had a view that hasn't bought the car! Hope it picks up for you soon!

We're a small dealer and work on appointments only. We carry out our appointments at home, but store the cars in a unit 4 miles away. We do explain this to customers, but still have the occasional person who doesn't care at all that we've gone out to collect and prep the car for them to just come and kick the tyres - or better yet, call 30-40 AFTER their appointment time to tell us they aren't coming (yeah, we guessed!) or not bother turning up at all. 3 that stick out are 1 person who came to view a C-Max. Wouldn't buy it as it didn't have a spare wheel, despite the car never having a spare wheel as it had an inflation kit. Another was a 2002 Skoda Fabia for £680. We had a family come 60 miles to view it. They had another car to look at, they called a day later and said they wanted it - Great! I asked a £200 deposit. Couldn't afford that, so we agreed a £50 deposit to be transferred that day so I sent the bank details across. No funds that day, next day a phone call - Death in the family, couldn't transfer the funds until that afternoon. That afternoon, no funds. As soon as the car sold and was taken offline they email to ask if it is still for sale! The last one the sticks out was a p/x 2004 Honda Civic CDTi, was faulty and advertised as such for £400. Had one person asking if I would take a part exchange and someone else asking if I would give it a warranty! Baffles us how you'll easily spend over an hour with a customer on a sub £1000 car, but the higher value cars, we seem to have deals done and dusted in 20-30 minutes! On the flipside, one customer called about a little Fiat Panda - Could we bring it to him - Sure, thats fine. Delivered the car, and he paid the asking price plus costs for delivery. Didn't test drive the car. Didn't even open the doors!