Earunder

WOW! Truly amazed! Nice work! Maybe I'll stop responding to their low ball offers with sarcastic price increases... Nah balls to that. Good Job for you but they deserve the sarcasm, plus it gives me a smile when I send it.

You sound like the AT rep... Get the quote Arthur 50 CarsStandard | Advanced | Premium

Run rabbit run rabbit run run run. Depends how much you rely on BCA. We bought 70% of our stock from BCA last year. About 20% from Manheim, this year a little different but would I risk closing my account? No! Have I been put in a position to close the account? No! It depends what your account level is if I'm being honest as BCA wouldn't give a to$$ about any legal action as they'll just drag the proceedings and make it cost you a fortune in court and solicitor fees. How do I know? It's what I would do. If you're not at least a Platinum suck it up or try as I said above and pretty much ask for mercy and forgiveness. Don't get angry or mad as that won't get you anywhere with them, just explain your case in a positive and merciful way. Sad but true.

Was quite a nice surprise as I was | <- that close to giving up on the day. I would have been all over that Disco like a dog on heat on viagra in a doggy day care full of bitches

Yup, know / see it?

Nice 1!!! Glad to hear some bargains still floating. Hahaha done the similar thing last week with Bedford. 2009 Mini Cooper S Convertible 82k... £2750, expecting a rattly pile of BUT I think I must have just caught it as we drove it back (100mile journey) and so far so good. 1 thing is the roof underlining is missing... I mean WTF, who wants that?

So if you're interested in ensuring AT are pricing "evenly" / "justly" you will need to get people to obtain quotes on say a 50 car advertising limit with a premium tier package. Or get quotes across the entire line: 50 Cars Standard | Advanced | Premium I'm no longer with them but I'm sure some dealers would be happy to get quotes. I don't think you're going to bring anything up abnormal if I'm honest, but I'm always willing to be amazed and shocked.

EDIT - TYPOS Off the wall bids are normal and have been around for as long as I was going to the halls with my father many many moons ago. Legal No, but it is normal practice. There's no action you can take in that respect and I wouldn't want to bring that up and probably risk an account closure by doing so. Wait for them to contact you about it and stress to them how adamant you are about you cancelling the proxy bid and there must have been an error on their system. That's the best way you can go and hopefully they see sense and come around that it was a mistake, everyone makes a mistake, so they may well take an exception towards you and let you off. If you get pi$$ed and argumentative, think of a decent way to sell your new XFR

My query to them would be if it's going through the Harwood sale again they then surely haven't paid or told Harwoods about it or it would be from MultiVendor?

Corrected Even the undesirable stuff are being held to ransom. All quite bizarre this year. Not bought as many from BCA in the same period this year to last year. About 60-70 down, Manheim about 30ish up and local purchases we're up a few. Still need stock, but not overpaying for the sake of it. Got a good number and a good stock atm so pretty content. Removed bid is a removed bid. You shouldn't have to pay anything as it's their error. They have a tech team so surely they can check if it was removed. £20,500 for that is insane!!! In anyones book they must realize a mistake is there somewhere. I take it you didn't get the car that was after?

BUT couldn't help myself, logged onto Enfield and Bought an Insignia and Merc ML. PS- I blame it on rich89 for bringing up the Harwood section... Then I though, hmm whats going through now...

No way!!! near enough CAP clean, IMO a car that should be well below book (£18,200 my guess)

That why I love CC's. As long as you are sensible with money, I'm a tight so and so, and you pay it off early / on time the rewards are great. Air Miles with BA, always get a Business Class seat upgrade for me and the family whenever we go to Vegas. Free flights around Europe. Obviously depends what you spend with them but still worth it if you put everything on them and can get to 20k per year. Fuel, Shopping, anything and everything goes on ours.

Winner so far!! £6k off!!! I would have definitely had some fun with him.

Had enough hearing a lot of you guys moan about the messers on Ebay. Lets turn it into some fun... Copy the layout as it makes it easier to read. You don't have to put the vehicle, but I just thought it gives a better perspective of the Ebayer. Vehice: Merc Convertible E350 50kmiles 2010 @ £13500 Ebayer: £10000? Me: £15000? Ebayer: Bought one now for £8000 Me: Ok £14000? Leader So Far:

Not quite sure I get how you can compare the packages... 3 tiers... Standard | Advanced | Premium Cost | + 23% | +65% I've worked that on the average when I was trying to get AT to work for us. We tinkered packages left right and center. Advertising 90% of stock, then down to 50% of stock, just couldn't get a decent return from the money spent. Always ended up us giving AT 60% of the profits and us getting 40% gross. Just not feasible. ALSO:- You'll find that when you cancel they'll upgrade you to Advanced to show it works. It gives you better advert placements so your stats start getting better.

Slow-ish. Unit wise we're about 2/3 from last year. Numbers wise we've gone above what we need and a few big ones (£20k +) sold yesterday. One more big one, (little nibble on a Disco @ £22k), accepted finance, checking with the wife so hopefully today or tomorrow. If that gets over we'd be even on numbers from last year. A lot of heavier stuff has gone this month for us, smaller stuff, not so much. Also got a nibble on my wifes latest car... hahaha only sold her last one about 6 weeks ago. She wanted a car to keep as she's due soon so got get a lovely BMW 420GT again... I said I'll take it to work today to get cleaned, customer due at 2pm for a test drive, all accepted with Zuto... Hehehe fingers crossed all goes well. It's mint, so I'm expecting a sale. Grey too, fully loaded. Maybe I'll buy her a Polo next.

Yes they charge, although never used it. Should do really as my air-miles would go whooooooooooooop... We would if I was selling to a trader or another business...

Ok so I was absolutely pi$$ed that CAP-HPi had a 12 month cancellation period where you agree to all and any price increases, such a shoddy and crappy practice so I had a look about and had some very good discussions with Motorcheck. Give them a call as they have a resolution that works, while not giving CAP-HPi any more money and using their services which they credit you for. I don't want to explain to much in detail as to the ins and outs but I'm a little happier now than I was in Feb! I hope CAP-HPI folds now because of their shiftyness!! If I did this to my customers I'll have a lawsuit over lawsuit. BTW, their sales team are TOLD not to tell you about the 12 month cancellation period as we're a business and not a consumer. They're told to shaft us!!! RANT OVER Motorcheck

We don't charge any fees (Selling £3k-£30k cars). It's illegal. I don't understand the admin fee rubbish? Whenever I see admin fee on any invoices I feel it's a con. Because it is. If you can't do without the £50-£200 charges then your margins are not setup correctly or your haggling your prices too low. On a side note: Do you guys still get charged £120 + VAT from Zuto or CF247?

Ahh but does it stand up to my wifes crucifixion cooking style ^^ I love bacon. Hmmmm... Nope would still buy it. I'd sacrifice a beer a week... But I love beer... Anywhoo... It's no surprise and certainly shouldn't be a surprise that AutoTrader keep having price increases. The equity firm who bought Guardian Media Group (AT), Apax Partners, are notoriously known for taking everyone and everything for every penny. Nothing will change. Look into the Equity firm. They do not care. They will have a contingency in place just in case every dealer in the UK pulled out of AT. That's right, unfortunately for some of us we do not get a good return from AT. I've used the money from AT for a SKY Media campaign. Promoting our workshop services and put a £2,000 budget to promote our PCP deals from Facebook. We're giving AT a LOT of money but that doesn't mean you can't be resourceful and spend it wisely else where. Have a look into those campaign ideas. Workshops full, great brand awareness campaign and the social media PcP campaign is doing pretty good. I'll be doing my ROI stats at the end of this quarter so not long now so will be more than happy to share what works for us.

Best post I've read in a long long time. I get why people advertise with AT and I get why people don't. What I don't get is why people constantly bring up AT and not get each others opinions and feel the need to indirectly show or prove they are the ones thinking correctly. There are no right or wrongs, no winners or losers, just a bunch of different opinions. Is it the most expensive? Yes Is SKY TV the most expensive? Yes Are Bacon Rashers from Tesco the most expensive? Yes I have SKY TV and buy my bacon rashers from Tesco. I do this as the product, for me, is the best. Heck of course I wish everything was cheaper, my customers probably think the same about my business and products. I don't have AT as it does not represent value for money for me and we do well with other media streams that others don't seem to. That's the art of business. Finding what works, what doesn't, what sells, what doesn't, etc.

My package with AT was - 120 cars on Advanced Package was £9,300 + VAT Went down to 60 @ £4,400 + VAT

I know one dealer, who advertises over 150 cars, pays around £9,000 but sells 30% of his stock every month from AT alone. You tell him it's too expensive and he'll laugh. If it works, as it does for the majority, and more importantly gives you a ROI then it's worth doing. IF it doesn't and in your case, mine too, then cancel. I cancelled mine awhile back as it was giving AT 60% of my profit from sales generated by them. Luckily AT were only responsible for 19-20% of my business last year (*even less this year) so it hasn't affected me. Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way defending the prices of AT but if they have customers that pay them what they charge who are we to say otherwise? Most companies in such sectors with a service operate in this manor. Look at Football Clubs for example. Ebay. Amazon. Nothing will happen with the prices if they have customers willing to pay them. Try telling some dealers to stop and come out of AT. It'll cost them thousands, some hundreds of thousands and more than likely shut them down. I get you're drive and spirit, I do, and I'm not berating what you want to achieve but you're tackling a monster with a huge axe like an ant with a twig.

Have I misread this? You have a golden goose if your paying AT £1,600 to advertise 60 cars. That's over £5,000 in the South East. We do this and have this in place for the last 3 years. In our area Motors was the worst value for money as they only sold 3 cars in the whole of last year. CarGurus was most value and AutoTrader 2nd.