Lakeside

So basically her son has crashed it and fed his mum some bull that the bumper “just fell off” then?

No reserve is pretty much just the scrap value stuff. Trade is anything newish with mega miles or rough bodywork, older stuff with low mileage and clean, cat c/d’s. Select tends to be clean with good history and mostly AA assured and premium is stuff under a certain age/mileage although a few still seam to slip into the wrong catagories.

Well to put it into perspective I bought a 58 308 1.4 out of UKCGR last year. Won it for around £700 plus fee’s. Turned out it had an immobiliser fault that would of cost more to repair than it was worth. Just out of interest I got an online quote off WBAC to see if it worth offloading back to them. They offered me £410+ £50 admin fee and that was before even seeing the car which they will always try and knock down more on inspection. So if that’s what they gave the original owner for it BCA made around £500 on just that one car and that was on a cheap day. Cap was around £1500 on it if I remember correctly.

Not all stuff sent to WBAC is private either. We’ve had a few company owned cars out of UKCGR.

We must be lucky here, apart from the odd silly month UKCGR stuff usually goes way under cap especially in “trade”. The “select” section tends to come with its own tax though as even rough cars in that section seam to fetch a premium. A fair bit of our stock comes from there but as said it is a gamble and I would never pay over the odds for the risk. I will admit though it’s very rare we get one that doesn’t have some kind of fault, some minor, some more serious but rare we get a perfect one.

I think what he’s getting at is for the sake of a bulb the garage could of just changed it on the ramp and passed it first time. On the other hand though I can see where the garage is coming from, to many first time passes and they end up getting investigated.

To be honest I don’t think 308’s are a bad car, it’s just that engine that lets them down.

Well the weather hasn’t put people off the auctions around here this week. Prices still through the roof. When will it end!

If it’s the same “Prince” engine as the 308/mini/1-series etc I’ve wiped my hands with them. Terrible engines and riddled with problems. I’ve only ever lost money on three cars and thry’ve all been Peugeot’s with that engine fitted.

Well this year so far has been totally different. Lots of interest and plenty sold so far. Just hope it carries on.

I could be wrong but I’m sure the AA inspection guys that come out are the same team that do the “assured reports” for bca. If that’s the case I wouldn’t trust them anywhere near a car I was buying.

Ukcgr is all the scrap from we buy any car which is now owned by BCA

Because apparently we had a legally binding verbal agreement

Well the plot thickens. I’ve had Tigra customer number one messaging me this morning claiming he’d already bought the new seat and isn’t happy that the car is no longer available so will be sending me the bill for it in the post. Oh and apparently had already taxed and insured it? Not sure how without the ref number off the v5 but still. I’ll wait and see.

I had it this weekend. A couple came down to look at a Tigra I had on Saturday, loved the car but his Mrs wasn’t happy about a bit of wear on the drivers seat. We agreed a price but no deposit was left as it was subject to him seeing how much a new seat would cost him first. Sunday and I get another phone call from someone else wanting to view it. They came down and bought it straight away for more than the offer from the first couple. Happy days. First customer rang me back last night saying he’d found a seat on eBay so would be down Monday to collect it. Sorry pal sold it this morning

We’re purely internet based but only part time. We had a very slow year last year, luckily as it’s only a secondary income we didn’t need to rely on it. This year seams to have picked up a lot better so far though.

Due to the amount of no shows last year I never go out of my way for customers anymore. They can work around me, if I’m not around then tough, they can wait until I’m back. That big black hole they all seam to fall into and never be seen again on the way here must be bigger than I thought.

Midlands prices had seam to come down a bit this week until today. Just watched the ex police sale at BCA Wolverhampton. What a Joke! Who wants a ragged to death ex police panda car at well over cap clean?

I get loads of low ballers. My recent favourites have been a chap making a genuine offer of half the asking price. I replied telling him he’d mistaken me for DFS. Another guy was trying to knock a wedge off as in his words he “needed to put fuel in his car to get to me” I replied that he needs to put fuel in his car to get his food shopping each week but I bet you don’t ask the cashier in Asda for a 25% discount.

Bca measham today, again waste of time. Highlights of the day for me was seeing a Mini Clubman with a Cap clean of £4400 fetch £5500 and a 57 plate Astra with 120k fetch £1400. Cap clean was under a grand and it wasn’t even clean.

They still do.

A year or so back I had an MG ZT cdti Auto. Same as the 75 but slightly more sporty, it wasn’t low mileage and wasn’t exactly mint either. I put it up for £1795 thinking I was being cheeky and honestly the phone rang off the hook, could of sold it ten times over. Easily the most interest I’ve had in a car for a long time.

Problem with eBay auction I find is for every one genuine bidder there’s ten time-wasters. Atleast with classified/pro you don’t lose anything, with auction you’ll lose listing and final value fee’s.

One thing I’ve learnt in this game, there is some strange people about.

Again, we do most of our business through eBay and again a lot of our sales come from messaging only. I defiantly wouldn’t ignore it completely, I don’t understand why anyone would do that unless you feel your selling enough through phone calls not to bother. Same as I don’t understand the people on here that insist on only buying cars from auction and believe every private sale is a con or a lay-by dealer even though auction prices can be double.