Nick M.K.

Do you mean publish a completely identical advert using a different reg for a normal S-Line? This is a neat idea which I should've thought of. With both adverts running it will get my car in all searches anyway and I still get to have a Great price marker against one of them. The only hurdle is the recent AT check for advert mileage against last MOT mileage. I need a donor reg of a very similar or at least lower mileage car so it doesn't flag a discrepancy.

Mine does, in EU member states plus a couple of others. Obviously this will be different post Brexit.

I've had a fair amount of interest in it, two customers were not accepted for finance, I had agreed a deal with a couple three weeks after we got it in stock and when they came to collect it they saw a C Class Estate I had just bought the day before and wanted it instead for the same price as the Audi (£1K more than I would ask for it after full prep), two other people wanted too much for their part exes so there was a fair bit of activity around it. I am not very keen on reducing it further as I don't think it will make huge difference.

Maybe my GREAT price indicator will go out the window when I do that. Will try and report back. So yes, if I downgrade the Variant to just "S-Line" the Retail price goes down from £13400 to just under £12K and my price marker gets lost.

I have an overage Audi Avant S-Line "Black Edition" which should've been sold by now but it's still here. AT Great price, same price from the start with minor adjustments only. If you do an AT search and specify "S-Line" in the Model Variant it does not appear in it at all! You have to specifically select "Black Edition" to find it and I think some people just don't. Is it a good idea to manually edit (downgrade) the car model so it appears in the main S-Line search list?? https://www.autotrader.co.uk/classified/advert/201809120428008

Other than the HUGE motorway tolls on the French and Spanish motorways? NO

It publishes a specific phone number which is different to your actual number, only the front five area code digits stay the same. Punters dial it, it diverts to your actual number and plays them a message "This call may be recorded". At the same time it plays you a message "This is another enquiry from eBay".

To the ferry or Chunnel yes. Beyond that there is no need to have UK road tax so no need for the plates.

Actually their foreign yard guys are the ones that can and will help if you can find one of them. The place is just huge and they park the sold vehicles in a remote compound. A 15min brisk walk if you can’t be bothered to wait for their shuttle bus.

Plan on spending at least an hour from arriving there to finding your parked car. Add 30 minutes if it needs a jump start :-)

Fleet, plenty of taxis, £10 to BCA

This sounds more like a DSC / ABS control unit fault, especially if you don't have fault codes stored in it. It's an expensive unit but various companies repair it, BMW also sell a repair kit for it. The NOx sensor fault in the engine ECU is a coincidence, I always get them on that engine.

+1. It happened automatically. eBay is a great source of callers that have at least 20 questions. Number one usually "Why are you selling it" :-)

My first AT package in 2010 or 2011 was around £700 + vat for 7+2 adverts. At the moment it's £1250 + vat for 12+2. When you take into account the double stock offer which wasn't around in 2011 (I don't think) I don't see a massive price increase if the number of ad slots stays the same. My margins have certainly increased over these years.

I was thinking exactly the same as Simon but the £175 are so low that for me it’s worth having it just for the 10-15 sales it does generate over a year, one of those deals (and the p/x and the p/x of the p/x) in 2018 netted me over £5K alone so I am keeping it. For now.

"Thank you for your time" "It's the first one we've looked at" "I've been looking for 9 months now and I WILL know when I see the RIGHT car" "Thank you for your time again" "Oh, it's been sold. How much did you sell it for" "I can't put a deposit down but if someone wants to buy it can you call me?" "We are looking for our daughter. She doesn't know what she wants" "This is a great car, thank you for showing it to us. We only wish it was black, not white, automatic, not manual, diesel not petrol and it was closer to our £7K budget instead of the £10900 asking price. We'll think about it and will let you know, at least now we know where you are" "Many thanks for your time!"

People not turning up to “appointment only”, then switching their phone off.

So the Expensive Autotrader has 504K listings and the FREE site will not have more if everyone is on it so it works??? The eBay, Gumtree, Facebook, CarGurus, Motors, AA, Parkers people will not want to be on it?? Of course they will. And when too many people sit on a branch they usually break it.

I think HELL NO!!!! Free advertising??? Where do you think your stock will rank among 3 million used car listings?? How easy would it be to find? How will you compete with all street traders with £100 margin? Expensive is good when it works.

No way. Danny was / is a legend. I miss his spelling deeply.

It is not that big, certainly not as big as BCA Blackbushe. They did buy up a lot of neighbouring land nad have planning permission for 5 billion (yes!!!) worth of residential development in what could become a prime West London location (if you don’t mind the world the world famous Wormwood Scrubs prison nearby) I need an Edit button

This is a great comment which perfectly shows how hard it is to please every customer in this business. Some say they want to buy from the comfort of their own home, some need to go and look at multiple pitches and cars, most are somewhere in-between. Most don't trust us. Getting it right is far from obvious and straight-forward but I feel buying in general (hotels, flights, electronics, books, music, films, even food and clothes) is moving more towards "from the comfort of the home" rather than "go and see many".

Not bad, especially considering I've never had one :-)

I am not so worried about the world ending (if that was the case the discussion would be about Healthcare problems or Mr Trump) but missing out on sales, especially in larger operations would certainly happen. In the same way your cars would be dirtier if you had a team of 3 valeters of which only one (the highest paid one) did most of the work and you sacked him.

Umesh, I meant that a dealership with well utilised AT package should do better than the same dealership without. They could be doing very well without AT 5 years on, better than in the past but what I meant was that had they stayed with AT all these years they would’ve sold more cars to a wider customers base and would’ve grown more. They had a couple of tough years attributed to the Scottish independence referendum and uncertainty in the offshore oil industry, an AT presence would’ve given them nationwide exposure in markets beyond Scotland where both theose factors didn’t make such an impact.