Nick M.K.

If they ask you where the other $50 million is coming from you can write down my name. Nick M K Hence the need to spend a lot of time on board bulletproof yachts in international waters.

They were clearly creating content for a fashion catalogue but one of the photos makes them look like they are in bed.

Well, in the case of Roman Abramovich it was reasonably simple and very similar to what we do, only with bigger numbers: In 1996 he took out a $50 million loan from a friend's bank with the help of another friend (Boris Yeltsin, then president) and teamed up with a third friend Boris Berezovski to give a $100 million loan to the Russian Government to get through the winter AND through the next election. Instead of returning the loan the Government gave them the ownership for SibNeft, an oil company. A few years later they sold the company for $13 Billion BACK TO the government. #simple

Still being kept busy by private owners with mileage limits on their PCPs no doubt.

NO. We get them out in a £10K+ car with £500-£1000 deposit in under 40 minutes and in under 4.5% interest. Rates are still very low, the lenders are still lending and at this moment there is nothing wrong with people's finances. They want cars, they are buying, looking, travelling to buy, as long as you reply to their enquiry. We must've typed our replies at the same time. I am indeed having a great month and nearly broke every record with 3 viewings yesterday on 3 cars BUT the only record I actually broke was my high blood pressure. And blood temperature. And redness in skin colour. One didn't buy because of a panel gap too wide (his pound coin shouldn't have fit in that gap, I had a photo in my ad showing it was absolutely fine), the other has been here before and went away to think some more and the third loved the car, loved everything and just felt the need to see another "few" examples to be sure. "Can I do anything to make you forget the other examples? Yes, you can knock off £800 from your price. Erm, the M25 is 3 miles that way"...

The customer bought the car from the finance company and the finance company are liable for its faults. The finance company bought the car from the OP in a business-to-business transaction which is not subject to CRA. If this case goes to court under CRA it will likely get thrown out. If the finance company wishes they can take the OP to court under contract law. This is extremely unlikely though but they will certainly refuse to work with that dealer again. Easiest thing: refund the finance company BUT attempt to negotiate a refund reduction, ask for the vehicle back, sell it for parts and move on. Second easiest thing: Call the finance company and tell them you don't wish to entertain their claim in this business to business transaction.

It depends on the stock really and how much you are aiming for. If you aim for £1K per car I can promise you you won't get £2K per car. If you aim for £3K per car it's entirely plausible that you can sell 4 cars with £2K profit on each. That's why I dislike retail-back and favour a more simple strategy: buy for as little as you can, sell for as much as you can. In my example above the (gross!!!) margins will be: S320: £4K Passat: £2200 Left hand drive Jeep: £2400 BMW i3: £1500 (if I get asking price) Of course to get the p/x stock with that sort of margins (I will achieve close to them, I promise you) I need the overpriced "retail" stock to advertise and get me the customer as I don't operate on a "We will buy your car for cash" basis like many others can and do.

It's the 8 year old stuff that can have that sort of margin rather than newish run of the mill superminis. I have three part exes I am about to retail. 2005 S320CDI, came at £1000, 2005 Passat 1.9 TDI Highline, came at £400 and 2006 Jeep Cherokee Left hand drive at £1600. Each needed a bit of work and each will earn me more than the last BMW i3 I bought at BCA for £15700. No chance for finance though and the work required on some of these cars to get them up to speed will scare a lot of people off.

Fair enough, he probably fails the car on the illegal plates, then passes it on the legal ones :-) The owner of one of the MOT garages I use likes to fail his own car sometimes, say on brake discs or pads right before he replaces them. So his MOT history has a fail every year on what must be one of the best maintained 8-9 year old cars in that part of London. Fail, new pads, Pass (and the old pads were less than 50% worn but who will complain!) Fail, new bulb, Pass etc etc. He doesn't agree with me when I say he is needlessly tainting his own MOT history. He thinks his test pattern shows due diligence. I try and explain to him how the car buying public thinks and we have this conversation every time

DSLR. And to learn how to get the best out of one takes a while. The photo files I uploaded here are 100 times smaller than the originals because of what the direct upload tool allows here. Here are the ones from Flickr I had uploaded to another thread:

My favourite veteran tester failed me the other day on "Headlight height adjustment switch not working". The BMW 330i he was testing had Xenons and no adjustment switch at all. He must've had a long day and tried the dashboard illumination rotary switch instead. Should be an easy free re-test Your MOT station is probably concerned about their high straight PASS rate and they need a few "easy" fails and some advisories to reach the national average...

You quoted no less than four sentences there but whichever of the four did it for you I am glad I managed to produce a powerful piece of writing that had a profound effect. Again.

I've had a great month and to possibly make it even better I've discounted a couple of cars that I've had for a while. Small price movements, £100 here, £200 there if this gets me Great price marker even better. I also increased a couple of prices though to stay away from Priced Low. It is a good idea to shuffle you images slightly, maybe replace the "money shot" front angle with an interior photo, definitely change the attention grabber and all the details buyers would remember. A new set of photos is always a great idea but sometimes the one you already made are so good, there is hardly any point in spending another 3 hours (in my case) on a new photo session Bought a beautiful MINI Convertible today. Drove it back from Blackbushe to Bucks with the roof open, heating on, seat heating on, I must've been the envy of the M25 in the sun this afternoon. "Best time of the year to buy one" goes in my attention grabber! Being a 2.0D probably also means it's the best time in history to buy one

That's the way to do it. In this example although there are 2 transactions only one of them goes through the DVLA so everything is fine. I personally prefer it when customers do DD because there are no refunds to worry about. I had to issue a refund some months ago and since I didn't have another buyer lined up I had to register the car to our company name so we received the refund cheque in the post and refunded the first customer.

Most mechanics I know hate selling cars because they understand them well and they know how much there is that can go wrong. I am glad that I don't know what they know. Ignorance is a bliss

Yes they are within their warranty period. At 9-10 years old in the hands of several careless owners that don't know the difference between Mobil 1 and Tripple QX it's a lottery if that part will last or not. We as dealers of USED goods play this lottery with every unit of stock and sometimes lose. Should your builder be responsible for the state of your roof 30 years (3 times the warranty period) after they built the house??

Slit my wrists RIGHT NOW if I have to start selling Zafiras or Astras again. I hate the things. I hate the part exes that they bring, I hate how indecisive their buyers can be and how price sensitive they always are as if their life depends on that last £20 and how insulted they look when you mention finance... I love German cars, I am not scared of them, my last 5 or 6 personal cars have all been high mileage diesel automatic Mercs which have given me many thousands of miles of sterling service and I dread the day when we won't be allowed to drive them anymore. At over 5 years old they CAN BE very inexpensive to run and maintain if you bought well. When you are in traffic on or inside the M25 you really see how popular German cars are at least around London. On the flip side I want to see anyone's face when you call the Hyundai parts department and they tell you the cost for a complete mirror assembly for a Santa Fe for example :-) "Are you sitting down?"

Big dealerships like Sytner will always chase the manufacturer for Goodwill repairs on cars just out-of-warranty. In the last few months I've had an A/C condenser leak authorised (£1200 repair) and also a Range Extender wiring loom on an i3 (£800). I hadn't asked for this. The dealership knew the vehicles were out of warranty and chased BMW before even calling me back with Quotes. On the A/C condenser repair I had to contribute £120 for new A/C refrigerant, new type R1234yf

So my busy morning is exception, not the rule. Been emailing this chap since 7am responding to a few questions, the last one "can we view on Sunday". Yes you can, in the morning, until 12ish: "Ok. No problem would not be able to make that sort of time as we have a very small baby it would have to be probably an afternoon. Early evening. So if okay if still available next week will maybe come down next Saturday. Thank you for your time Sent from my iPhone"

The problem here is that they've driven it little and CRA will assume that a fault that presents itself in the first 6 months after the sale was there UNLESS the dealer can prove that it wasn't. ACE Engineers or DEKRA can provide an independent engineer's report but that may well say that the "chain snapped due to age-related wear and sudden breakage in the plastic chain guides which would've been present and developed at the point of sale"... BMW will not offer a contribution at over 100K miles unless the car is only a few years old. You can always offer to chase BMW for it but that's unlikely to be enough to make the customer happy. ££££ is what everyone wants.

You were already open when you supplied a 100K mile BMW (I sell them well too) but I would agree that you shouldn't rush into getting it back. If it arrives back to you, you will end up owning it. A good option if it comes to that (and if you have the stock of course) is to offer the customer another one of your cars in swap, one with lower value but similar size and condition.

@Dave2302, have you got DAS / Xentry? If I send you a MB Becker MAP Pilot Navigation module which is locked with a PIN, DAS should unlock it. Provided you have a 2011-2014 Mercedes with the Becker SAT NAV slot so you can plug it in?

I've seen before and after photos and can genuinely say that our guy is an absolute wizzard, he even manufactures very specific tools for his own use. "£50 for under 10 minutes of work? That's crazy!" No Mr Customer, the £50 are for the many years of learning and practice that it takes to be able to do what I do in under 10 minutes

Yes. It's quite common unfortunately. First get the exact mileage from your customer to establish how much have they driven it after purchase. If it's something reasonable like 2-3000 miles offer them a GOODWILL contribution towards their repair cost OR to buy the car back at a reduced price. Remind them of course that your warranty has indeed expired and that you reserve your right to have the vehicle independently examined to establish the cause for this failure.

I have a fixed package for around £80 a month with HPI. Gives me a fixed number of checks, valuations etc and works out at £2.50 for fill HPI check, £0.50 per vehicle ID and some SMMT data and £0.50 per CAP valuation. In addition I pay them optional £2.90 for Spec Checks which I absolutely need on higher value premium stock.