Nick M.K.

It's either a route out or a route all the way IN

Apologies chaps, I was born in 1978, my earliest memories in terms of global events are probably from the Chernobyl disaster in '86.

This is actually not a bad position to be in. If it's the exact same fault that you paid them to fix ask them to please repair the vehicle "for our mutual customer" under the terms of their labour warranty. If it's a different fault: ask for a quote. If cheap and easy pay it as Gesture of goodwill. If something big and new fault, not present at the point of sale send the letter in my early reply.

He paid the specialist that was chosen by the customer, not his own garage. Personally if I cover a warranty repair that was not carried out by MY trusted garage but by one that the customer specifically chose locally for convenience I would send them to deal with "their" garage directly in the event of the exact same fault occuring three months down the line. That garage could've taken a water ingressed ECU out, dried it with a hair dryer for 20 minutes, sent the OP a bill for a few hundred pounds worth of "Full ECU refurbishment" and laughed all the way to the bank.

Don't even think about it. Just send them the letter, recorded delivery by post. They might threaten with court but chances are they will not actually do anything. I will correct you here as well. A new EML has appeared, not The EML has "returned". It couldn't return with the same issue if "their" specialist charged you to fix it and IF it is the same issue it is now down that specialist that got paid by you to sort it out.

THIS. EVERYONE that sells anything online these days needs to have the ability to take a deposit and customers trust card-over-the-phone more than anything else. You take £50-£99, they are YOURS. They stop searching, stop browsing, they start to develop a sense of ownership. Also, if you will be any good at selling stuff online you need to buy stuff online, all the time, to experience that mentality, that moment of clicking the BUY NOW and taking the plunge rather than closing the browser window and not even remembering that desire to own whatever you were about to buy.

Dear customer, I was surprised to be contacted by you regarding the new issue on the VW Polo after we rectified everything your specialist previously noted and at great cost to us which exceeded the limit of our warranty cover. This new issue was clearly not present at the point of sale (otherwise the specialist would've picked it up when he last worked on the vehicle) so may I suggest you get in touch directly with them as issues not present at the point of sale and not covered by extended warranty fall outside the realm of our responsibilities as a supplier of used vehicles. May I take this opportunity to thank you once again for your purchase and for your business. Best wishes. Selfy trader

Like a longer term Contract hire or more like Daily (Nightly) rentals?

How many people on this forum know what an Eeprommer guy is and even more interestingly, how many people know and use an Eeprommer?? I know a Polish guy, really good. Very difficult to get hold of though.

I think this is what most dealers actually prefer. Not the selling, certainly not the prep (with one or two exceptions). Many owners of larger dealerships go themselves to the auctions leaving everything else in the capable hands of their people. I still see the owner of Big Motoring World at various South East auctions doing his buying. Look out for Range Rovers at the car park with reg BIG I or BIG II.

You take the merchant provider to court for removing funds from your account when they have no legal right to do so.

Interesting topic this. My take on the specific question: Get a fell about how they sound on the phone. If you get a good feeling offer to send them £50 to their PayPal or bank account to secure the car. To some people this will be enough to hold it for you. If you don't like it let them keep your fifty quid. And my general advice after 13 years of buying cars: Don't buy exclusively from private sellers. Get into auction buying. I know it's tough, daunting and prices sometimes seem high BUT there is so much stock at auction in this WBAC age that when you become a better buyer (will take a while) re-stocking will become easy and cheap for you. You will go to one place, look at 1200 cars, pick 4-5 and this will all take you half a day at most. Electronic payment, cheap collection or delivery, secure enough, consistent enough. Then buy privately through p/ex or when someone gets in touch directly to offer you a car similar to what you sell. And when you do that pay as little as possible.

Yes and No. He had secured it with a deposit and I wouldn't have sold it to anyone else between TUE and SAT. Buyers can trust me with this 100%. However the car was always advertised on Autotrader (albeit at a slightly higher price), calls would keep coming in if someone had any interest and depending on my mood and how that person sounded I tell them one of two small lies: 1) The car is available, however we have reserved it for a customer with a small deposit, they have seen it on video, they are a long distance away and if they don't complete their purchase by midday on Saturday 22 September I will give you a call. You will be No1 on my waiting list. In fact you are also welcome to send a small fully refundable deposit to secure that No1 waiting spot if you really like our vehicle on paper / video. If you are close to us you are welcome to come and view it on the understanding that the other buyer has first refusal. People love that sort of thing. 2) The car is available, it is at a specialist company that will (this answer really depends on the vehicle) but something like refurbish the alloy wheels, upgrade the software on the navigation system, reverse a previous engine remap to return it to it's original "version" or even just carry out our final 133 point pre-sale check. I will call you as soon as it's back to arrange your viewing. *I will not offer to take a deposit in this case. If a buyer pulls out of a purchase I would usually try to keep all or part of that deposit but in this case I offered him to not buy my car before he said it and to a person like this I would prefer to return their full deposit. Good riddance! The strategy worked as I got £11 more than my original asking price from a nicer easier to deal with buyer before heaving to re-advertise or even re-prep.

That's absolutely fine. It's all about risk taking. If you are more risk prone you can do really well in this business. If a dealer sells a prestige car for 150K on a credit card they are so much braver than me, especially if they used stocking facility to buy that car in.

In fairness to them they turned out to be the nicest couple, did the whole deal in under 20 minutes. Actually the deal overall was more interesting that the last 20 minutes, I started a separate topic on it...

Sunday morning story time... Last Tuesday I took a £250 deposit on a Mercedes CLC160 Auto, a nice little thing, asking price was £5889. The customer spent 30 minutes on the phone asking me a ton of questions, literally dozens of questions. He had been looking for a good one for 6 months (!) and wanted every assurance that it will be worth his while to travel 40 minutes for mine. He'd seen my short video + 50ish photos. He had read ALL my reviews. I said to him, come down, have a look, we'll have a coffee and you'll know if it's for you. He turned up, spent no less than an hour checking everything (locking wheel nut fits, right?) INCLUDING asking me to try and take the rear number plate off because on his last Merc the bolts had seized and he'd spent a fortune getting it replaced. Drove it, loved it, left a £250 cash deposit on the understanding that his mechanic mate will come with him on Saturday to collect and will have a good look at it and plug his scanner. "He's worked on CLCs for 30 years (!!!), knows them inside and out". The same day I increased my AT ad price to £6000 exactly to measure the difference in response like I often do on sold cars (it's around 20% more on the rounded figure btw). On Friday he texted to make sure that we had two keys with it (didn't ask the first time). Yes and No I said. We have them but one of them doesn't work. It's not the battery, it just doesn't work. He then proceeded with 5 more texts asking questions about could it be this, could it be that, but they are £300 to buy etc etc. He had to have a second key. Couldn't live without it. I called him to say I think we should leave it and asked him to text me his bank details so I can refund him the £250 deposit. He said OK and texted them + "I'll still consider the car and will call you on Sat evening if I still want it". Yesterday afternoon another chap called. "Will you take £5500". No but I will take £5900 if you leave me a deposit now. He did. Came this morning, took a 20 second look at it in the heavy rain, sat inside, started the engine, said it was all great, came in my office and transferred me the £5800 balance. I pointed out the faulty key, he couldn't possibly care less. All in the space of around 20 minutes. My mistake: Not asking the first "buyer" to leave my premises when he wanted me to remove the rear number plate.

I don't envy dealers that stock a lot of newish cheap superminis and have to deal with that "market" all the time for 30+ years. Actually I'll tell you what else REALLY BUGS ME: When my buyer calls on SAT afternoon, leaves a deposit and wants to come as early as possible on Sunday morning to view and collect. Because It's very important they do it as early as possible. Is 9am early enough for a Sunday? Em, 8am would be better but ok, let's do 9. The time is now 9:13 and the text has arrived: "Running late, will be with you in 30 minutes. Sorry".

In no particular order: 1. The way some customers (punters rather) have no regard for the seller's time or the seller's ability to earn a profit from a deal 2. The way they describe their part exchanges on the phone vs the actual condition of their chariots 3. Some of the questions they ask on the phone while reading the right answer in my advert text 4. When a finance company tells me the customer is approved on my £13K car but are only willing to lend them £6K 5. Wanting to go on a test drive before they've even shook my hand Hello 6. Saying "Milk and two sugars please" when I go inside to get the keys for the car they've come for 7. Being early, late or (God forbid) unannounced for a viewing They want to leave their deposit quickly. "Hi, you've reached the voicemail of Simon. Due to the high volume of calls if you are calling to urgently secure YOUR vehicle with a deposit please send a transfer with the funds to XX-XX-XX, account XXXXXXXX using the vehicle reg number as payment reference"

That track will only work if you are selling demolition equipment.

I bought a 2009 Prius T Spirit the other day, 95K miles, Cap Clean £6600. The exact same car in 2016 would've booked at around £5.5K at those miles. Petrol and especially Hybrid prices have become stupid high so I've switched to buying diesels. Great bargains to be had, thankfully I don't aim for the local market (just outside London). My Prius was an absolute bargain too because of it's burgundy colour and a couple of BIG scratches on the rear bumper.

+1 BUT I don't wish it was cheaper. If it was cheaper A LOT more private sellers and dealerships would be on it so it would instantly become less effective. Would I pay a bit more for a more effective platform? F*** yeah! Some pay £50K per year to their salesmen but complain about £20K per year to AT which can really open up a market in a way that no living salesman can. P.S. Unrelated (or it might be): I just ordered a potty-trainer for my daughter online. It's past midday and the delivery is guaranteed for this evening. In 5-6 years time we will sell at least half of our used cars in this way. No salesman at all. If you fancy effective nationwide online advertising of course. Many thought along the same lines, tried and failed to even gain a tenth of the response. CarGurus would kill them: Errrr, no. Facebook will put the final nail in their coffin: It didn't. Findandfundmycar.com will be the solution to all our problems: People are already forgetting it. Motors has a nice interface and is a tenth of the price: They do and they are and they only provide a tenth of the response. Use an advertiser that works, not one that is cheap. Same for any provider really.

This was my thinking as well. I didn't believe they would lie for something so obvious.

Thank you for that insight. Confirms what I've been saying on another forum for years.

As some of you know I don't rely heavily on video but I have a 1-2 minute full walkaround YouTube videos embedded in my Autotrader Ads. The Autotrader response tracker tells me that some of my ads have 30, 40, 100 video views. At the same time my YouTube control panel tells me the same videos have 3,7,15 views... Is this because AT are lying (CarGurus style) or YouTube simply counts all views on a certain video through the Autotrader website / app as one single view? I am just curious as to how many customers actually watch these videos as the adverts themselves are seen by a lot of people and the phones ring on the same cars.

As some of you know I don't rely heavily on video but I have a 1-2 minute full walkaround YouTube videos embedded in my Autotrader Ads. The Autotrader response tracker tells me that some of my ads have 30, 40, 100 video views. At the same time my YouTube control panel tells me the same videos have 3,7,15 views... Is this because AT are lying (CarGurus style) or YouTube simply counts all views on a certain video through the Autotrader website / app as one single view? I am just curious as to how many customers actually watch these videos as the adverts themselves are seen by a lot of people and the phones ring on the same cars.