Nick M.K.

There is no export marker when you take your UK car to your holiday home abroad for a couple of years. You can SORN the car but most people keep taxing them. There is no easy way to tell if a car has been abroad other than headlamp stickers :-) The export marker is only for permanent export.

Or been abroad for a few years

Last year I took a 2006 Jeep Cherokee 2.5 CRD (left hand drive!) from a very respectful looking couple in their 70s, returning in the UK from Portugal... They drove to me in another car to view a newish Mercedes Estate and mentioned the Jeep. Because of the left hand drive it was difficult to arrive at a trade price "unseen" so we agreed I will go to them the next day. When I went at the arranged time the engine was running and the gentleman was cleaning the Jeep. The engine ran well, A/C was ice cold, the car looked spotless for a 12 year old 4x4 and had leather and lots of kit. I got in it, drove it around their neighbourhood, a deal was struck, hands were shaken and deposit paid. They would drive it to me the next day (a Saturday) at noon. When they came they parked it at the top of our drive with very little room to get the Mercedes out. We managed it somehow and off they went. A couple of hours later I go to start the Jeep and the key doesn't turn fully in the ignition, I can't start the thing! Plus my access for my other other cars is now extremely tight! They weren't answering their phones so I got a trusted mechanic to come out and after some looking and checking he opened the bonnet, removed the starter relay and showed me how to start the car from the pins. Two thin metal sticks, touch them together and the Jeep fired up straight away. Perhaps my customers were the luckiest people in the history of part exchanging and the ignition failed after their very last drive. The Chrysler / Jeep main dealers wanted to sell me a complete £1200 lower dashboard and ignition barrel assembly but luckily I found a company that imported only the plastic cylinder that was broken inside the original barrel. £90 all in. I took the Jeep to a very good garage that I use and a couple of hours later it was completely fixed, sweet as you like. "Your long screwdrivers are in the glovebox Nick" "What screwdrivers?" I asked "The two long thin flathead screwdrivers that we found under the driver's seat". They weren't mine though so my respectable elderly customers must've left them behind when the AA or RAC or whoever told them how to start their Jeep when their ignition failed :-))))

So when you give the lender a link to the car and the price is £7500 why would they lend another £499? This sounds too messy for my liking. And especially for the open section of this forum. I'd have to say: no FCA registration - no car finance.

Car finance or a personal loan? Can you be very clear about this. Two very different things.

Might be yes. They've fitted it the wrong way and now the floggle control unit is feeding wrong information to the MCAS.

Boys (and girls), where did that crystal ball go? Who has it???

BCA HP team they are called. They will send you a clearance email almost immediately

I personally think it's dirt cheap. Also, why are you paying £2000? My bill is less than half that.

For me personally the answer has always been NO! I can always do more and better. And I keep trying.

Well, tell them the truth: I have gone the extra mile and have spent a fair bit of time (and money) to research the service history of this car, I paid BMW their £1 a minute on the 0906 number, bought a duplicate service book and personally completed it with all the VERIFIED service information I could find and you now have a book to use to enter the service information during your ownership. Incidentally the parts desk at my local BMW dealer is so ashamed by the hoops they have to make me jump through when ordering a duplicate book (V5 in my name or an auction invoice as a minimum proof of ownership) that they ask me to buy one online (eBay) and bring it in to be stamped!!!

Tradegirl, call them again tomorrow. Tell them you've just bought the vehicle and want to check for outstanding recalls. Then casually ask them to tell you the dates and mileages of these 2 services. Buy a blank BMW service book from eBay for £20 or a generic one for £4 and a Dymo label gun. Enter the details of the two services in the book yourself with the correct date, miles and with the Dymo gun type the dealership name, post code and phone number and stick the label there. Don't pay those mugs £54 for 2 minutes of admin time!!!

Love a bit of branding: M Sport badge on ES BMWs S-Line badge on any Audi and R badge on virtually anything else VAG AMG badges everywhere on Mercs and Brabus badging on Smart

Sell it with 1 month 1000 miles limited warranty. Essentially meaning that it will be covered on it's way to Dover if anything major gives way which seems extremely unlikely. This way buyer gets a small amount of peace of mind and you get a lot of peace of mind once that 1000 rolls on the odometer.

£2.99 Febreeze on carpets and cloth seats (which I don’t often have)

When you look at it this way AT has always been the cheapest ad platform. IF used correctly of course.

Proud of you Mark. There is no point to know that an advertiser out there works well and not be signed up to them. It’s expensive but if it works then it’s worth the stretch

Yes I did ask them when I went on the paid package for the first time in 2017. They refused any notion about fake leads of course (why would we do that, they said) but I am 100% sure there was something untoward going on. I know Rory is very pleased with their performance which leads me to believe that they take from some dealers to give to others. Just like WarrantyWise did. This is even worse than AT who simply take from all dealers to give to their shareholders:-)))

One car does well on AT, the same car gets almost no view on EMP and vice-versa. I still sell from eBay but a small fraction compared to AT. I pay them a small fraction too so that’s allright. CarGurus is my biggest disappointment to date in terms of ROI. Middle package, £234 per month, NO sales and I mean none. Will ditch them. My theory is that they used to send fake leads, now they focus their efforts to promote the stock of specific dealers so the word gets out there. I am speculating of course but how come I haven’t had a single sale from this well known strong platform??

I can’t believe the DVSA have not thought to invalidate MOTs following insurance loss. You’d think it was common sense. Always always do a new Mot on a write off car to confirm that repairs have been carried out to a high enough standard and that the car is STILL roadworthy. There is no point to save the £30odd test fee.

I think it will be 19.2 19 the year and they do a new update twice a year sometimes so 19.2 or 19.4? On 16.2 you will comfortably work on vehicles up 2017 model year

For that sort of money you can use it for a year, then sell it on for the same money and it's a no brainer. Even if it doesn't have the latest updates doesn't matter that much, you just won't be able to read some 2018 and 2019 cars. No big deal.

Erm, maybe excluding MX5 because of the buyer profile :-)

Great bit of kit, I have the more basic Ethos (reads everything like the Solus but you can't do coding) If you don't do a lot of coding (new batteries, new injectors etc etc) the Ethos is great for under a grand and then spend the other grand on a Launch which can do a lot of coding and just in case one can't read something you can always fall back on the other. I have both, my Snap On is 4 times faster.

I get very annoyed with myself when I experience this, as if I should've known what everyone is after, at what exact price point, in what colour etc... Japanese petrols are in heavy demand in my area and back in the day majority of sales were diesel so there aren't many of them about. Around £3-£3500 seems a good price on AT, I am assuming you are either not on AT or somewhere closer to £2750?