EPV

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Posts posted by EPV

  4. Posted

    35 minutes ago, met said:

    Just out of interest, what is the current preferred way for 'newbies' to fund stock buying in 2018. I don't think buying one car at a time and building up is workable in a realistic time frame? Other than that, save up for 10yrs, lottery win or bank robbery?:D

    I had a £15k pot that I used to buy three cars, that was at the start of the year. 10 sales later and I’ve doubled my forecourt size by reinvesting profits. It means I still have to work a day job but hopefully not much longer. 

    I’m seriously considering a credit line of some sort (either personal credit card or bank overdraft) and doubling my stock again, and just going for gold. Might be a bit premature but i’m sorely tempted. 

  5. Posted

    6 hours ago, DHill said:

    Definitely 48 hours after collection or delivery. We get stuff regularly online, delivered or collected a week later and no issues when ringing up for claims within the 48 hour period.

    Yep 100%. I’ve bought a car, paid for it 4 days later, had it collected 4 days after that (got charged storage) and made a complaint a day after it was collected. 

    • Like 1

  6. Posted

    25 minutes ago, sparky said:

    I take your point. It will never stop me buying cars that fit my profile regardless of whether i control tells me they are good news or not but it may open my mind a little to stuff I wouldn't usually look at. It's buckshee so not much to lose IMO. Enjoy your San Miguel :)

    I control and smart buying are best used when dovetailed in with your own experience. Relying on a computer to tel you to buy a certain make/model/derivative when it’s pink and hasn’t been serviced for 5 years is obviously illogical. As you are discovering, I Control opens your eyes to some things. 

  7. Posted

    6 hours ago, Arfur Dealy said:

    If you have a signed PDI and invoice stating the car must be returned then stand your ground. If you don’t, simply pay him off and learn from the experience. You have to do the job right and cover yourself. 

    +1. 

    If I may, speak frankly, you have made a bit of a mess of this. Unless I have got this wrong, you have not done a properly worded pdi, you have not issued a properly worded receipt and you have allowed the customer to chuck various parts at the car and have whoever he wants diagnose the problem. If this went to court you’d lose, badly. It’s not just about proving the car is roadworthy. 

    Put it down to experience, refund the bloke in full, apologise, try and save some reputation. Get the car back, fix the fault, sort your pdi and receipt policy/paperwork out and sell the car to someone else. 

  8. Posted

    38 minutes ago, have a word with the wife said:

    my personal smoker costs £30 a year to tax, ive got £500 in it, its worth treble, i would go 500 mile in it tomorrow without even thinking about it if need be, my trade plates are for demonstration and thats about all, how much are the trade plates that allow you to go home and shopping then ? :rolleyes:

    Same price plus some creative lyin....I mean, thinking. 

  10. Posted

    9 minutes ago, Matt Reid said:

    Thats what gives us all a bad name. surely a visit from trading standards could be arranged?

    I’m not one for grassing but that sort of thing makes me want to make an exception 

  11. Posted

    4 hours ago, Mark101 said:

    Thanks for your help on this - I have just signed up to a Car Dealer 5 package - should be live by the end of the week.

     

    Thank you Umesh, I had missed this reply - very kind and you're fairly local to me!

    You could do a lot worse than mimic what that fella does. Absolutely spot on digital marketing! 

  14. Posted

    34 minutes ago, RH Trading said:

    He's got the same number of cars but he's on the billy basic start up package as he begrudges spending a penny. I do pay more, but I get more. He's paying around £1800 for 30 cars and selling 13 cars (give or take) from autotrader per month. His cost to sell is around £138 approximately.

    Yes - I pay more for 30 cars -  £2593 per month for 30 cars, From the autotrader - I sold 22 cars in Feb, January 28 cars, December 19 cars, November 25 cars, October 29 cars, so far in March I'm on 29 cars. Total spend for past 6 months = £15,558, total cars sold as a direct result of AutoTrader in last 6 months - 152. Cost of sale per car = £102 average for last 6 months. and I still think I can do better. My average net profit per car is £769, total net profit from those 152 sales in past 6 months is £120,232 as of today so my dms tells me.  He's a bit old school John (neighbour) and see's it just as a massive cost rather than an investment, doesn't really monitor, he's in almost daily though asking me to icontol some of his cars the cheeky bugger, he actually stocks about 50 but says he cant afford to advertise the lot.

    So short answer is - Yes I'm happy to be paying more because I'm selling more and its actually costing less, its just simple maths. it works for me, speculate to accumulate and all that. I take the emotion out of it, I don't like everything the autotrader does and disagree with many of the new things they've brought out but its by far the best channel of selling cars for me - that's what my facts are telling me regardless of what I personally think 

    how many cars and how much profit made on those sales have you received for your £2m investment Trade Vet?

    I think you’ve mentioned a significant thing there as to why you sell twice as much as your neighbour and the cheeky bugger nicks it from you! 

    • Like 1

  16. Posted

    3 hours ago, Mark101 said:

    It's a long shot but having trawled various pages looking for a "Kim and Aggie" type solution, this kept popping up.

    Having read all the many positive and the few negative reviews (apt, as per other post regarding reviews) advertising a unit at £90, I thought shall I take a gamble - then I found it advertised on Amazon for £59 delivered (Prime) and thought, let's give it ago.

    Anyway, car should be out of bodyshop (bumper and door car park dinks) on Wednesday and ready for the valeters to attack the new paint with their TFR.  I will see how "clean" they can get the interior and then give this gizmo a blast (taking lots of precautions as per the many health warnings).

    Here it is, next to Quentin!

     

     

    IMG_0466.jpg

    I like your lamp. I’ll swap you a knackered mondeo for it. 

  17. Posted

    3 minutes ago, justina3 said:

    Must be a nice position to be in to have spare stock i can hardly fill the site quick enough let alone have any left over to worry about.

     

    I’d say your set of circumstances is preferable to having spare stock! 

  18. Posted

    23 minutes ago, Mark101 said:

    I cannot believe that you can get "done" for not being taxed in a pub car park (providing it was taxed or on trade plates to get there).

    All we hear about is how under resourced the Police are nowadays, so why would they bother with such petty "crime."

    I would hope that most "officials" would appreciate that someone is just trying to make an honest living.

    I think you’re being naive. “Petty crime” is a specialist subject for police these days. Serious crime is on the up and online crime is much more important it seems. As we all know the police love to target a motorist so i’d not be so confident that the police would be too busy to make an easy nick. 

  20. Posted

    22 minutes ago, Arthur thicken said:

    There is something starting to bother me about this, it would be good to see dealers get price reductions by either saying they’ll cancel or reduce their package, my concern is AT won’t care and will actually put the prices up of the franchised deares who they said had cheaper deals. The last thing I wanted to do was cost anyone money, all I wanted AT to do was prove their value to dealers. 

    I may be sounding like a broken record here but surely it’s up to each individual to extract as much value as possible from AT? It’s YOUR business. YOU should be making sure the advertising is working for you and knowing how much ROI you get from each pound you spend with AT. 

  21. Posted

    39 minutes ago, HKQAC said:

    You're right no one is forced to use AT.  If you read my original post, I said "It wouldn't surprise me if on a busy month at least 20% of my spaces online aren't in use, either with a car thats already sold or even a space that I just don't use."  I think this is the same for others, and you have to consider do ALL of your cars have to be advetised 24/7 on AT?  More and more dealers are rotating stock.  

    And your point is different because Im not saying Autotrader should hand it out for reduced prices as nice as that would be.  Just the price increases don't seem warranted, there not selling me any more cars and i don't think the average time to sell a car has gone down (As far as I'm aware).  Your point would be the same if we all got together and boycotted AT in an effort to reduce there prices.

    Definitely agree it should be cheaper for people who advertise more, economies of scale is important. 

    Prices increase. They rarely if ever go down. That’s the same for all businesses and services. If you don’t think it’s warranted then of course you exercise your right to take your business elsewhere. Personally I believe I get more from AT than they do me. That may well change when I grow larger and get more cars in! There are people making it work away from AT so nothing to say you can’t be one of them! 

  22. Posted

    2 minutes ago, HKQAC said:

    Yes you could do, but I think you're missing the point.  For dealers that rely on Autotrader but aren't happy with the price rise, we should consider collectively reducing packages to reduce our bill.  

    I think by putting the point to AT that we are willing to do this we could make a difference.  

    I'm not saying its right, but its probably something I will do going forward.  But if others would rather moan and do anything about it that's their choice!

    But it’s a business? AT is a business, not a public service we are “forced” to use. You either pay what AT want and utilise their business to the max, or you don’t. I wonder if 50% of your customers refused to buy cars from you until you reduced your prices by 20% how you would react?  You’d probably just sell cars to the other 50% and cultivate new customers? 

    So how it’s this different? 

  23. Posted

    8 hours ago, HKQAC said:

    After reading this thread I'm fuming with the amount of money i've been spending on Autotrader in comparison.  I cant believe that some people are happy to pay these big bills.  So well done for taking a stand Arthur and I hope it works out, keep us informed!

    Exactly as others have been saying is we need to make a point to AT that we won't put up with it, and we need to do so without impacting sales.  

    Hopefully I haven't lost you all here but surely the thing to do so that everyone can contribute to standing up to AT, is that collectively we all commit to reducing our packages by 10, 15, 20% as an example.  If you can make the most of your forecourt and keep all of those spaces full with cars that are actually up for sale and not sold, in theory it shouldn't impact your business dramatically?

    It wouldn't surprise me if on a busy month at least 20% of my spaces online aren't in use, either with a car thats already sold or even a space that I just don't use. 

    For ease of numbers: 100 dealers paying £2500 a month commit to reduce there package by 20%.  

    Total before: £250k a month to AT

    Total after 20% reduction: £200k a month

    AT losing out on 50K a month as a rough average.  These are conservative numbers and I'm sure we could get alot more dealers involved than that.

    Best case scenario they reduce our packages.  Worst case scenario a lot of us will see if we really need to advertise ALL our cars on AT.

     

    Depending on feedback, I'll be happy to make an online petition to see how many people would be willing to put there name down to reduce there AT package slightly, then I'll forward to Autotrader!

    Thanks

     

     

     

     

    You could just cancel your contract with AT?