Contracts

Thanks, will give it a try

Spec check is handy but don’t trust it for Land Rover / Range Rover as it often adds and misses items. Also on newer BMW’s it lists the packs by individual item cost which is handy but I think newer buyers search for the actual pack names e.g comfort pack. One of the traders who buys from us only values cars using the Autotrader dealer app. It sometimes works in our favour as we say see a car at £7k trade A/T list it a lot more. I also believe he prices his cars in line with Autotrader so they show as “Great Price” for customers.

Are you in the motor trade?

I don’t get involved with them but the admin girl that does is having a battle as they have cashed the cheque but only renewed on set of plates and sent a refund for over payment, we sent a new cheque, only renewed one set again.... I think she has now sent seperate cheques.

Just had to take an X5 M-sport back in, massive spec but 120k. Sales exec who is no longer with us valued it in writing last year for January at £10k so we have stood on. No idea what book he was looking at but it ain’t trading at £10k....

Got it in one, Sandero “Access” no less. I forgot they don’t even have radios and you need to put the key in the door to unlock them. Pity the nurses who have had to drive around in them, luckily for them they have just renewed into Seat Ibiza’s

So I brought 2 retail ready five door hatchbacks back in today, they are 2016/65 plate, both just over 35k with main dealer history, £2000 a piece. Any ideas what they are?

Well done on moving it on. I think lots of people believe they are buying investments with anything over 20 years old and sub 50k. Fiat Coupes, Alfa GTV etc are all on the up but a Mazda 323? Not a fairground ride I would want to be on when the music stops.

Luckily not our loan car, Volvo main dealers but still charging us £15 a day for the insurance. So far we have agreed to replace the tyre, Volvo have downloaded updated nav maps FOC plus some software updates. Apart from that they can’t find a single fault but they have him going in later to go out in the car.

So a quick update, my XC60 man has been into Volvo today. They have looked at his list and have not found fault with anything apart from concluding that the car probably does vibrate but they won’t drive it as it has a sizeable bulge to the near side front tyre along with alloy damage which definitely was not there when he collected it. As he is refusing to acknowledge this is his responsibility he says he is keeping the courtesy car until it is sorted.... Volvo are being quite good about it and will try the car with a different wheel tomorrow and update.

Is anyone still using it? In the past I have used it to source a few cars but over the last few months everyone I have called seems to have a story. As for selling, we used to sell a lot of cars off there but anything I put on these days gets very little interest apart from the normal 2 e-mails (what will buy it? and the other is generally an offer of 15% off trade).

Have only ever managed to buy a couple of cars from Sytner auction. Both times I was highest bidder but reserve was not met but a quick call and a price was agreed. I am not sure everything that is outside their retail scope ends up on there or the standard auctions.

That’s an understatement! for us, the number of cars we sell via Autotrademail etc to dealers who don’t even seem to be members on there, more get someone else to log on for them.... Would be interested to hear the outcome as I have always believed once it’s in its in!

Sort of reminds me of the time I saw my old company car with our logo on the plates on Traffic Cops without insurance, tax or licence... I assume most dealers get boomerang cars from customers. Have an Evoque due back next week that we have sold three times in the past, the gift that keeps giving.

Decided having mine on mute is best, in the event of a crash I don’t want my last moments being remembered as Car Karaoke to Radio 2...

They must have been, absolutely no logic to it but then demos are VAT Q but we are finding more dealer groups will only sell to us if we tax and register (one even refused to supply a used car after they invoiced us and we paid for it). If you go on Autotrader there is a big difference between VAT Q and Margin cars on the 2018 facelifts. Transporters I understand but I thought Ranger 3.2 Wildtraks were way off book at the moment?

Have an odd one ongoing. We don’t normally sell out of manufacturers warranty but made an exception for a decent 15 plate Volvo XC60 with 50k, full Volvo history. Sold to a guy from Cornwall, the day after taking it says the collision warning auto brake system does not seem to work as he can get right up to the car in front in traffic. Offered him to take it to Volvo which he said he will book in over the new year. Have had a long e-mail today with a list of “faults” including sat nav maps out of date, gearbox holds low gears when accelerating hard, auto wipers slow to detect rain, wheel wobble at 80mph+, poor DAB reception, central locking noisy. I don’t think any of these would be addressed by a normal warranty company but I have e-mailed him to ask him to book into Volvo to check all the faults and come back to us. Hopefully they will give him he correct answers.

To be fair having viewed mine you can only see the plates of other cars clearly of you are behind them or they are in focus for a few seconds. They are just handy as a back up as most detail is captured. One of the companies we look after had their footage passed to the police and an insurance company following a driver hitting their van on a traffic light controlled roundabout. The other person swears they did not go through a red light and our client had but the footage was clear enough to see our client was in the right. Sadly being van drivers they do tend to be in the wrong most of the time.

Have we found the forum version of Alexa with the answer above? in answer to the question, we run dashcams in our staff cars, we have a couple of different ones as they were purchased to trial for a client about 5 years ago. The market has changed a lot since then with Nextbase becoming the retail favourite. To be fair when we were looking the client wanted the unit to be discreet so we avoided units with display screens as they thought people would steal them like Tom Toms but to date I have not heard of a dash cam theft. This gave the problem that on occasion we needed the footage the camera had been knocked and was incorrectly angled making it useless. The one I have got in my car is called a Mobius? They were around £50 a unit and to be fair it is very good quality and you would never know it was there. I am not sure how well this unit would fair being taken in and out a lot as it is pretty much hard wired in behind the mirror. If it is a single unit and for ease of use as mentioned above the Nextbase unit seems to cover most requirements.

Brought over the phone, credit card deposit, sent plate driver. To be fair it was the cheapest in the country by a long way but it was their attitude that sucked.

Any sub two year old Range Rover or Range Rover Sport at Cap Clean. Do really well flipping these with the right colours, options and price point. The week before Christmas one I wanted went £16k over Cap, I was happy going £5k over as it had a couple of options but it was at least £5k more than I can buy one from a Land Rover dealer.

Purchased a full retail price car from Evans Halshaw earlier this year. Being under 3 years old and in warranty thought it would be OK. Roof had been poorly painted, budget tyres, no spare key, no handbooks, no service history, no log book on collection so unable to tax until they managed to get a scan sent over. Apparently if these items are not mentioned in the advert consider getting them a bonus (they put that in writing). With their buying service and PX’s they seem to advertise the cars before putting them through workshop to check they are fit for retail.

Am not in the office this week but I know one of the guys has converted a Christmas day Autotrader e-mail yesterday. Apparently vans are getting a few enquires with at least one done today plus a Navara in prop.

We purchase quite a few late ex demos etc that we can’t find in our normal supply routes and it amazes me the condition the cars arrive in, I know we are seen as “trade” so they don’t always get a proper clean and to be fair we don’t often get much off either.

Supplying new cars directly to end users via outright purchase or PCP is a very closed shop controlled by manufacturers and franchise dealers who spend a fortune building their shiny showrooms with corporate floor tiles. Over the years many brokers have got involved in the market (Drive the deal, Broadspeed etc) but they have to supply the car via a franchise dealer. CarWow seems the biggest introducer at the moment but people I know that have used it to get the best price online and then use it for negotiation at the local dealer. If you know a way to buy new U.K. market cars without them going through a main dealer I am all ears.