sparky

Another FB deal this morning. I must admit they do taste that little bit sweeter. This one even more so as the car was advertised on my page over a month ago and had long disappeared off my timeline, but I keep targeting the same areas and planting the seeds and hey presto. Don't get me wrong, I'm not doing huge amounts off it but I reckon it's four or five deals a month that I wasn't having this time last year when I was without FB. A victory for Wales this afternoon and life will suddenly start to look a bit better than it was 24 hours ago.

I feel sick. I'm pretty sure it's not going to have a positive effect on the job in the short term. Longer term, who knows, but personally I don't see a land of milk and honey.

I would more or less echo that. However, after having what can only be described as a disastrous little spell with AutoExposure and Motors I was going back to Click Dealer, until I had a chat with the guys at Starkwood.

Thanks Gavin, You've just saved 30 minutes of my time. No disrespect to the guys and girls at TPTV, but at this moment in time I'm not really interested in what Langley has to say. We are on different pages, of different books and I'm quite happy with my bedtime reading.

This. I used to love a bit of Boris on have a got news for you but the very sight and sound of him now makes me combust like a Vauxhall heater blower. There has been far too much rhetoric coming from the out camp for my liking. Things are far from perfect now but I fear they could be a lot worse, so I'm in the better the devil you know camp and have voted to remain.

Dealer A has a motor up for sale at 5k, which according to you guys is a bad deal (booooooooo). That said, in his defence it comes with full service history, 12 months MOT, a proper warranty and the usual facilities you would associate with a good garage. Dealer A is a good guy, Dealer A's business is a good, established and reputable. He looks after his customers. Now then, along comes Dealer B with the same car, model, spec etc etc. Problem is, Dealer B's car is not quite of the same standard and provenance shall we say but, at £4250 he's offering a great deal (yeah, woop woop, high fives all round). Also, a little investigation tells us that Dealer B is not really a stand up guy and from what we can gather, his business seems to have a few enemies. He doesn't care. Whose really offering the better 'deal'?

Good man. With so much negativity around the job these days it's nice to hear some positives.

This is Captain Jamslug, we should be landing in about an hour. Just got some last minute prep to do so if your OK for 10 minutes or so we can engage in some small talk. Nothing to worry about, honest.

Moving slightly off thread, but I feel you have got to hand it the the brothers who started 247 as well as the guys who started carloans4u. Such a simple idea really that anyone of us could have come up with.

Let's be honest, it was BCA and their staples that has made you leave. Good luck.

www.carcraft.co.uk

Worth doing. £150 + VAT is not cheap but you do get full screen price with them. I've not used them for a while and then out of nothing have done two in a week. Both went with Moneyway, I doubt either would have happened if I wasn't set up with them.

Would you mind throwing some of you research this way . I can share mine, you can share yours When it comes to Sub Prime, my preferred lender is First Response. In complete contrast to a few years ago, they are super efficient in all aspects of the process, easy to communicate with and once the docs are in (which there are not many of) payout is super quick. They pay a little commission which helps and they are happy to provide as much point of sale stuff as you like, even balloons! They would be my first point of call. As for black box/PAYD finance, I'm set up with The Car Finance Company which is a lot more complicated as it involves their rep signing the customer up, umpteen proofs and the fitting of the box. That said, their online dealer proposal system is very good in my opinion and keeps you in the loop. In terms of numbers, I maybe do one sub prime deal a month as it's not something I've really looked to get into, but no doubt it's big business. I do feel a little uneasy about what they charge and would never force someone into it, but there are plenty of sub prime customers out there who are in the market so I feel I may as well try and have a piece of it. What eases my guilt somewhat is that my sub prime customers are driving around in decent stock cars that are well serviced for them and as long as they continue to look after them they will do them just fine whilst maintaining some value. It's the customers of sub prime out fits that weld these customers into the **** that nobody at auction wants then wash their hands of them that I feel sorry for.

Out of interest, which auctioneer is it?

I had it for 6 months or so and my thoughts on it are similar to RH Trading. I ignored the pricing aspect of it but the 'desirability' tool was quite handy and again, like RH, I bought cars that I wouldn't normally have bought and they sold in pretty quick time. Agree with RS though, the pricing aspect of it is a joke and that's why I binned it as I was only using half the product.

Ha! Yes I know. I once contacted Tess Daley to see if she would do something similar for me, sadly she was in a meeting at the time.

Unlike the other dealers me and you have spoken about, these guys seem to be selling at 'normal' prices. Obviously I've no idea what they are paying for stuff. As far as I can see, sales appear to be coming from FB, local advertising and repeat business/word of mouth. Hats off to them I say.

Lakeside Car Sales, Redditch. I've yet to come across a dealer based on a Ind Estate who appears to have so little online presence (apart from a huge FB following) yet shifts so much metal at normal old fashioned prices. Very impressive.

By the looks of it, they have been on there since the year dot. As ever, you just have to go with your gut I guess.

I was thinking £200 for a half page, certainly not £500-£600. There is a dealer not too far away from Umesh and SC who from what I can gather, only does half page adverts, has a basic website but a large following on FB and boy do they seem to be shifting some metal. This prompted my research but as SC says, I think I'd rather put that type of money into FB.

Thanks Umesh With regards to the costs, I don't know what I was expecting but I wasn't expecting it to be almost half of you know what. With a digital mindset, I can't see me taking the plunge.

I can't remember the last time I put a classified advert in a paper, suffice to say it was when I had hair and was a stone lighter. Anyway, just been pricing up some adverts in the local rags and couldn't believe how much they cost. My local paper group has four newspapers under it's umbrella which gives it a coverage of circa 100k. For a 30 car advert I was looking at £150 pw which in this digital age seems a lot to me. A small block advert with just the website in it was £80pw and then holy smoke batman, a half page advert featuring pictures, monthly costs etc was coming out at £600pw! Now obviously it's all about the ROI, but I was quite shocked at the cost of it. I was thinking of doing a bit of hybrid advertising but not at those figures and so I'll just be using the paper to learn about how much Big June won at the bingo. I know some on here use classified adverts so I'd be interested to know what sort of money you pay, what coverage that gives you and what sort of returns in brings in.

You have every right to vent because that is totally out of order. I hope you sell the car PDQ and give a cyber two fingered salute to the weasel. Trying to spin that into a positive, at least you don't have him as a customer, a friend, family member, lover etc etc.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to put a Triumph Stag on ebay. It's goosed ( although I dare say Manheim would give it a bronze label) so any ideas on how best to describe it or should I just sell the car to myself and then put it on my private ebay account?

It is indeed, the silver one is not much better as many major issues are still not covered so basically, all we are left with is gold if you want the same level of cover as you would get from BCA. This on the back of increased fees and a farcical website makeover just pushes more of by business to BCA.