MarkTVS

My better half overhead me on the phone the other day talking about a dodge part exchange and started excitedly asking me about the car, her assuming it was something special like a charger Unlucky for her an me the trade in was a Dodge Journey, gave well below bottom book as a trade in, it’s a 09 2.0 auto 7 seater with 100k miles, was going dispose of it by trading it till I realised they use the 2.0 tdi vw engine, so it is currently undergoing prep to be retailed as there seems to be a brilliant mark up for it!

I think the torque settings from the Half inch gun are brilliant when tightening a wheel you can pick from one ugga dugga or two ugga duggas

Have they stopped charging? I was told today there was no referral fee and I even got it in writing as I have been told that before then sent a bill later? Just not sure if it’s just a one off?

Been bitten once by a nasty fiesta that was ten times worse than the photos looked. I don’t usually make the effort going to a sale unless I’m sure I can buy 3/5 cars or it’s a wasted trip. However if it’s a niche car I will sometimes buy online as opposed to making the effort I generally sell older prestige / hot hatches from 2008/2012 I don’t mind grade 4 etc if it has good history as paintwork isn’t that expensive it’s just cracked bumpers etc I hate!

lmfao

What’s a quiet day? We are constantly chasing our tails never really get any opportunity to relax apart from an odd Sunday

Will be the clutch on the ac pump more than likely there fortunes from Vauxhall not worth fixing

Out of curiosity what is the one series recall for? I have just taken a deposit on one we have today and the customer mentioned an outstanding recall.

That wasn't on a Honda was it Dave?

I have my CPC etc, the truck gets inspected every 12 weeks or so though we don't require them, I will look into this further as Im not sure you are correct here but I could be wrong.

We have a 3 car Iveco Eurocargo, one on the top deck and 2 on the bottom, it was a bargain buy, ive had it a year and its more than paid for itself already, BCA Edinburgh charge us £50+Vat a unit to Glasgow, I take the truck with 2 bodies therefore bringing back 5 at a time. Way I see it that is £250+vat im saving, less fuel, operating costs, staff time etc I still think the truck makes over £100 a run. Planning to run it another 6 months to a year and change up to a bigger 5/6 car transporter. Also plan on getting a small single car Boxer/Ducato type van that I can send down south and that will be decent on fuel, the big truck is too greedy to send anywhere for just one car. Operators license is not always required, I read the manuals and made lots of enquiries and due to the fact transportation is not our main business and the truck only does one small journey a week I was told it is exempt. We don't run a tacho either, Just a manual logbook.

I tend not to like stuff that has had engines changed, I feel it puts customers off, I would only mention it if a customer asked, the added bonus though is that it has been done by BMW main dealer.

I bought my personal car from a fairly large independent dealer down south, they stock 150/200 cars. Now the car I bought was cheap but a good 7/8 hours from me I did some online research to find out about the company before I made the decision to buy. It struck me as odd as their reviews were the best I’ve seen in the industry for such a large dealer, 4.9 out of 5 on just about every platform. How can they be so perfect? We all know customers can be hard work and I just couldn’t figure out how they got so many 5 star reviews. Anyway I bought the car, they were actually brilliant guys to deal with, about 2 weeks later I received an email from them requesting a review but there was a slight trick, the email explained that they contacted every customer who bought a car that month and for every 5 star review they received they put £10 in a pot and at the end of the month one customer from the month won the full pot of money. It then hotlinked to review sites there was Autotrader, Facebook, google, and a couple of others. It encourages you to leave a review on every platform. For example one person could leave the same review on 5 different platforms and that would be £50 in the pot. There was also pictures attached of customers receiving their huge cardboard cheque in front of their premises for £800 odd. I was actually fairly amazed by it, I thought it was a brilliant idea but can’t decide if it’s cheating slightly or not! Whats everyone else’s opinion?

I like to do follow up calls, generally after a week, though I do tend to avoid the customers that have been hard work, it is generally always well received and generates us some good reviews!

Welcome! Best of luck! Doing it from home is great with little overheads, I quite fancy in ten years moving away from the stress of a bigger pitch and selling 4/5 specialist cars from the house!

My weekend car is an Audi R8 V8 but it rarely gets driven, the mrs has an older S3 that's a brilliant runabout. Need something bigger and more sensible soon though to replace the S3 due to expanding family, im trying to convince the better half that a C63 estate is the way foward

I did start out buying lots of French stuff, the margins are great, there is lots of headaches with them but they were great to start with, now I actively avoid French stuff.

Ok therefore bca are in breach of this with just about 50 percent of the stuff they sell then? Laws are a great thing but whether it would stand up in court is another thing. Police round here cant even make a speeding find stand up in court most times.

Just curious as to who owns a personal car and who just uses stock cars? I do have a personal car but only really use it on days off, I take fresh stock cars home most nights as I find it helps me spot any hidden issues and underlying problems.

Schotts is never a place I was a fan of Rory, I have only bought 3/4 cars there over the years. We mainly buy from BCA Edinburgh, Livingston, Kinross and occasionally Morris Leslie in Perth, I did buy a 2014 E Class from Manheim in Colchester recently and I felt I was raped by the fees and delivery and how useless the surecheck was. The car arrived with a Aux battery malfunction, a SRS airbag issue - neither of which was on sure check and after paying them over £400 for delivery the car was driven up as opposed to a truck which added a good bit of mileage onto the car!

We do advise the customers that they should not be driven without a mechanical inspection and advise they should be transported away and they sign a disclaimer to this effect. All defects we are aware of we also note on the invoice. No issues as yet to be honest.

If your current logic isn't working then you need to sit down evaluate what you have done and where you are going wrong and trying another route. With regards to buying stock at auction, don't necessarily buy stuff as it is cheap as the reason its cheap is it may have lots of issues, I would rather pay more for a clean tidy car with bags of history and a sensible mileage than get something that's grade 5 with poor history. Its less donkey work when you buy something tidy to begin with.

I use codeweavers and mine is meant to be £70 a month as mine is set to the choice of 2 lenders, blue or close, It is only £50 for one lender and Blue had offered to cover the cost of that but I didn't want to be restricted. It does save a lot of time and is worth the money, we have had a lot of teething issues to the extent I refuse to deal with our area manager as he is a useless twat however the rest of the team in the office are great and we now have most of our issues sorted.

We generally put the scrap on gumtree/scumtree and it sells within a week, though it Is made extremely clear that it is sold as spares or repairs. Usually we make £100/£200 on them aswell, they always get at least a basic valet. For example we got a 2009 Ford Fiesta Zetec S in last wee with 110k cap below was £1950 but I gave him £1100 for it as it was BCA grade 6 or 7 if it existed, 2 dangerously bald tyres, needing near enough every panel painted and a few replaced, interior was filthy, quick valet and sold within 2 days for £1250 signed as spares or repairs.

I think we are about 13 at the moment which is bang on where I want to be, one a day is good enough on average, finding it hard to replace stock at the moment, all the Scottish auction stuff at the moment is crap. Mark