Lazz

At their present profit per unit they do not have a sustainable business and if they carry on as they are, it will not be if they go out of buisness but when.

I would recommend self warrant and put the money in a pot, prep the cars right and you will be surprised how few comebacks you have and watch the pot grow, you’ll be surprised. I got fed up with the grief of dealing with warranty companies not wanting to pay, and I would not go back now, and you have the flexibility to look after customers.

Normally ask if you can deliver it.

I remember them days, drive to the local office take your number, wait your turn and someone would sort you out, sorted. Anything government related these days is a total shambles absolutely shocking but what choice do you have and they know that.

We presently subcontracting this work out and i am thinking of getting a employee trained up to do it so we can hopefully bring the cost down and have more control over how quickly we can get them done. Anybody have any experience of the courses available to learn this or can recommend any. I need something that will take someone from never picking up a spray gun(but is keen to learn) to someone who can do this job.

Oil and filter and MOT at the least and stops them taking it elsewhere and all the pain that can cause.

Realistically i would of thought that google or any of the tech giants could bury autotrader and the likes of if they want and i reckon its not if, but when. I think it is perhaps happening slowly anyway with the younger generation, when i asked my sons (early 20's) where they would search for a car they said google and had never heard of autotrader. Not sure if i will see it in whats left of my working life, but i do hope so.

would be nice to see a big player like that enter the market and shake it up. The likes of autotrader should be concerned if these type of players enter the market and i think they will, chasing the revenue, they certainly have the resources and know how to do it.

I use car dealer websites, easy enough people to deal with, maybe not the best looking websites out there but for the price you can't moan and will generate invoices etc if you set it up right. So in all i am very happy with them (i am not affiliated to them in any shape or form)

Thanks all for your input i advertise over autotrader/ebay/gumtree and motors and i have been finding ebay has been getting worse for leads to the point i am properly not going to bother renewing my contract with them and i suppose at £25 per month for someone else to upload everything instead of doing it manually has got to be worth it?

I don't advertise on facebook and i know some people have quite a good success rate with it, but do you do it all yourself or do you farm it out to a 3rd party to handle it for you and if so who ? Got plenty of time on my hands at the moment with being closed and am really just looking at all advertising platforms to make sure i am not missing a trick and am trying to bring myself up to date with everything.

The last person i had on the one i was selling wanted to take it another garage to partly dismantle the engine and check something obscure he had read on the internet, I told him he was having a laugh and the car was going nowhere, told him i did not piss around like this when i brought it, i just looked around paid the man and then drove of into the sunset which he did not take to kindly to and our conversation came to a abrupt end. Complete and utter space cadets, it was the most viewed car i had on the internet by a mile and generated some of the worst customers/dreamers i have had the misfortune to come across. Never again.

I take my hat of to the people who make a living out of that stuff, I had a modern classic advertised last year and the amount of dreamers and time wasters i had enquiring about it made me lose the will to live with that car. I don't have the patience with this type of customer. Took the car of the adverts and it sits in the corner gathering dust, when my times up the kids will be able to sell it as a barn find.

sounds like you may need cover adding for vehicles at business premises

I think Pendragon and Cazoo are chasing the wrong things, I can not understand why they are not looking at opening their own Auctions especially Pendragon as they already have a supply of cars. If i were either of them thats where my attention would be focused as it seem a better business model then retailing cars. If you build it they will come.

From a totally selfish point of vIew I hope the government does not do a scrapage scheme, the market I am in, it is detrimental to my own business and I was around during the last scrapage scheme and it did cost me business. A lot of franchises are zombie business and maybe some of them should be allowed to fold and then hopefully the ones left will have a more profitable and sustainable business, we are maybe seeing this now with manufactors culling franchises. with the exception of grant I have had recently just like lots of others nobody has come running to my rescue when the going gets tough and I have worked through a couple of recessions already not including the one that's hitting/hit us now.

I think this depends a little at what ends of the market you are working at and if you are not careful you will just slash prices for the sake of it when there will be no need. i think there may be a slight dip initially with dealers holding back and seeing what's happening but realistically I think supply won't be great. There will be what's sitting at the auctions now ready to go but it will take a while for the main dealers to get back up to speed with the part exchanges coming through which means supply will be low initially which I think will help prices. i have been in the game a while and have worked through a couple of recessions and if you are not careful you will talk yourself into working for nothing and we carried on selling through them profitably. just keep an eye on the auction prices and if they start nudging down just be mindful deal your self out of what you have when you can, and restock at reduced prices. i for one will not be slashing prices from the word go.

I'd say good luck to them, you must remember as a private buyer you can walk into a bca auction and just buy without proving anything, as long as you have the money you are good to go.

I think people should be tackFull how they handle this or they may find it comes back to haunt you at a later date

If you can afford to pay i think its far you pay, if you genuinely can not afford it i would say talk to the landlord and try and come to an agreement. I reckon there will be quite a few people out there trying to twist this to there advantage, i have a few rentals and if someone demonstrates to me they can not afford to pay i am more then happy to come to an agreement but if i were to find out that they could not show they are experiencing hardship because of this i would take a completely different view on it. I think people are getting the impression they can get out of paying things when really they are only delaying things, what the government have done is slightly delay the eviction process, but the landlord will get you there eventually if he wishes. I would keep everything as amicable as possible.

I can’t see them selling 20000 cars in 3 months, i thought they had a stock of approx 2000 vehicles, something’s not right there and they certainly are not cheap.

I do feel sorry for them, but it is the criminals just exploiting people's greed and just shows if it looks to good to me true it normally is.

I am hoping somebody could point me in the right direction, i know a few of you cover the number plates up when taking your pictures with a number plate advertising your company and was hoping someone could point me in the right direction of where to source these, I know i could just get a plate just made up, but want something that just clips on and off, minimal effort and all that. Many thanks in advance.

I am woundering if autotrader are afraid of getting left behind hence why they adopting these kind of price marker that some of the other competion use and are trying to stay relevant. if they are some dominate why would they do this?

I am sure people these days look across multiple sites, had a chap the other day phone on a car I had on eBay, he asked me why it was n’t on autotrader to which I replied because I don’t have to. i think autotrader should be concerned about the likes of Facebook, if they ever got their act together with a decent, simple interface and being able to target certain demographics I think they could really be into something plus they have pots of money to promote it.