CRW

Personally I am usually happy to go up to CAP Clean (as long as it is clean!), especially at the moment with the crazy pricing elsewhere. My view is that at least with the privates you wont have a dollop of commission put on top. Also you can quiz them pretty hard to get a better feel for the car and test drive it as well.

Without meaning to sound like im taking the piss, yes they most probably do im afraid! Very much a "computer says no" scenario with DVLA!

As for the women feeling like an idiot, yes love, you are. Pretty simple maths, £200 per month, £2400 per year, how many years should a £18000 car with interest take to pay off? Dont think its 5 years, but then I don't have arthritis so might be different rules for me.

In the current situation, where you are unable to view cars in auction, logic suggests that all cars should be falling way below CAP figures. You are buying blind with little or no recourse unless the car has some form of assurance with it. However, it is not BCA or Manheim's fault if two punters decide to "have a go" and run it up to a price that leaves no room for preparation costs or major repairs. If one trader goes to the wall because they got trigger happy buying the wrong things and paying the wrong money in an auction, neither BCA or Manheim will worry as there will be another one coming along next week. Will you lose sleep once its out of your hair and somebody else's problem? No, you will be relieved its gone and move on from there.

I'm sorry but you bought a car in an auction, blind, with no assurances from the auction house. What were you expecting? Did you not question why it might have been in an auction in the first place? I imagine its going to hurt, but that is the nature of this game unfortunately.

Had to claim for 12 windscreens being put through a couple of years back. Im with Arista and they paid up, no problems at all.

Agree totally, the majority of potential customers aren't stupid and have been conditioned to the new normal by the supermarkets. I will certainly be opening on the 1st June, I have a pitch with an office which is clearly signed no entry. I will socially distance myself outside with customers and explain that we cant discuss things in the office. I expect the majority of customers to understand and I can work around this. As far as I see it, we were all covered by "car showrooms" during the lockdown, regardless of whether we had a showroom or a just pitch, I am not now going to spend time looking for a loophole or technicality that prevents me from opening. Be sure that if there is an extension to the SEISS (which I doubt there will be), owners of car showrooms will not be included and they will certainly not extend it to us, or make exceptions for those with just a pitch. Everyone is welcome to their opinion, if you can afford to stay closed, do so, but having lost nearly a quarter of the year I believe its time to get this sector going again.

I did think that as I was writing it. Although the stuff some people put on here can be quite revealing! Have applied to join the big boys, see you on the other side hopefully.

Yeah, fair point, understand its somewhat sensitive.

Without meaning to start a debate on the pros and cons of the bounce back loans, has anybody had any success so far in applying and receiving any funds? Are some banks more responsive than others? Barclays seem to have had a few problems.

Another problem with the 6 month extension is the glut of MOTs that will come due later in the year, followed by a big reduction in demand around this time next year. Workshops will be flat out doing MOTs around mid autumn, MOT slots could become like gold dust. Then in the spring there will be no demand. Could take a few years to filter the bottleneck out of the system.

The reality is the NHS wont collapse, it will simply reach saturation point. There will be armed police or the army stood at the door and you will be turned away. I said at the start of this that those that got ill early in the pandemic will eventually be seen as the lucky ones.

I am assuming they are referring to a net profit of £50k and not a gross profit of £50k. Wont be much use to many of us if its based on Gross.

Seems one extreme to the other, schools are still open yet in 72 hours we might be locked in our houses? Personally I cant see it, but who knows!

Agree, I don't touch them anymore. Only Peugeot (or Citroen) I have are the 107's or 108's or C1's, because in 1.0 form the important bits are all Toyota.

Great way to introduce yourself with a first post "f-bomb"...…….. To clarify, yes I am well aware of the concept of exponential growth. Believe it or not, some of us car dealers did go to school/ college/ university.

Slight difference was theirs began with a major cluster in the North, it was rife before they had a chance to react. Ours seems pretty well spread, no idea if that will make a difference though. We seem to be having circa 50 cases a day and should it remain around that then I would be fairly positive. Lets just hope for some warmer weather and battle on in the meantime!

How bloody unreasonable of you! How dare you attempt to make a living!

I think the funniest one I saw was a private ad on AT here local to me last week. 2007 Honda Civic diesel. 170k miles with a list of modifications that nobody would want. Asking £3995 for it, AT retail was something like £1100, showing a marker of £2900 over retail. Do these people not do any research into what the car might be worth before paying a fortune to advertise?

Simply due to the fact that they have to get off their ass and look at the car. "That's another £500 off the price I'm afraid sir!"

Which ironically is my biggest problem here at the moment as I'm really struggling to replace stock at sensible prices. Oh well, it gets the locals talking! Will try to buy again next week.

Cheers. Certainly wasn't my intention to have a row with anybody over it!

It was definitely putting down roots! Yes, I do consider my advertising to be a pretty minimal overhead cost. I turn over around £500k of stock a year with advertising costs of £3k. £3k per month (£36k per year) which I read about on here for an AT package is about as appealing to me as a genital wart. If I multiply my advertising tenfold, am I going to suddenly turn over £5m, I doubt it and most importantly, I don't need to!

Car will sell for with a gross margin of £500, after 2 years that is rubbish I know , but still technically not a loss. The part ex has a £1000 margin in it, I know the car, sold it previously and its in a good price range at £3995. Had I traded the car out after 6 months I would have lost anywhere up to £1k easily so just sat on it. I am aware that I could have flipped that money over several times, but this is trading, it happens sometimes. Its only a problem if you cant afford to buy anymore stock until said car sells, this sticking Focus never stopped me from buying other stock that I wanted. These days, I only advertise a new arrival through a boosted facebook post as generally I find this as good "pound for pound" as anything else. After this I leave them sell from the front or through the website, which is included in my annual £3k advertising cost. Because I'm not in any form of contractual advertising, I calculate that each sale last year cost me £33 in advertising as an average, certainly not £33 per month per car. This wasn't meant as a bragging post, im far from proud of the situation. My point is, had I bailed out early I would have lost. As it is there will be VAT to pay and therefore in my opinion that represents a profit of some form. Of course you cant run a business sitting on cars for 2 years and for a start up business it would be fatal. However, I have been trading for 15 years so have learnt not to panic as long as something is always moving. But offset by the fact that another car sold on the same day, before I had even washed it and generating around an £1800 profit.

That's on the assumption that I use AT, which I don't. My total advertising bill last year for the sale of 90 cars was around £3k. I'm a one man band with a 20 car site on a main A road, so don't feel the need to haemorrhage money on advertising. Yes, I could spend more on advertising, but AT doesn't work down here. If I was selling more, I would need to employ staff and in my opinion my business model works fine for me. The Focus was just unfortunate, but whilst other stock was selling I just left it run.