jimreidvehicle

Now as we all know we do take for granted information on tax savings as gospel from our accountants and over the years they have saved us quite a sum of money which in real terms was not due to the tax man anyway. However if at my next meeting my accountant suggested I posed as a DJ as this will save me money on tax, it's safe to say that I would question his/her ability & integrity. However Mr Moyles seemed OK with this explanation to become a car dealer on paper to save tax!!!!!!!! Ah well at least he has admitted fault!

We opened our service /performance centre in April last year and in this time we have had to replace or recondition 8 Vauxhall 6 speed gearboxes! Some have been under our used car warranty some have been for vehicles part exchanged but as this seems to be quite a resent problem we have experiencing I would love to know if any one else experiencing the same problems? Mostly but not restricted to Vauxhall Astra (07 to 09) however we have also had two Zafiras about the same age and last week a 10 plated new model Astra 1.4 Turbo Sri! So is it just me, or just Aberdeenshire drivers or is it a major built quality issue that Vauxhall really need to address? your thoughts please.

SOCIAL MEDIA SUICIDE

The fun is all on Twitter mate thats why we are there! You should try it sometime! Really you should And just for the record , I'm quite partial to a Cappuccino, no sweetener, I'm more than sweet enough ! Also you will have to be careful not to be spending too much time on this forum, you may miss a customer if you don't look up from your PC , just saying

It's really quite amazing that some people just don't GET IT! One thing is for sure no one visiting our site manages to walk off without being spoken too, also Latte's are ONLY for coffee time. It's great that we can have a balance of Social Media interaction which produces customers and STILL manage to deal with customers enquiries from all mediums, i.e. telephone, e-mail , walk-in and Social Media, it takes quite a while to get up to this level, but Green Giant if you want any tips please just give me or Umesh a shout we are more than willing to help you, we even have the Awards to prove it

Most independents who start up on their own have worked in the past for a franchised garage which means they are actual specialists in their field and tend to specialise in that model of vehicle, what is wrong with that? If there were no independents customer would not be allowed to compare different makes and models on the same pitch. Also if Franchises were as good as they say they are (not tarring everyone with the same brush) the independent would not exist as EVERY customer would go only to the franchised dealer to get the best deal and the best level of customer of service however we all know that this not necessarily the case.

Well done Mike from CAP, if you don't already follow him or any of his work 'mates' on TWITTER you should. Great mixture of advice and fun

yip,please pardon the pun but the market could become flooded with these cars, as they will end up somewhere!

Chris great question, the only time we ever do that is if the customer is traveling a bit of distance and only 24 hours before and it has to be £250

James, can you ask " With the SMMT's existence being -'the promotion of the Motor Industry in the UK' why do they not build and host a Classified Website which could become a credible alternative to AutoTrader?" The promotion of the motor industry is now more important than ever, now that we have proved our resilience by bouncing back yet again in the shadow of a recession. Is it now about time that the SMMT became more active in setting up a classified website along with other promotion online tools to help promote the industry further using their depth of knowledge and understanding of the industry and help members and the UK Motortrade to become again world beaters?

We always tell the customer that the £250 is NON refundable, based on the fact that we will remove it from classified online advertising and start re-conditioning on it , although you get the odd rumble of complaint most agree that this is fair! Jim

Andy, we have a lovely Rav 4 3dr on a 53 plate coming in, the trade tells me it's heavy in the book! CAP clean at £2950 from memory, I'm sure we could do something with your £2k! to get the ball rolling. Give me a shout it's coming in on Wednesday, CT to transfer which takes two weeks, but lovely car, I can e-mail you details if you e-mail your interest jim@jimreidvehiclesales.co.uk

We have had similar situations happen to us in the past, so we only ever set a car to one side for the customer on receipt of a £250 deposit. Even if Mrs A turned up with the deposit in hand and Mr & Mrs B was out test driving the car, it would be Mr & Mrs B's call, as Mrs A had her chance! Only place you have gone wrong is by saying that you would set the car to one side and remove it from the online adverts, to Mrs A that sounded like the conclusion of a deal!

yes, Umesh and these guys have been favourited over 50 times, however I notice there is no 'un-favourite' button, for a balanced review!!

We use AutoTrade-mail.com for cherry picking for stock and for sourcing that exact car for our customers. We are very professional in what we ask the dealer selling the car to ensure that the tyres are not on their last legs, the alloys aren't all kerbed, that it has Full Service History with documentation, V5 , MOT and spare key even ask about the alloy wheel key, that the bodywork hasn't had paint or requiring anything and that the interior doesn't look and smell like the inside of a teenagers bedroom! So why is it even asking these questions that some (not all) dealers feel the need to lie about the condition of the car or the mileage or the service history! When we agree a price over the phone we always trust that dealer to the extent that we transfer the funds in full straight away, awaiting collection by our trusted transport company, so WHY after all this do we still find cars coming up requiring work? We bought a lovely Seat Leon from a dealer in Wales last week, it was delivered on Friday with 3 bald /illegal tyres! when i challenged them they said that the vehicle left them with 4 good tyres!!!! it was on the back of a transporter not driven up to us by a Formula 1 driver! We even e-mailed pics to them which they replied saying that the pictures could be from any car in our yard!!! and to think we had agreed to buy another car from them by this point, and they won't budge!!!!! Is this what the Motortrade come to? There should always be a mutual trust between dealers regardless of where you are in the country, yet this happens time after time to us! WHY?

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/jan/21/guardian-media-group-to-sell-trader-media-group-stake Guardian Media Group to sell 50.1% stake in Trader Media Group Guardian, Observer and theguardian.com publisher to invest sale proceeds, thought to be £600m to £700m, in core business Jason Deans theguardian.com, Tuesday 21 January 2014 12.58 GMT Auto Trader: Guardian Media Group is to sell its 50.1% stake in owner Trader Media Group Guardian Media Group is selling its 50.1% stake in Auto Trader owner Trader Media Group to private equity firm Apax Partners in a deal thought to be worth £600m to £700m to the Guardian publisher. The sale to Apax, which bought 49.9% of Trader Media Group in 2007 and has been GMG's joint venture partner in the business since then, is thought to give TMG an enterprise value of about £1.8bn. The exact financial details of the deal were not revealed. GMG's sale of the TMG stake is subject to reguatory approval and final completion. Andrew Miller, the chief executive of GMG, said: "This proposed transaction makes strategic sense as we focus GMG's activities on award-winning digital and print journalism. On completion, the sale proceeds will strengthen our balance sheet and position us for further investment and growth in our core business." Neil Berkett, the chair of the GMG board, said: "Once completed, this deal will make GMG a very well-capitalised media organisation with the financial flexibility to navigate the rapidly-changing media environment, where our flagship titles are proven pioneers of digital and print innovation." The Scott Trust, sole shareholder in GMG, has given its approval for the proposed sale and authorised the company board to reinvest the proceeds to enable it to continue to safeguard the Guardian's editorial and financial independence. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer advised GMG on the deal. • To contact the MediaGuardian news desk email media@theguardian.com or phone 020 3353 3857. For all other inquiries please call the main Guardian switchboard on 020 3353 2000. If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication". • To get the latest media news to your desktop or mobile, follow MediaGuardian on Twitter and Facebook.

Agree Andy, although the post is titled "Could this work in the UK' it doesn't mean that I agree with it! A large company like Costco helping gain their members large discounts off a used car will be unlikely to work, almost the same as the Vauxhall Partners scheme, it's amazing how many people work for the NHS within your family or who are your 2nd cousin removed, just to get a little bit of discount from a FULL price product, when in fact if you are wise and shop about you will get a better deal without it, just me view of course!

The reason I ask the question is two fold:- 1st. As you most likely know we won Two Awards and a Highly Commended at the Car Dealer Magazine Used Car Dealer Awards in early December. Because these were National Awards we were extremely proud of our achievement and wanted everyone to know about it, but where do you start? Yip, Social Media is a great start and it is Twitter and Facebook that most likely got as most exposure however we wanted to tell NEW potential customers that they had a National Award Winning Independent Car Dealer in their area that they can buy a car from. So what I did was write up my very own Press Release and sent it to 15 e-mail connections that I had stashed away, everything from local & national newspapers, tv & radio, industry and non-industry online and offline magazine based companies. The result...............was very poor with only a handful of these connections even responding to the e-mail even less taking up the 'good news' story! which was all very disappointing. Even the local paper who I had spend £10k over the last 12months with, needed 4 phone calls/emails and the eventually a threat to 'stop' all advertising, for them to print a small article in their Car pullout, in their paper, wow! 2nd reason is I have been contacted recently by a friend of mine who is looking to set up on her own as a PR company and she wondered if (as a group) would some MotorTrade Independents use a PR company like her's? After my recent experience I said possibly yes, as I felt that as a PR company she would manage to package the same story and deliver it much further that I ever could myself. Now I'm not just talking about awards, but as an industry we are growing again and it's is the independents that are being most successful. There are some great stories to be had out of our trade that she could use get your company more exposure both locally & nationally. We missed the boat too when we expanded back in April last year, buying over a Motorsport serving and repair business, which saved two jobs and made two new jobs, with a large investment which almost doubled our size, sure this is something to shout about? So the questions I would like asked are:- Have you come up against a similar problem, where you want to tell the world about the accomplishment but fall flat on your face? Can you see the benefits of using a PR company,run by an experienced individual who knows the industry inside out? Would you use such a company as part of a Group if the price was right? Do you fully understand what a PR company could do for you? Thank you for your time, I look forward to your replies. Jim

Yes guys but surely this is a different model? Costco are trying to get their members into Franchise Used Car Dealerships to gain a discount , as far as I can see they are not trying to sell cars in the shops !

We stocked up during late November and December and hopefully sitting pretty for the great January take-off! But if AutoTradeMail is anything to go by, stock is making good money at the moment! Let's hope customer demands meet expectations. Bring it on!

http://www.autonews.com/article/20140104/RETAIL04/301069993/#axzz2pR00ARWj

it's really quite simple "bum's on seats, sells cars" , Autolink, we also have a very successful used car dealer who say to customers that request a test drive "if you are going to buy the car then you can test drive it" , which still makes me laugh because instead of encouraging customers to buy cars from them they encourage customers to buy from us, because our main aim is to get the customer behind the wheel. There are always going to be the exceptions, like the '5 to 5' folk, are they really going to buy a car that night within 5 mins? some do, most don't, but that all comes with experience, qualifying the customer properly and going with your gut! The next question is then surely, what do you do during a test drive? go with the customer or let them go on their own? 'unaccompanied test drives???' great post BTW, Jim

I think you will find James prefers a 'Mokka'-chino ooooh that was "woeful"

This is the quietest December we have experienced!!!!!!!!

Honda must we worthy of a mention with this one:- http://youtu.be/UelJZG_bF98