jimreidvehicle

yes, I agree it is an open Forum however the name of the forum 'Car Dealer' kind of gives it away! You are also right, if you are paying your taxes and dues , looking after your customers, preparing the cars you sell to the highest standard ,'treating customers fairly' offering them the highest customer care at all times , ensuring that you repair cars if they come back with a problem and running your 'part time' business under the Consumer Rights regulations, and hold down a full time job, then congratulations you are a better man than me! In my personal view 'commitment' is exactly that, ensuring that you do what you need to do to make it work for you and your employees and customers, after all they are the reason you are in business! A bit like 'marriage' which is another commitment, you make sure that you love, support and do the best for your spouse, all the time(full time) , because successful marriages don't have another part time wife on the side. As I said at the beginning this post was not to offend but to vent my views and yes it was down to the chat openly admitting he was not vat registered on here, which unless he can clarify on the forum why he needs even more stock when he (in your words) only sells a couple of cars a year is beyond me!

Steve and this is exactly the reason why this Forum and our Forum has started up, to help discuss issues and problems in the trade and help each other, however for me you have to fully commit to a 'trade' to be part of it! IMHO

Just as a matter of interest how many cars do you sell per week, per month, per year? As I would love to know how you manage to keep under the VAT levels! Stock is hard to source for us all and even harder to make a living for most when you are paying margin vat on your profit. Im my humble opinion Auctions should only ever allow VAT registered traders into their sales anyway, or they could run two levels of sales the first time they run through the cream cars of the auction then for the cars that don't sell through that vat registered sale they can then go back through the ring allowing non- vat registered traders and public to bid each other up, sounds fair to me, what do you think?

No that's not what I mean< i'm the first in the queue to help anyone with anything if I think I can , however when we have someone on the Forum who openly admits that they are not a VAT registered dealer dealing with £10k cars , please tell me how that works, so there we have it, I've been 30 years in the trade the last 13 years on my own and now have 12 employees and if someone can tell me how I can pay no vat (legally) please fire away.........but I won'y hold my breath! The point I was trying to make is this, Auctions shouldn't dictate to the Dealers it should be the other way round, however now they are so big they have complete control , taking more and more profit opportunity away from each of us by pushing up prices by inviting everyone and their dog in to purchase cars. Getting stock has always been hard and now getting harder but unless you are a VAT registered trader with a traders licence , let that be trade to trade or trade to retail , these are the ONLY people who should be allowed to trade and gain info in forums like this. As I already said, I'm happy to take on a mentoring role as I already do with anyone who wants to make this industry their business , living and career, but if you are 'in it to wing it' move on!

Now I'm just going to get straight to the point. I'm not posting this to offend anyone, however I have noticed over the last few months that more and more questions are appearing on Car Dealer Magazine Forum from small part-time , home traders , asking how to do this and how to do that in the trade, now as I say I'm not meaning to offend anyone especially anyone at Car Dealer Magazine who do police this forum very well, BUT in my view if you have another MAIN employment and only trade on the side then do you think it's ethical that these part timers are asking detailed questions about the trade on this platform and expecting FULLY committed dealers of all sizes to answer them? Now I know what you are going to say, everyone has to start somewhere, YES, I agree and many people start part time with old cars to see if they like the trade before committing fully, however when some part-timer traders have full time employment and trade on the side with cars priced up to £10,000 with NO intention of giving up their full time work surely that is affecting us full time, fully committed businesses? I would also like to say that I am more than happy to help, assist or answer any amount of questions from someone who wants to make a go at this great industry , we even run a small mentoring service for these but at some point you have to commit to go full time, either that or you are stealing sales & profit from me and my peers! As I say hopefully I won't receive abusive phone calls or emails with this, but feel that someone has to say it, because I'm sure there are many who are thinking it! Jim

Career & Industry Highlights :- Winning Car Dealer Magazines 'Dealers Dealer award' in London in NovemberWinning- Highly Commended 'Used Car Dealer of the Year Award' (50-100cars) for the 2nd year runningMeeting so many nice people in the trade over the last 12 monthsManaging to turn this year around despite the NE of Scotland experiencing once its biggest declines in recent years due to the collapse of the oil & Gas Industry resulting in 70,000 job losses.Increasing turnover and profit!Cracking Facebook- which has now resulted in almost 90 cars sold via this Social MediaRetaining all my staff for another 12months, including taking on a new Apprentice TechnicianOpening a Sports & Prestige Car Sales area within Jim Reid Vehicle Sales , under the banner 'ReidLine Performance'Being interviewed for MotortradeRadio.com Podcast 3 timesBusting our Finance turnover target again!!!All this achieved without advertising a single car on Autotrader! Jim

that one has been doing the rounds for at least 7 or 8 years

Difficult one to answer as every month seems to differ , but with us it tends to be the third week of the month and Tues, Wed or Thursday would suit us best Jim

However Steve, you don't have to use the electronic system , you CAN still conveniently stick a 3rd class stamp on an envelope and post it to DVLA :-)

Thanks for the update James, glad to see you are succeeding without AT, the cost saving alone must help Decembers figures. A wee tip from a man who has been through it, you will go through those quiet months , because everyone gets them, but remember don't be tempted to go back, because we are all at our most vulnerable when it's a really quiet month, but as I said everyone get's those even when you advertise every car you have on Autotrader! Next update 3 months? I look forward to it! UPWARDS AND ONWARDS

You have to be very careful with not only what you put on FB and Twitter but also how much too. If you put a picture on there with a large logo or message in print FB knows this and will not allow you to promote the post, so worth watching. Also in our opinion if all you do is post cars on Social Media it wont be long before likers stop liking and following posts, they will start to block from their timeline, just me thoughts. It's all about balance!

1st stop, fuel filter

Yip, had our accounts hacked too about a month ago during a free trial, so have decided not to continue advertising on this platform,

Hey Hey, thanks for the message yeh ,meeting up with Umesh for a party on Monday :-)

Rising Costs and Falling Margins.............and the cause of both? Yip you've got it, our Suppliers! or most of them anyway! Prices always go up however the industry and especially the independents can no longer sustain this pain, something has to change, big style!

It's really easy to change but has to be done at the Post Office or DVLA, wait until the vehicle is sold and ready to tax, take the V5C to the POst Office completed with all the new keepers details , circle the 'disabled' part with a black pen and then draw an arrow from there to section V.5 on the bottom of the first page just above the green section where it says 'tax class' write in petrol car or diesel car. PO will tax it as you have asked petrol car or diesel car, then ask them to post the doc to DVLA, it won't even cost you 50p for a stamp

Much better than October, thankfully

The guys have basically cover it on the comments above Simon. There are some major costs incurred with setting up included in the thread above including the fact that at some point you will have to register for VAT. But even if you do manage to keep under that threshold , £500 cars are the cars we move through the auction for a reason! If there was some type of profit in them without customer comeback then we would all be doing it. Sorry, in my humble opinion you either 'do something right or don't do it at all'!

James It's the ONLY way to find out, so well done for having the confidence to PULL OUT! We left Autotrader almost 3 years ago now and we still sell plenty cars, however don't go convincing yourself that when it goes quiet that the answer is to go back to AT!!! When it goes quiet it goes quiet for everyone, the only difference is I don't have a £1500 or worse 5 week AT invoice to deal with when it does go quiet! Well done you. Jim

Hi Paul, more than happy to help, we offer a Free Motortrade Mentoring system if you would like more details just give me a shout at jim@jimreidvehiclesales.co.uk we would love to see you do the right thing and succeed in this competitive marketplace, there is lots of help available! Jim

James, I think this is the FUTURE of selling to be honest. The younger customer (who is our customer of the future) is already buying online, so why should it be different for cars? Leasing companies having been doing it for years and I don't really understand why the New/Used Car retail market has not moved quicker into this. As an industry we are seeing less physical people on our forecourts and in our showrooms , yet more customers are seeing our business, why? because of the internet and the increased security of buying online and the age group that is now coming to the age of buying cars have known nothing different than buying online, using their phones, tablets or apple macs. What these guys have done at Carspring is not Rocket Science instead it is embracing what is available and instead of shying away from the 14day return in dispute of distance selling they are advertising it as a buying feature to give customers confidence. Offering the customer car as a retail on their website before it even arrives is pure genius so is the offer that they will buy the customers car if they don't sell it with a period of time ( I note they don't say what figure this is at , very clever) These guys deserve to do well and congratulate them on a fresh business model, however as a seasoned Motor Trade Dealer how different are we doing things at the moment? Not that different to be honest, Yesterday I did a home visit to a customer who had no way of getting to the dealership, so I personally took the car to them, they took for a drive in their own environment, it was parked outside their house in their drive, they didn't have to imagine owning it, the experience was real it was there and now, a little discount and a great service that car will be returned to it's new home next week, fully serviced, MOT'd , taxed, fuelled, valeted and warranted. We are DOING it already , so all we have to do is get our heads around the regulation and legislation and embrace what is available and take the bulls by the horns. This article along with other recent ones has really got me quite excited about what is achievable in our own marketplace , so you may well see Jim Reid Click & Collect sooner than you think! I'll give you guys at Car Dealer Mag the first exclusive interview :-)

Thanks to Umesh for forwarding this link. What does everyone think? I firmly believe that this is the future of car retailing. Some of my concerns are more to do with the Distance selling and signing of finance off site, if these regulations can be changed I think that this is definitely the future. What does everyone else think? Jim Online retailer Carspring takes used-car market to customer’s doorOctober 15, 2015Oliver Harry226 Views CARSPRING, a new online retail platform, has launched in the UK promising to radically alter the way customers buy and sell pre-owned cars. By delivering a fully inspected vehicle straight to the buyer’s door within a week of purchase, and with a 14-day refund guarantee if they aren’t satisfied, Carspring removes the need for customers to view or drive the car. For those selling a car the firm provides an online quote followed up by a free inspection, valuation and listing on the Carspring website. What’s more, if the car doesn’t sell on its website within 30 days, Carspring will buy it themselves. In recent years, online shopping has increased massively, however used-car consumers still prefer to travel to dealerships before making a purchasing decision. According to a report by Carspring’s team – pictured above – 7.2 million cars were sold in Britain last year. Of these, 85 per cent of buyers opt to visit the dealership in the final decision-making stages. Carspring’s founder, Max Vollenbroich, said: ‘Today, e-commerce is king, but the secondhand car market has struggled to evolve with the digital age, in the way we’ve seen happen in most other sectors.’ The report attributed this to a lack of trust in existing online used car platforms and that cars are such a high cost purchase. Vollenbroich continued: ‘People would visit a dealership five times before making up their mind, but now they’re window shopped online and only go out to ‘test drive’ their chosen car to settle their decision on such a pricey item. But with Carspring, there’s no need to do even that, as our experts vet the cars themselves before they appear on our website and we offer a full refund if the customer isn’t happy.’ Carspring wants consumers to think of the platform as a ‘car concierge’ service, guiding buyers through model choices, explaining jargon and highlighting normally hidden costs.

would you like me to post the content? Is it really hard to look as the picture

Guys & Girls This maybe help you answer some of you customers questions and concerns if their VW is affected by the Emissions Recall! It still gives no detail about when the recall will start however does give you the opportunity to contact your customers before VW do , so you can score BROWNIE POINTS! to check the VIN number of your customers and your stock VW's http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/owners/dieselinfo Jim Reid