Paul C

I know all about the restrictions of driving with trade plates. My understanding was that trade plates are used to "cover" the fact a car isn't taxed on the road. BUT are they also required when a car is "in the trade" ie it doesn't have a registered keeper? For example, if I wanted to drive an "in the trade" car to/from an MoT, do I need them, since I don't need tax because there is a specific exemption there. TIA!

Plates or transporter?

Only on internet dating sites

I'd be more worried about the bigger picture - how did this "mistake" occur?? Cruise control is a desirable option on older cars, and probably costly to retrofit, but I think you're going to have to stump up for that mistake. Door handle too. Is her partner her husband? If so, they're basically one and the same legal entity, so the comms and claim is valid from him too. If you've not actually been rude or ignored for ages or communicated anything yet, your best hope is to try negotiate <£500 but be prepared to meet a stonewall. And do something about how you check cars so £500 mistakes don't keep happening.....

Was it a like-for-like comparison? The customer may have changed/enhanced their figures between the two quotes, to try get a better deal.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58335060 The headline is, that new car production is down 37.6%. Perhaps now is the time for the market correction that has been building up for ages, the fact is there is (was) overproduction of cars basically flooding the market, getting people into them with big discounts and (IMHO) stupidly high amounts of finance/borrowing. With the way the world and the environment is going, less wastage and consumerism is a long term good thing. Of course it would be a big shake up for UK with so much car manufacturing based here but then there's worker shortages in many other UK industry sectors.

The only true measure is a free market, ie no-reserve bidding. Bid rigging is simply an underhand way to run a reserve auction, which is not a free market. Whether its illegal or not, I don't know, but I do know "the wall" has bought a lot of cars!!!

Once you factor in the revenue stream from the YouTube channel, it starts making sense. It would be easy to say that area of the industry has taken a dive but really its about more/better information (ie the places and details of Cat C/D/S/N cars for sale) which has meant its no longer a "secret squirrel club" of knowing someone who knows someone who gets those type of cars. Personally for me....I have no appetite for risk. But I respect those who like this type of challenge. I agree though, for a pro business to do this, once you exclude the cars which get bid up to unprofitable level, there's pretty much nothing left any more.

Its a broad generalisation but the days of chancing upon a Copart car which has easy-to-repair body damage (and a handful of other, normal issues) at a bargain price is pretty much over, there's so many hobbyists at it there will always be one (or more) who won't assess the car properly, underestimate the repair cost then push its price up to uneconomic pretty quick. Let them try it and learn their lessons along the way.

Why on earth would a reputable dealer shoot themselves in the foot by trying this "private sale" bollocks and reducing the value from retail to private in one big lump? Surely the thing to do is to buy at trade price, sell at retail price and obvs the difference in the two pays for the costs in doing so, perhaps even making a profit??? Add value and add onto the price rather than trying to squeeze it into something not even legal! I'd be prepping "friends" cars, offering them at full retail and thanking the friend for the business. Oh and he'd already have been settled with the appropriate trade-in value so he has no concern for the car any more, its a lump of metal that he used to own now.

Or in the office again.....?

I don't think this was too unreasonable a request - I hope you don't leave customers waiting this long for a reply. In the meantime, all I can deduce from the non-reply is that you're trading from home or a minimal cost setup which screams "private seller" or <1 year startup. There really is no excuse for not having a decent website in 2021. You can make a very posh website for very little, and attract buyers from far and wide if the stock is decent........the cars you're selling are decent condition (or started out average but have been brought up to good condition?)

"Jeremy" is an automated script which crawls the web looking for website forums which aren't updated with the latest software patches, then automatically registers and posts into the forum including a link. The link is for the purpose of manipulating Google search rankings.

Any pics of your premises or website?

FFS More spam

Posh showroom, warranty as good as a new car warranty, finance, low(er) mileage condition 1 cars (which you'll unlikely find from auction houses - more like the cream of the trade-ins from new PCP etc).

Did you time travel back to January and personally inspect it? The appeals time limit is 3 months for corrosion.

Agree. I believe the regulatory bodies will (eventually) catch up and more tightly regulate SPACs, thus rendering this type of flotation/valuation impossible. It smells like a pyramid scheme.

Its a case of positioning yourself in a busy market (cheap, middle, 'Rolls Royce") then being authentic and having the complete package if you choose the RR end, to justify the higher price you may charge. Its getting more and more difficult (especially since the rapid acceleration to online effectively puts a vanilla coating on everything), and its easy to slip from RR to middle. A minority of dealers can & do achieve that "RR" level of service though, hats off to them.

It would be great if this were true across the industry. Unfortunately it is not, which is why Cazoo have a chance of success. Some people don't like traditional car dealers.

What do we all think? I believe it is entirely possible to run an attended auction in a Covid-secure way, but obviously the BCA Accountants have crunched the numbers and dictated that they'll stay online only. Manheim too. You can't blame them if its simply where we would (probably) have been 10 years from now anyway, but its a bit of a shame for some of us.

Isn't a sale as a taxi classed as a business-to-business transaction, thus avoiding a lot of the consumer protection a customer would otherwise be entitled to?

The well-established model for a lot of online retailers is, you go and look at the thing in a normal shop, but stop short of buying it there. Instead, you come home, browse the internet and choose on price. Great for guitars, laptops, tellys etc and most things new, helped by DSR meaning you can send it back within 14 days. Unless the cars they source are absolutely fault-free and they somehow build a reputation for great cars, I can't see it ever working for an online secondhand car proposition. My experience is the best cars go new>used but stay within a dealer group eg Inchcape, Arnold Clark etc but even then, their processes aren't robust enough to filter out bad cars or afford to go the extra mile to resolve an issue, they dig their heels in and treat a car just like any other dealer treats a car comeback. The reviews read generally good but there are always some horror stories. So, they need to "break the ceiling" for customer care; but do it at the cheapest price, cheaper than everyone else. From a starting point of nothing. Can this be done simply by relying on economy of scale? With someone else's money? Hmmmmmm I'm oot!

Indeed, the main weakness is that their business model relies on a big shift to online buying, citing that secondhand cars are a "growth potential area" because of the currently low % bought online. The reason for this, is because a car is a complicated mechanical thing which can & does go wrong; and also, excepting nearly-new cars (and even then...) once a car starts getting older, they become distinct from each other so you want to inspect the one you're buying. Its not like a telly where its a boxed, new item. To alter this needs a big shift in confidence level in dealers (they are silent on this....) and/or a seismic change in online vs offline buying (like a global pandemic which forces the government to close offline car dealers). Its impossible to split out the "Covid effect" from their growth, in fact you could say they ought to have made a killing on the market but they didn't seem to.....possibly because of out-of-their-control factors such as capacity to prep cars, logistics, availability of stock etc. Sure, online buying will grow, sure Covid has moved us forwards quickly, but it cannot be assumed nor taken for granted. And you can't monopolise it either.

Also the "31% don't trust car dealers" is somewhat shooting themselves in the foot. THEY'RE A CAR DEALER TOO!!! The difference being, a consumer could still buy a car from an untrusted car dealer because they could go and look at the car beforehand, nitpick, take it for a test drive, blah blah blah. At the end of the day you're not marrying the dealer or asking them to look after your puppy, the car could still be good despite the car dealer being a sleazeball. And car dealers being untrusted is a disadvantage to them, not an advantage, because in addition to themselves being a car dealer, they need to establish a sufficiently high amount of trust to convince the customer to do it entirely online. Starting from nothing is a risk. At least Cinch have the advantage that parent BCA have been screwing their customers for donkey's years so have it down to a fine art.