Rory RSC

I place no emphasis on Autotrader desirability personally. I have some highly desirable regular quick sellers which always sell well with good money an often attract my favourite finance commission but AT rank them low. The right car, presented well at a fair price will always sell just needs to catch someones eye and irrespective of anything make sure you are happy with the margin in the deal yourself.

We always sort it unless its a rubbish px. On them we take the gas out with the price of it Got our own equipment here but I would just buy new to be fair. Second hand won't be up to much. Euro will always have a deal.

Good work. That's how you sell cars, get them in and online.

Get in in cheaper, and sell cheaper than the ones that are sticking and yours will sell. I find anything 4x4 always sells well and generally fairly quickly, particularly if its cheap which this one will be.

Got to ask yourself would you happily sell the car to a walk in for screen price. Would you happily sell it to a walk in that takes 15minutes to prop and e sign and gets you an extra £200/£400 / £1000+ for doing the same deal. I would rather sell everything on finance. Sub prime is next to no commission and generally get the customers that love to complain and kick off rather than bring just bring it back and get it fixed

Wherever possible take a deposit subject to finance being obtainable and going ahead, if we can't refund deposit. It is annoying I get loads of finance apps and the percentage that complete and buy a car is far lower than total number of online applications received and I am led to believe I write a pretty good amount of finance business monthly. There are other brokers out there that do a bit more of the legwork and chasing up for you. One of the ones that annoys me is when you do a deal with CF247 / Zuto and they ring up asking you to invoice and send v5 etc, you do all that and then the customer just decides not to go ahead. That is a real waste of time.

I broke a new record in July - Most cars refunded in one month

Ive always noticed if I screen shot a video it looks better than the pics I take using the same iphone

Mate some people are just weird. I don't even think about it anymore it is them not you More often you find yourself at the end of their buying journey where they settle on your 10.5k car after going to look at all the 8k ones that were battered but every so often its the other way round.

I got invited on to Judge Rinder by a muppet of a customer once because of an EGR valve being blocked on a Mondeo ST TDCI.

You will be lucky without watching his video and leaving a deposit first

I would say the one thing on here despite our different approaches to selling cars is we are all pretty honest traders. We might jazz stuff up a bit, etc etc but no one on here is selling cat damaged cars and not telling customers or anything like that. Sad reality is there are plenty of places who run their business model like this clocking / buying accident repair / selling bodged up death traps. Its a full time job, new name every few months, go back and complain get asked if you want a fight, car goes wrong so what zero comeback. When you do the job right and fix problems, sell fair stock and look after folk you don't need to be dropping money off nice cars either.

Kind of agree with the sentiments of this tbf. Pretty much my view. Like the customers who came to buy a car off me at the weekend having had their other car taken off by the police as they had been down to London to buy it from a Shady estate, privately as it was a 15k car for 10k...no wonder it was so cheap it was nicked.

We run with one full time mechanic. Getting an all rounder is really hard as you say. Recruiting and retaining is really difficult. Current one is great, knows his shit and nothing will beat him. Incredibly thorough and cars that come back within the first couple of days for stupid things that should have been picked up are at an all time low. Trade off, he knows one pace and its slow. Previous mechanic was a younger likeable lad, fiery temper and used to be incredibly quick fly through work stay late smash the overtime and was earning serious money with us. He was a maverick and used to cut corners couldn't accept ever being wrong and used to clash quite regularly. A combination of the 2 would be ideal but never gonna happen. Robots are not sounding so bad now.....

Taught me something with that one like it

Sometimes you just need to see it for what it is and wake up and take note. I spent 5 figures before seeing it for what it is.

How much was your total spend on RAC warranties? How much was your total claims amount? Include headache and out of pocket additions from you, plus poor customer service. Do the numbers.

In an ideal world you would pay for an aftermarket warranty with say Warrantywise they would deal with the customer and the garage and pay out promptly making life nice and easy and simple. You don't have to get involved and your customer is nice and happy. The reality is they don't cover what they say they will, wriggle out of everything, won't cover a wheel bearing because it missed its pollen filter at 18k miles, send out engineers to inspect stuff taking 48+ hours and then you argue your life away and then they finally agree to cover it under goodwill as you are a good customer. Best bet is to go a bit halfway, work with a company like A1 who do self admin warranties. You pay into the pot monthly so maybe pay a /£30/£40 admin fee and then you can put anything you like in per car so £50 / £100 / £200 etc. They then use your money for your warranty claims. If you prep right and look after your customers this makes life far easier as A1 work with you for the right outcome. They still drive costs down and make sure garages don't take the mick and if its something that is not really a warranty item they will still let you know and see if you want to step in rather than just a point blank computer says no. After sales is what makes or breaks your feedback, reputation and reviews in this game and its crucial if you are offering warranty and good service that its backed up when the customer needs it or you are forever getting it in the neck.

EPV - I didn't know much about mechanics when starting out and can't really work on cars myself. What I do know is I don't like being taken for a ride so I soon made sure to learn what was what and research jobs etc so garages that appeared friendly were not having my pants down. Now we have our own workshop its important to know basics just to ensure any staff involved in that side of things don't take 5 hours for 1 hour jobs etc.

An old employee ended up with the nickname Towbar. He had about as much personality as one and was always lurking round corners and you would walk into him....

Yesterday turned it around for us back in business

Biggest scumbag customer we ever had was a copper. Most dishonest one we have ever come across. The 30 page evidence file complaint letters he sent in were truly something to behold

Well done mate good to hear someones having it good.

Worst month of the year for me so far. We are always busy, always loads going on never a dull moment the last 10 days has been dead. Signs of improving over the weekend. Just ride it out, no point slashing prices etc just make sure everything is priced optimally already with some really good pics, video etc etc and you will be good.

Always email customers on matters like this. If they are not coming back and having me fit it and I agreed to cover it as goodwill I would get the cheapest price from Euro and then allow them that amount so if they want a fancier battery or the main dealer experience they can have it. Most places would not cover a battery after 2 months. Its literally been fine for 2 months on an old french car and failed due to wearing out. This tool has now taken the piss out of you for your generosity. He full well knows this was not what you had kindly agreed.