Rory RSC

What are your viewing stats like off autotrader/ebay your website?

Absolutely flying start to the month here how is everyone else getting on?

Had enough with them totally. I have asked for a refund on all active policies and requested they be cancelled. Binned the life size Quentin cut out and all the other point of sale garbage. My own fund will just have to get bigger but at least then we can actually offer a fair service for customers.

We have still sent them quite a few the numbers have not dropped off that much as we sell a lot of sporty/high risk stuff and they get all the extended stuff. Had another claim declined by them this morning on an X5 brake caliper sticking because it was on its last MOT failure. OSF was the caliper at failure this is the NSF FFS!!!! Mentalists.

A certain Quentin backed warranty company are providing me a bit of frustration at the moment. We have an Astra VXR ( M32 BOX) that left our business 7-8 weeks ago spot on. No grumbles, play, stick movement or anything. It has returned just short of 2k miles later and it sounds horrendous and has difficulty even going into gear. Really sloppy box movement. We have dropped back on using external warranties but have still been slapping them on a few cars we sell mainly performance and any autos. They have covered 2 VXR boxes out of the 25-30 we have sold and taken out warranty cover on. Put in a claim to warrantywise for the box and they will not cover it. They claim that it is a known issue on this type of vehicle and is just wear and tear. Pretty annoyed as I have sold the merits of warrantywise to lots of customers taking out extended cover on the Astra VXR's saying they will certainly pay for a box if/when it needs doing. I feel like I have essentially duped loads of customers and that just does not sit well with the way I try to run this business. Can anyone offer any form of counter argument or a way of trying to get them to cover this?

Trade mail. Send it to auction. Ring round a couple of local traders and tell them you just want to move it on are they interested. Take new pictures, clean it again, re write the advert drop the price so you take a bit of a hit on it that won't be as bad as the hit you may take at auction. Call around all the local hairdressers you can find in it trying to shift it...

Nextgear over VTG. Been great for growing our business. You need to turn stock quickly to make it work for you. I don't really think it is that expensive in the scheme of things. Look at the fees you pay. Look at the profits you can bring in that without the stocking facility you just would not see.

Overall a bit of a let down this Month. I expected more and wanted to do much more. We have sold similar to previous months but have never felt busy. Some real headache situations involving just plain unreasonable customers who short of rebuilding entire cars and making them new again I fail to see how we could ever please them. I take no pleasure in that side of the business. Fingers crossed April gets off to a good start. On a positive I am holding almost 50 cars in stock now which is some real growth from low 30's at the start of the year. I don't have much space left here

Auto populate sometimes on the adverts. I delete all auto features and just list the main highlights to avoid that. How do you get on with scirrocos in general I reckon they look like good value for money at the moment but I have never bought one in? Tempted to have a try.

Took a bumper off an blue one I have in stock and repainted it red. Bodyshop managed to fit it in and are staying late. Much easier finding a new bumper in blue.

Turn up at work this morning after a couple of days off. Someone has stolen the front bumper off an Astra VXR we have. CCTV shows nothing. Car was parked just out of view. Peace and tranquility out of the window I am fuming!!!!! I have a deposit on the car with a customer coming to collect tomorrow morning.

I like your user name. I find the phrase is always 'last price'

Last weekend was good but this week so far just the 1 deposit taken. We are going to be open Friday and Saturday but I have decided to close on Easter Sunday and going to do the same on Easter Monday.I have not taken a single day off since the new year and need a couple of days to re charge and I think everyone else has been working hard and under a lot of pressure so it will do no harm.

If you speak to the right finance companies and seem like a good fit for their business (maybe a few good facebook/google+ reviews etc) then the rep should be able to come out and help you do the FCA thing as they will have done it before. We used Close brothers when starting offering finance and it started us off with a really good rapport with the rep having had him spend a couple of hours with us getting things set up. I would recommend this option. We use global pay for the merchant services and it was really straight forward to set up. Think they made sure we had a business bank account, soft credit search on both me and business partner and a week or 2 later all done and dusted. You don't want to be paying a percentage like that on debit card transactions. That sounds awful.

Proxy bids are good I do that and then thats my price I am prepared to pay. Every so often though I 'win' one and its a good bit lower than the proxy and I end up thinking oh dear what have I got myself into here. Are you ever winning the auction when using livebid and say you are on a car at £7000 the auctioneer suddenly starts saying £7k, £7k, £7k for what feels like eternity yet flies through every other lot? Winds me right up.

Half way (ish) through the new month how is business for everyone? We are a lot quieter than A) I would like and B ) I ever expected. Last year from march onwards we went mental busy and saw some really strong growth.

We service every car and I stamp the service book for the customer on the date and mileage the car leaves our premises.

Will be tuned in today - best of luck.

Meet at a pre arranged meeting point such as a friends garage? if you were a buyer and someone wanted to meet you at the local 24hr garage/ asda car park/etc how would that make you feel ? people at £1000 are so much worse than customers at 5-6k. they buy a £750 banger and that is literally all their money they have no other money towards fixing it even if it is a cheap example of a 187,000 car if something isn't working they will be back and moaning.

He will be feeling sheepish when he comes back for the pick up.....

Finished on 35 retail units for Feb. A couple of deals cancelled last minute for us which is rare. Overall a fairly profitable month sales wise however we had a couple of horrendous warranty claims. Lets hope March is a success this year like it was last year - was growth month on month after March.

Keep them for the Xmas party CDX16 afterparty

How much additional profit can you achieve realistically with 100k extra stock. nextgear you only pay for what you use also.

I don't dispute that. The benefit of the just passing people means they can see something in person they would otherwise have dismissed as to expensive/not suitable / a million other reasons online. I just don't get any of them with where I am situated. Do you find the just passing by folks commit on the spot or do they often return having thought about it?

I have sold 1 car in all the time I have been where I am to a walk on. No passing trade here.