Kingsbridge Autos

Great thread OP, and great email back. Make sure you request a read receipt so you know he/she has read it.

Movex are great. DMN logisitcs if you want full inspection and report done and in uniform

Evening, Just after some contact details for a company that can offer drive away insurance for my customers other than Lloyd Latchford?

Tried this but grey out CAP tick boxes, only Glasses is showing.. What is a vehicle ID check as oppose to an HPI whilst you mention it ?

i Have an HPI account but you cannot do the cap without an HPI check!

Been quoted £600 for 150 searches or £800 for 500 searches + 275 per annum for black book + and a further £275 for cap book live!!! Anyone use anyone else other than cap that are cheaper? Or do you just check prices via comps on autotrader?

Previous customer wanted a 3 series auto with leather under 3 years old and under 40k found one on Auction 4 cars (motorpoint) and as no one else bid picked it up at a decent price. Am now worried abotu the quality of the car that is going to arrive! Has anyone else bought from there? The car is a 63 plate warranty till december and 22k miles 318d se but no service history.

Jim can you send me you email would like to talk to you about facebook posts?

Just boosted an Astra VXR 64 plate priced at 17,995 budget set £40 for two weeks, Leeds + 90km (55 miles) men and woman aged 24-44 and people that live and pass through the area. What do you think?

Thanks for all the comments, I will of course pay for it and my priority is keeping my customer happy with our service. Bear in mind this is not a regular dripping of oil but a very slow odd drip from a worn metal seal. My question was more interested to hear others advice on how much to pay taking everything into account. In hindsight perhaps difficult to call without knowing all the details from start to finish. Also interested to hear point of view from the new Consumer rights act as it seems to pretty much put responsibility for anything at all on the dealer.

RE Facebook, I Have Boosted a few ads and targeted 25-55 year olds England, scotland and Wales. not had any luck with it so far am guessing you need to build it slowly and spend allot of time posting good content mixed with ads as some have mentioned above.

For whats its worth I have a 2010 M3 DCT in Grey with 52k priced 24k coming up to 3 months no interest whatsoever! 64 Astra VXR with 5k extras and 17k priced 17995 some interest but nothing serious also coming to three months. 12 640dm sport with 28k only two calls. Very quiet and a little worrying but I think like anything it will sell eventually or at least I hope they will

The new owner noticed drips of oil on his driveway and took it to BMW to see what was wrong. Service history is all BMW and last one was in last 6 months. With the consumer rights act now everyone seems to become a lawyer when something goes wrong on their cars! however this isn't affecting its driveability its very minor and I just feel there should at least be a shared responsibility with the customer!

Evening Chaps, Sold a 61 plate X5 40d to a customer about 3 months ago with about 47k on it. declined my warranty offer on it. Customer sends me a full 'legal' email stating power steering leak diagnosed by bmw and wants me to pay for it to be replaced. I ask him to take it to my garage who diagnose a rear main oil seal leak adjacent to the bell housing a cheap part but very labour intensive to get to and involves dropping the gear box etc. My garage dont want the job as its too big, been quoted nearly 800-1k to do and customer saying he expects me to pick up the bill in full as it was present when he bought it. I did not notice this and neither did he before as its a very minor bit of oil dripping from the seal so could of been there and take a while to appear or may not have there at all on purchase. what do you advise should i just cough up or argue the toss and agree to pay half or refuse to pay saying its a wear and tear item?

Hi, I took a 14 plate silver Astra 5 dr SRI 1.6 petrol with nav and parking sensors with 22500 miles in part ex against 116d. However its not my sort of stock and as I work appointment only on prestige cars am struggling to do anything with it. Its mint apart from one wheel has some very minor curbing. I allowed £7850 for it can anyone take it or do you know anyone that would. Thanks

Do you use them? what are the fees roughly?

Evening all, A friend of mine does stocking finance on simple easy to use contract as it just him in the business. He rang me today offering a 100k facility at 1% per week on whatever amount was being used. I said I would think about it but to me seems crazy expensive to spend 52k a year on stocking finance on top of VAT, tax and all the other costs. Having said that I am looking at some form of finance to increase stock levels and was considering Netgear (haven't called them to discuss costs yet) but was interested in other thoughts on what is a reasonable cost for say a 100k facility?

I personally feel printed press has a limited lifespan and will dwindle away eventually. Just look and the Independant newspaper that has ceased print after some 30 odd years going down from half a million sold copies a day at its peak to less than thirty thousand recently. Most news items I will look at the likes of the BBC website or if am bored and just general rubbish will suffice the daily mail online always delivers. Having said all that, the papers do target a specific audience as there are those that still refuse or don't want the internet or mobile phone and still rely on a directory such as the Yellow pages and papers for their information. These people will mostly be older and will not require or want any sort of finance. To me that seems like a very limited market and can only be tapped into through your local press. Most of these if they want a car I imagine will drive round to their nearest dealership to look at one.

CCL cost circa £100. There is commission paid to dealer so yes its an added revenue stream.

Thanks Chaps, have seen a lot of good reports about using FB have set up a page and getting my web guy to link my site to fb, instagram and twitter see if soem sort of auto updating to those social media sites will drive sales

Who did you email out of interest? From research I would say Close brothers are good for small dealers however you cant get past the requirement for the CCL and the associated quarterly reports and lots of other paperwork that needs to be maintained regularly. Let me know how you get on?

Great idea Phil. Recently I have had customers asking me do I supply warranty despite it stating in my ads that I do. However when Warranty wise rang Autotrader with my dealer ID and asked to use their logo on my ads they again refused point black unless I was on contract!. I wouldn't mind but everything seems to be extra... 20 images instead of 9£££, priority listings on mobile devices £££ Am thinking of moving across to gumtree or ebay but find it harder for my kind of stock which is 10-30k mostly. Have used piston heads a number of times for performance cars but never seem to get anything out of it.

To offer finance the rules have tightened up immensely to push out small home traders/dealers and make the industry more regulated. To that end you need to obtain a Consumer credit licence and meet all the associated criteria (all on their website). A lot of them will only work with vat registered dealers working from business premisses. So in short you will not be able to offer finance at this trading level.

Hi All Been reading posts on this forum for a number of months now but never posted. I have been trading for approx 3 years now on a PAYG basis with AT. However I have now spent a decent amount on a flash website and want customers to be able to click through to it from the dealer website button. My problem is AT are saying i cannot do anything including displaying a link to my website, my logo or warranty logo unless I enter into a monthly contract with them for a minimum of 13 weeks. As a very small dealer holding no more than 7 cars at any one time I feel the cost quote of nearly £500 per month inc VAT seems a lot and limits my options marketing with other websites. Can anyone advise if there is any way to link my website to my ads on AT without committing to a monthly contract just yet? AT customer service seem unhelpful and unwilling to negotiate or be flexible in any way shape or form which I was quiet disappointed with, Thanks Eli