PrestigeDiesels

Hi Over the last eleven months business has been ok, but come the 1st April customer enquiries from A/T have sunk to a new low! When I phone A/T and explain to them the effects they are causing in the motor trade, you would think I was the only one upset.. Obviously I am not the only one. If anyone here is thinking of paying for something we already had only a month ago then you need to look at your future with A/T. If they think you can afford to pay these increases then it will keep on happening year after year. Image five years from now what they will be asking for your advertising. What we need is a website owned by the motor traders so we can decide how much money is needed to generate customer leads. Its already been done in the housing market with "On The Market" when "Right Move" became too expensive. My biggest hope is that this will bring the car dealers together in order to safe guard our future in the car industry. M.J the crazy thing is A/T are the ones that have pushed you away. We have started to invest in other areas so we can leave too. I have tried my hardest to work with A/T but they have made the decision for me. To put it simply... if A/T were a customer wanting to buy a car from me I would decline. Who would want to do business with someone like that! I wish you lots of luck and business.. Trade Vet have you sent a link to the email addresses you posted. If not please do!!

Thanks Steve - Thats handy!

We are finding the RAC certificates a lot more user friendly and easier for the customers to understand - any each to their own! If you guys are doing spec checks you can get them for free here - http://carinfo.kiev.ua/cars/vin/ You need to translate from Russian! You need to know what could possibly be the extra spec on the cars you are selling to work out the extras as they are bundled in with all the spec. I have just checked a Mini with over 6k extras which originally we had done a spec check on and all the extras that are included in the list after I searched against the VIN number Cant promise it will work every time but it a handy site to know!

Just found out today that our HPI check price had gone up in March and we were not informed. Currently we are paying £3.65, If id known I would have reverted back to Autotrader's Experian check through dealer portal which is at £3.50 (I also noticed you can add a CAP valuation for 60p and Glasses for 50p) As you can imagine HPI will not budge on price so they've lost our business... Now we have the RAC as a new player on the market, so for you dealers that are unaware, the cheapest option which offers the same service is the RAC passport check... This is priced for us at £2.99 as we do under 5,000 checks Pricing -1 - 5,000 £2.99 5,000 - 10,000 £2.49 10,000 - 25,000 £1.99 25,000 - 50,000 £1.49 50,000+POA https://www.rac.co.uk/business/commercial-services/car-passport/Home/Index?ReturnUrl=%2Fbusiness%2Fcommercial-services%2Fcar-passport%2F Hope this has saved at least one of you guy's some money!

Chat to Jim Reid about Facebook... Its a very quiet month for us too I don' think you are doing anything wrong.

I cant believe the money the directors are making at Autotrader - That's an obscene amount. Coincidentally we've sold two cars from AT this month at a premium of£1600... Now I know where our moneys going! Transporter - Burnt orange my favourite colour! This infamous sign still spoken about... I doubt we will never know the truth...

A Few years ago we decided to get some Fuel Cards, not to save money but we seemed to have a problem with lost fuel receipts. We decided to go with the Fuel Card company and although there was no great saving, the ease of use of a bill each month certainly helped my receipt headache. Anyway 2 years down the line and I have to admit this is hard to say but we have been robbed blind! Every week we receive a set price for our fuel by email, of course I would check to see if the prices were inline with the pumps and they were so after a while I stopped checking.... More the fool me!! I have just found out that we have been paying £1.29 PLUS VAT for Diesel from Texaco - I don't need to say anymore, I'm angry, annoyed and frustrated at myself. Lesson learnt, don't become complacent in this day and age with anything. Guys if you have fuel cards all I can say is check your pricing as you might be involved in the Great British Fuel Card Rip Off too!

We have George T Dog who is easily our top sales person... Don't know if he can help you though, he speaks Spanish ;-) XY32N8Lw.jpg-large

To add we also use www.cartotradedotcom and its well worth looking at ;-)

We have reduced our Autotrader bill to the bear minimum now as we are seeing a poor response and our bill is huge for the amount of cars we have. Sometimes we pay them more than we pay ourselves. We were on Motors for 6 months and no enquires, not a sausage . I also know Umesh at specialist cars has just come off Motors for the same reason. All is not doom and gloom though! We have sold cars from Facebook before but with no advertising and I think we got lucky. After hearing Jim Reid's Podcast on Facebook I realised this is the place to focus on.. So the last week we have done just that advertised 3 cars for £20 each and guess what, we have sold 2 cars with finance! More than we have sold off Autotrader in a week! This is the way forward for sure! You can target the market and people you want to see your post... Don't get me wrong it can be tricky and you get many enquires that are weak but eventually you will succeed with persistence. It has been a steep learning curve and without the help of Jim Reid I don't think we would see the response we have had so far. If anyone wants any help please feel free to call us, Jim Reid is by far the expert but he has given us some amazing pointers. Jim Reid On Facebook and selling cars through Facebook £173k additional NET profit made from Facebook in one year £1600 spent A must listen for all dealers! This could be the future ;-)