grant8064

Nice reply! Thrown out over a used car, you shouldn't laugh but...

We had a similarly twatish one on the weekend. Five seconds in and the bonnets up and the punters friend is telling him it's broken because it won't rev up. He eventually accepts that VW's are rev limited but didn't appreciate the way I told him apparently, nor the recent belt, pump and 9 stamps in the book. The only decent thing to do is wave them goodbye and wish them luck

Mazda 3 on a 06 - 12 plate. No idea why but they just sell like hotcakes around here. Cars I can't get enough of...retailable part exchanges. Don't care what it is if it's the right money.

Nasty business that. Broad daylight as well. Hope it resolves itself in the end.

...don't be too put off Stephen, we've got one coming in tomorrow and whilst I know it'll be a pain to deal with a slow OAP they always sell. The perfect Jag for the man that cannot afford a proper Jag. They're usually pretty decent buyers if the car is well presented too, just go along with their casual racism, talk up Brexit and you can't go far wrong.

But selling it once painted, tidied and prepped is going to be so so much easier than dealing with a load of pretend traders offering you stupid cash deals or scummy punters thinking they can snap up a bargain. Aside from the moral/legal stuff that everyone's banging on about it'll just be an easier quicker deal. Your pitch is awkward because it's priced somewhere in between retail and trade money but won't appeal to a good buyer in either camp IMO. Get it prepped and sold properly would be my route, otherwise it's no different to those 'traders' buying from BCA and throwing a bucket of water and £200 onto their stock. (oh and stop buying Pug 308 CC's blind from the block...you've had a very lucky escape IMO)

I've only skimmed the above and don't really have an opinion. Would I buy it? No too much money. More importantly i'd just be asking 'why isn't he going with it himself...roof must be intermittently f***ed'. Why don't you just go with it yourself? Bit of paint and tidying is easy. Nice miles, looks pretty, perfect cheapo cab for the local Barratt/Council estate.

Sub prime = crap commissions in my book. Happy to do them on overage but not something we encourage especially with a finance company waiting to throw the car back at you if it goes wrong. Never done an extended warranty in my life, gives them more of a reason to come back and scream when the warranty provider refuses to pay out...how do you get on with them down the line? Easter has been so so for us. Slow but cars are still selling. Tyre kickers and dreamers galore though which is annoying but to be expected.

+1 We've got a few hilarious reviews. One completely ridiculous and two from people we've never even met. Replied to all professionally, calmly but not certainly not happily. They've been commented on by a few customers how funny it all is....good for a bit of handover banter!

Snap. We've sold all of ours now. Last one went on the wettest day of March. People love a convertible in winter, maybe they think they're getting a great deal buying before summer? Never done well with them during the sunny months.

Easter holidays...i'd expect nothing less! We're exactly the same. Plenty of traffic but they're 90% bored dads trying to escape the kids, bored mums trying to escape the kids, bored grand parents trying to escape the kids. Next week should be back to normal.

^^^ £65-£70 on stationary per vehicle? Is that a typo?

I don't think I have ever actually 'sold' a car. Glorified order taker with no shame here. Like everyone says, good stock sells itself. So long as you're not too rude, polite to polite people and don't lie you can't go far wrong. The real skill in selling a car is knowing when NOT to sell it to someone, profit retention and keeping control of power crazed tools looking to impress their wife/girlfriend. That's the stuff that is part instinctual and part experience IMO.

Get plenty of that ourselves. Nothing more irritating because however nice a 3k car is it'll never meet their expectations. I usually suggest they need to spend 10k upwards for something more befitting knowing full well they haven't actually got a pot to piss in and wave them goodbye as they climb back into their shiny company car/PCP nightmare.

+1

Just done a dipper on a 10 plate hatch with 6 owners. They justified the high owners to themselves and still went ahead. Why? Only new shape model about in good condition for that kind of money. A lot of people don't care if the plates new enough, it looks good and, most importantly, they can get it in their budget. It's gonna impress the neighbours a lot more than a one owner 57 plate old shape in their eyes.

You want to be doing touch ins, small areas of compounding etc yourself...it's too easy to justify paying someone else to. Just practice on an old shed until you get good at it. A few GB stickers are worth having in the drawer. My advice would be to buy loads of silicone for handovers and expect your chosen painter to go AWOL quite often. They like a drink and the fumes don't help.

My brother in law has one and it does the same thing but on one side only...if you find the answer let us know!

Doesn't really bother me too much. Most of ours are 3 or 4 owner units being around 8 years old average. Demo, PCP and then an owner or two...hardly unusual. We get the odd screamer when they ask but then they're not the kind of buyer I want anyway. Done plenty with 5 - 7 owners...as the ownership implies they're always a good seller! I get what everyone worries about with high owners. I don't care one bit if the cars sellable and a good colour. What we do avoid is the ones with two owners within the last six months...screams trouble that has been handed back to the supplying dealer a couple of times recently. Just done a seven owner VX 61 plate and they've been back to buy another because they trust the car so much. Our best is eleven owners but i'm sure some of you can beat that?

You guys....I knew this would be the place to ask! A wealth of information as always. I'll absorb the info and get on the phone to the local merchants. Cheers all

You heard that right. I wanna chat aggregates. We have a nice site that is covered in a lovely layer of pea shingle and looks the dogs whatsits but our second site is a bloody mess. Its a cheapo site that the owner will develop within the next few years so we don't want to spend anything on it but I nearly lost a vertebrae hitting a pot hole on it the other day. It's a mix of asphalt, dark grey one inch chippings and some random shingle bits in it. The pot holes are in the grey shingle stuff, it's like the purple chippings that people put in their front gardens but dark grey and seem to compact better. I might be acting dumb but does anyone know the name of these grey chippings...I dropped into b&q but they don't do them and it's really difficult to work out on google. And if I find said chippings should I chuck a bit of cement in the mix to set the filling in the hole?

We only do AT (works so bloody well) and eBay (it's cheap but the less said the better) Happy to pay what AT charge because it sells cars. Might lose eBay if it has a price increase this year.

Like all customers, you get good ones and you get bad ones. The one we had-had a real smell of 'five months later i'm gonna try backing this and i'll be a real pain in the arse' so it was best to nip it in the bud. EPV - I only mention it because sometimes it's better business for you to just refund and resell, rarely, but sometimes and only when it suits you. Sometimes you can just tell it's gonna be cheaper and easier in the long run, especially on something rare that you know you won't struggle with. If this is your first screamer as you say then just use it as a good learning curve because it won't be the last!

Rare thing a petrol DSG Passat...not an estate is it? On the subject we had one recently, a solicitor, moaning about MPG figures, CD not working and a smelly clutch. Got the car back and sat them down next to us to go for a little drive. CD worked, clutch doesn't smell if you don't ride the life out of it and we managed to get pretty close to factory MPG which even I was surprised with. They were sheepish but still a moaning pain so I simply refunded and resold. Don't need screamers like that in my life. Best thing is car sold a week later at for £200 more than originally because we realised it was under priced! Just a thought...

I've never been too concerned over how many numbers we do per month. All about the margin for me. I'm much more happy to do 50% less turnover with double the margin and half the potential screamers, half the paperwork etc. Maybe it's the wrong way to go about it but it works for us in the area we're in. Pretty fortunate we're not near any car supermarkets and whilst we're competitive we're certainly not the cheapest option but still shift enough locally.