grant8064

...and I thought I had a few headaches to deal with! Best of luck Alfie

Cheers for that mate, We've been considering it for a while but been busy expanding and only just got round to doing it after going through some figures. In theory it should save us a fair bit of time trying to squeeze blood from the current warranty supplier each month. Good shout on the wording, I had read something about that before but wasn't certain about it. I think we'll start off with the basic booklets and maybe look into making some adjustments once we get settled. Thanks again

We've had a typical one today; Five months into owning a twelve year old car and a caliper has seized which apparently is our fault, it was apparently 'seized and faulty at the point of sale' (yep they've been doing their CRA homework) nothing to do with parking by the sea during winter and infrequently using the car. Oh and their friend that works at the garage the car is at has quoted a mere £600 to remedy it but won't even supply the current mileage on the car so far. I think it was within 30 seconds that the threats to tell everyone what cowboys we are and take this to the highest levels were made. ...the worst thing is I tried so hard not to sell it to them knowing what the outcome would be but they went ahead anyway.

Hi Guys, We're currently with RAC for warranties offering 6 months on 3K + cars but it's costing us a fortune per year and we end up having to take all the calls, moans and deal with the claims ourselves as most customers refuse point blank to deal with them themselves. Last year we did approx 40k in warranty costs and had payouts for claims not totalling more than 10k, plus it's always a struggle getting them to play ball. We want to self admin warranties putting a figure of £100 per vehicle into an account and building a fund to use. We'll still be doing the same donkey work as we are now but hopefully will be better off financially and be able to be a bit more flexible about what we pay out on. Question is are the Lawgistics books any good? We use Lawgistics for our legal stuff and find them helpful. Any other recommendations? Any tips, tricks, hints or things we need to be aware of? Cheers

Comes down in part to the running costs down here though. I definitely charge more for an Astra than a guy up North but my rent and rates are crazy in comparison. Mechanics charge more per hour, paint is more expensive etc. I often look into the Midlands area, the other halfs family live in a nice bit, and I recently found a 40 car forecourt I could buy outright for the same price as four years rent on my site down here...never quite as simple as just that but it's always interesting to look around

I find the CF247 ones much better than most of ours that walk through the door tbh...I think a lot of it has to do with how much interaction you have with them. Most of the 247 ones we only meet for a quick test drive and quick handover, The ones through the door drive me mad...it all takes far too long and I usually miss a few walk ons dealing with them only for it to come back declined anyway. Yer thanks for the heads up...I don't think we have actually done a doc fee yet, they've all been easy deals. But we were going to implement it for those outside finance companies, something we'll have to think again about in that case.

If the client finds the car themselves then yes they charge, if you refer the customer then no charge as you'd expect. We have a document fee we charge for the ones where they apply a charge so it cancels itself out. Not ideal but they get acceptances for people we simply can't place ANYWHERE and hoover up some of the very overage stock.

£280 sounds a bit strong but i guess it varies from dealer to dealer...ours is nowhere near that. Their customers, whilst very very sub prime, aren't usually too bad and they're great for shifting overage stock onto.

This was my main reason for not allowing my business partner to agree to it. No audience and need stock so it should be free for six months whilst they build the brand IMO. Unfortunately it's too late to have a real impact IMO...CF247 have stolen the ground on customers sorting the finance themselves rather than being led by the dealer.

We've always been pretty lucky with V5's coming through...two weeks max usually but I had one back within the week recently. I do love a behind book finance repo with no V5, scares the public at the block off no end

Same. We're Brighton way and whilst we do still knock out diesels most people are quite anti them. Frankly they don't make any sense here anyway, constant traffic, no open roads and most work commutes are quite slow and short. Even I had to switch over to petrol because of the traffic. For us the local anti diesel stance isn't a bad thing because our buyers are starting to learn that if you use one for 5 minute journeys you'll clog it and kill it...saves trying to explain how to do a regen to a month old punter. I'd imagine they'll do well in more rural areas still. Can't see new diesel sales dropping off for much longer IMO...fleet buyers know diesel is the cheapest per mile to run and there isn't an electric replacement for mass fleets yet.

No. We considered it but after a run of p**s taking punters one month decided not to bother. We stick 'COURTESY VEHICLES NOT SUPPLIED' on our invoices and I have only ever had a couple of punters question it. Hire cars are £20 a day which if it's life and death (it always seems to be) they can stump up for themselves, funnily enough they never seem to be in such great need of wheels when I mention this.

We've just had an 11 year old car go into one for a health check because his missus is a service receptionist there (so that's going to be an unbiased report). Clean MOT last week and FSH, Peugeot claim it needs £550 worth of work doing We've told him as a gesture we'll do half the work and he can cover the rest but we're using our garage and sourcing our own parts...total cost £72 in bits and an hours labour. Sp that's just a 5X mark up Mr Peugeot.

I've never had a punter going ahead with work without notification. Our invoices have a big bold bit that states any works must be approved in advance which seems to stop us having this as an issue. Having said all that i'd weigh up the guy and the garage and offer half as a gesture so long as it was something over £3000

It's changing!!! We normally have about 90 in stock and since Christmas have been struggling to replenish because we refuse to pay January silly money. Bought 6 last week and 7 tonight, tonight was almost all behind book too (love it when the online bidding goes down).

We've had to do a few of these this winter...I think ours were around £90 so shop around!

I HATE VOLVOS. That's all I have to say on the matter.

This is the issue and where common sense has to prevail because the way things are going people seriously will start trying to reject stuff because the last owner lived at number 13 and they weren't made aware of this and never would have bought if they'd known a 13 was associated with it. I think this is where Simons videos might play a big part in the future. Forget the sale they're just a cracking bit of evidence to present to if ever anything gets sticky around the 'we weren't told' area because everything's there on camera.

We're about 15 - 20 cars short now so it's panic stations but we simply refuse to pay silly money for junk. Tonight was the perfect example. Nice 2010 1 series in white 60k, just our kind of low end flash mobile for the middle class driveways locally. Cap clean £4600 needed a bit of paint but i'd pay top book still All good until we see the vehicle description states " NO BRAKES " New one on me...now we're not talking needing some pads or a warped disc. We're talking NO BRAKES. Rolls into the hall, pushed to a stop and proceeds to make £4850. If it wasn't so funny i'd be angry at a wasted evening

I was in a px shitter doing a McDonalds run (we're usually pretty healthy but it had been a stressful busy day) and found out too late that it was so old and crap there were no cup holders...anywhere! Had to strap the drinks in with the mouldy seatbelt...nothing worse than no cupholders so I can understand your punter completely

Controversial maybe but i'd say we convert about 30%-40% of all email leads into sales and i'd say our enquiries split is about 30% email, 30% phone 40% walk ons. Email suits me perfectly. I don't want to converse with a customer who can't speak into the phone loudly enough, asks the same question three times and loses their train of thought halfway through. Plus it's easy to get caught off guard or miss a walk on whilst on the phone because it always rings at the wrong moment. Email I can reply to when it's convenient for me, I can check my facts fully before answering a question and reconstruct sentences before sending. Funny enough we very rarely get asked 'best price last price' via ebay msg or email but do all the time over the phone by chancers. I think a big part of it is that we're very email friendly, answer questions fully and in a friendly manner and fish out the time wasters quickly. The days when I no longer have to verbally communicate a customer can't come soon enough...not that I dislike Joe Public or anything

We finished our contract in December. Total waste of money for us; next to no genuine enquiries, plenty of time wasting fake enquiries, no rep support.

Let me know when you find out...be handy to know

If it's Cluster Repairs UK don't hold your breath...f***ing useless IMO

We're busy busy busy on sales and can't buy stock as per usual, not complaining though!