Gavin@Rousdon

Anyone, be it someone with a forecourt, a main dealer, someone who trades from home or a road side trader can do an honest fair job but also anyone in the chain can do a bad job. It's a case of being 'Honest' with how you do a job. Painting one element of the motor trade as the lowest of the low is just defelecting the fact that there are rogue traders all along the line. Myself I perfer to focus on my business and doing that right, yes I look at my business rates each year and think a roadside trader doesn't have that expense, but I also see Main Dealers offering to service a car for £99 or £149 and I know it's basicly an 'oil change' rather then what I would consider a 'Service'. If your in it for the long term you need to back yourself, the bad traders get found out it just take time. Would we all be better trying to get Trading Standards and the Office of Fair Trading to sit and listen to us, show them that a flexible approach is needed as the mechanics of a car is so complex that customer expectations need to be realistic.

I've read the guidence for motor dealers which was written by the OFT, the PDF file can be found by following the link below. http://www.oft.gov.uk/news-and-updates/press/2010/71-10#.UnyhRCdlJvY The problem is that it's very open ended and leaves alot of 'grey area' especialy around the term 'a reasonable period of time'. There are no hard and fast rules with the dealer having to prove to faults weren't present at time of sale, which sounds easy but the guidence states that a fault could be present without being noticable. It's a minefield and weighed in the customers favour (not a bad thing in certain cases) but if a dealer decides to try their hand in court it would require a Judge with a good degree of mechanic knowledge for the case to be ruled fairly.

Longer warranties should help second hand values too. Lots of dealer offer their own warranties now and whilst not the most glamorous car a 5 year old Kia with FSH and 2 years warranty left should make used Kia's appealing to the trade.

I would say the MOT's for £30 is more worrying to the Citroen Dealer then a 51 Plate Saxo in a lay-by.

Barrie, firstly there is very little wrong with my motal compass, I just don't class everyone as crooks because they haven't got a site. Yes I agree the council should look into the fact they are using a public highway to trade from and trading standards should be paying close attention to ALL dealers who aren't comlpying to the law. Just because the person you saw wasn't carrying 50 sets of car keys doesn't mean everyone is. The crooks aren't in it for the long term, they just want to make quick money and rip people off. If they last a few year maybe you should offer them a little respect because it means they must be doing something right. In all honesty I choose to worry about my own business and not what others are doing, with the internet and how people search for car every car dealer is next door to each other. If they worry you so much I'm afraid the motor trade isn't the place for you and your morale compass.

Funny how a customer who's knows the in's and out's of the car they are trying to buy knows so little about their own part ex..."how many onwers???............eeerrmmmm, 2 before me I think" (HPI says 5)....service history?? ............yes..it's been serviced (by the first 2 or the 6 owners)............."The airbag light is on"........................"Yes, it does that now and again, hasn't for a while, thought my garage had sorted it" ........MOT? ....."Well into next year, will have to check!!!" (2 weeks left). They only advantage is with every lie their p/ex value falls more and more.

Would be interesting to find out how many faults relate to engine managment lights. The 'check engine' light can come on for 100's of reasons yet the car runs fine yet the only indication is the red/yellow light shining from your dashboard which in turn scares the customer to death! Other componants on the car could be in a far worse state (yet still useable) and the customer would neither know or worry.

Would a roadside trader take customer off a dealer with a site? I guess it depends on your stock profile, if your selling cars £5000+ your customer isn't going to pay to much attention to a line of cars priced at £100-£1500. Also where do these roadside traders get there stock, I guess many are part exchange cars from other dealers, either purchased direct of via auction. We may not like them but without them we would have a lot of money tied up in p/x stock that we don't want to retail. We all know the trading standards recieve lots of complaints about used cars, would be interesting to see a breakdown of these in relation to price, miles and type of dealer. Roadside trading could be a first step to building a business and I think it's unfair to class them all as crooks. Lets not forget that Main Dealers have their fair share of problems dealing with complaints, the internet is full of stories on customer getting fobbed off by MD's then getting a result when the brands customer services get invloved. Also the paying customer has to take a degree of responsiblity, if its cheap, its cheap for a reason.

The first Nissan Micra's, when I started off in business I could buy Freg to H reg ones from the local Nissan Dealer with low mileage for £200-£300 and sell easy for £795, then re-invest the money in a Nissan Primera which again would never break down !!! I took one on my old Mirca's that I sold 9 years ago back in part exchange last month, paid £250 for it in 2004 and still had to give £150 in p/x in 2013 !!! Used to love Rover 214 or 216's too, in the case of the 216 SLi the words 'Its got the Honda engine and Power Steering' always used to seal the deal !! In the case of the 214's I used to twist the truth by claiming the K Series engine 'Was developed with Honda, Sir!!'...followed by....' it's got power steering Sir' which used to move the conversation on !!!!!

Argee with Umesh, educate people at point of sale. Some people are going to buy a diesel car despite a petrol making more sense, they get blinded but the MPG figures and the £30 or £105 a year road tax. Either when you are quailifing these people or at point of hand over a basic outline of how a DPF works is a must. Simply telling them that the car needs to be driven at speed for 5-10 miles a months to allow the filter to clear itself out is all it takes. Then its upto them if they follow your advice or not.

Why the thrist for Autotrader to be challeneged? Yes it is expensive but it works. As soon as other companies come in and grab a slice of the market they will start charging a premium too. Are independent dealers going to risk stop use Autotrader and miss out on all the traffic it creates therefore risking sales? Autotrader aren't going to drop their prices anytime soon, other companies aren't going to be able to produce the number of leads that Autotrader does anytime soon. We soon will get to the stage that we were 12-13 years ago when websites and internet searches became the normal for the motor trade and dealers were paying for packages with sites like V-Cars, Telegraph Motoring (and many others) which just weren't worth the money. For all the promises companies like Motors.co.uk make unless their prices are a fraction of what Autotrader charge its not going to be cost effective.