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I noticed that the new car market is a strange one indeed. All the major magazines are offering "find a new car" service, however they simply offer Franchised dealer cars, therefore they are not treating the customer fairly. I guess its like Compare the Market having all the most expensive insurance companies on their books but excluding the cheaper ones because the big boys wont like it. Mercedes think 25% of their business will be done online by 2021 , so the franchised dealer who is keeping prices high (they have to) maybe in for a shock What are your thoughts, should magazine likes whatcar be allowed to cheery pick the dealers who dont really discount, is this false advertising. ??

With only 6 weeks left of 2013, it's time to look back through the year and compare with previous years results. With all the increases in new car sales, with some fantastic enhanced and subsidised new car deals, in comes as no surprise that new car sales have gone up, but what about us independents? What about the used cars especially the nearly new car m,market, how has that been affected for you? We would love to know what the REAL picture is out there, not the picture that the media has painted, but the view from the coal face! Jim

So another survey to see how bad the motor trade is - Do you think its justified ? Are customers get a bad deal ? Are sales staff getting poor at selling ? http://cardealermagazine.co.uk/publish/customers-fail-to-receive-the-test-drives-they-want/77813?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter Various reasons may be ! We're told customers have done all their research and are just coming in to buy - so the sales staff JUST want to sell, why bother with test drives! 'order takers' appears many franchised dealers no longer want the 'professional ' sales person but simply someone who can quote monthly payments and shoot between sales managers office and customer ' A Puppet' ( From what I'm told by Many customers!) "Why bother with test drives the customer won't buy from us only shop around so I'll let 'another' dealer do the work and I'll just give him the best price" is what I've heard before ! Are the managers putting pressure on to 'sell' cars - Numbers as opposed to ' satisfying customer needs' 1st ? Are sales staff simply lazy? Back to basics I think ! any thoughts?