THIS HAS BEEN BUGGING ME FOR AGES NOW. I REALLY NEED THE OPINION OF OTHER PEOPLE IN MY SHOES. THANKS :)

[jamslug 91]

I know I posted this is Twitter Car Dealers but I want a broader audience. 

So in short; this is how I use autotrader:

1) Buying stock from auction with the stock profiler in autotrade mail.
2) Pricing stock using retail checker.
3) Valuing part exchanges with retail checker. 
4) Creating adverts.
5) Printing sales flyers.
6) Generating leads. 

This costs around £1200 every 4 weeks. 

I really find the pricing useful and allows me to buy stock in the first plce to still be able to use their retail prices which I find really does work well and helps with stock turnover.

What I want to do is knock AT on the head completely and source each of the above elsewhere. It will be a little more work but should be worth the £14,400 annual saving.
 

So I would like help on the following replacements:

1) Does anyone use the stock profiler in autotrade mail as a stand alone product or are there other alternatives out there?

2) I have considered Glass radar as this will do the same sort of thing but at the moment AT's retail checker is quite good. Does anyone else have experience of Glass's radar or it's accuracy?

3) What is the best way to value a part exchange. I always sell my part exchanges and never auction so I am guessing with the help of Glass' radar (if it is any good) then that is my best bet.

4 & 5) I would use Motor's portal if I ditched AT, do you know if you can do flyers from there? 

6) Motors generates the most leads by far already for me, far more than AT so this has never been an issue. 

I am am expecting sales to drop slightly if I did decide to do this but I wont ever have the financial burden of the AT bill and I wont find myself having to budget through tough times. I would have the extra advertising budget for facbook and local papers that surprisingly also work well for me. 

This has been playing on my mind for a while now and it is a huge step for me as I am only a 23 year old one man band, so I would really appreciate any thoughts at all. Even if it is on just one of the above subjects. 
Any feedback would be incredibly useful. 

 

[Trident 24]

We swapped out from Cap valuations last year, we went to glasses with the radar option mostly due to the cost of cap incorporating commercials, anyway, its useless, even with our settings at 'below' we end up with a usually inaccurate figure, generally higher than autotrader, so used guess work instead and  it has seen us lose out to quite a few part ex deals, so we are biding our time to get out of glasses and go back to trusted Cap...Now we too have used autotrader for giving out part ex pricing I have found the autotrader tool really helpful, people take the figure as gospel, because often it will be the figure that they have accessed for themselves and when it prints the valuation its in such big print they cant dispute it, its not just a dodgy trader picking a low figure from the air to fleece them. So, in summary, I consider that to go to Glasses, may not give you what you are after, the radar side of pricing is reasonable but it's biggest benefit is the option to view 'sold' pricing, how accurate it is I have no idea...

[jamslug 91]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for your response. I wonder if I can just remove the advertising aspect from autotrader and still use the portal part to get the retail checker tool?

[Trident 24]

Unlikely, cause it is accessed via the 'advertising' portal, so i would probably reduce stock to minimum to keep facility and reduce costs, kind of a compromise to quitting completely, have you ever used the valuation tool from the AT website that customers view? I find it really helpful because no matter what the trade says, that is the info Joe Bloggs gets...

[Rory RSC 596]

No idea if I am doing things wrong but I have a HPI subscription. Whenever a PX comes in I HPI the car to check free from finance/ write off status. 
HPI gives me the options of ticking boxes to get Cap or Glasses valuations. 

That is how I value the PX's. It does also give an option to do a comparison retail checker type product. I have never used it. I always just look at what other examples are selling for on Autotrader myself.

[James Bush 95]

I use HPI and the attached CAP and Glasses valuations. I also use a handy iPhone app "we price cars" and it tends to be pretty accurate on everyday stuff but can be a little wild on the sportier/prestige stuff.

When valuing/pricing I always have a search on AT to see what else is about and price mine accordingly, I find AT's valuation tool just takes an average of whats advertised and doesn't remove CAT C/D's, cars advertised as a finance payment, sold cars that are then reduced to £99 etc so it can be out by £100's

[GreenGiant 287]

Not sure if I should blab about this (as I usually prefer to keep my opinions to myself...), but I've been a user of autorola's Autofind Stock Locator for many years. Not only does it have a large no of main dealer cars for sale, there is also a facility to add cars to advertise. Doing this by reg no lookup gives both cap and glass valuations. Tbh, I don't think I pay anything for it, so seems like a proper bargain to me!

If there is a cost, I'm sorry but don't grass on me. 

[Trident 24]

OMG...Green Giant you are amazing.... it works!!!

[umesh 336]

James, I did ask autotrader about the 'valuations' and like you believed that the prices shown are low due to car C & CAT D Cars bridging the value down, I'm told this is NOT the case , when CAT C-D Cars are highlighted with VRM , There are removed from the valuation tools so does not affect the 'retail' prices, obviously if some sellers don't use the VRM and its a CAT C/D in the wordings etc then this cannot be picked up for valuation purposes and some will slip the net. Hope this helps! 

GG you're a genius ! free tips always appreciated.. must check it out ! I look forward to your next tip ..... advertising cars on all platforms for free !    

[countryman 13]

Not sure if I should blab about this (as I usually prefer to keep my opinions to myself...), but I've been a user of autorola's Autofind Stock Locator for many years. Not only does it have a large no of main dealer cars for sale, there is also a facility to add cars to advertise. Doing this by reg no lookup gives both cap and glass valuations. Tbh, I don't think I pay anything for it, so seems like a proper bargain to me!

If there is a cost, I'm sorry but don't grass on me. 

So how do you do it? I have just registered, but when I click on 'Register your car for free' it just says 'Unfortunately you are not authorised to view these vehicles.'

[GreenGiant 287]

Think you may have to contact them to get properly authorised. I'll talk to my contact there and find out for you.

[countryman 13]

Think you may have to contact them to get properly authorised. I'll talk to my contact there and find out for you.

OK - they have sent me an e-mail to say I'm registered but it's still the same! Thanks!!

[GreenGiant 287]

https://www.autorola.co.uk/autofind/about.do

 

[GreenGiant 287]

OMG...Green Giant you are amazing.... it works!!!

Fill your boots, cancel your guide subscriptions and donate to a charity of your choice instead. 

My work here is complete...

[Steve92 80]

Having worked for a charity and the wife working for a different charity I can safely say any savings should be spent on beer, takeaways and loose women.

[sparky 274]

Having worked for a charity and the wife working for a different charity I can safely say any savings should be spent on beer, takeaways and loose women.

And just waste the rest.....

Shameless plug and apologies for doing so, but if this works I'll be making my 'guide' donation to a friend's just giving group. https://www.facebook.com/avaswalkingwish?fref=ts

If anyone is unsure what to so with theirs or has anything lying around the office that they may wish to throw in to a charity golf day and all that goes with it that we are holding in a week then feel welcome to give me a shout.

Cheers.

 

[RH Trading 80]

Hi James - you can use Flyers from Motors, we also dropped CAP and use the auto trader value tool. CAP doesn't mean a thing to my customers but they seem to trust the AT one. around half of all our enquiries start off asking me to value their car first. didn't hear from half of the enquiries after I gave them the CAP value but now I email them the AT price, ask them to bring it in with them when they test drive and 9 times out of 10 they turn up with it,