OT: buying a car remotely

Make = Vauhall, model ? (it wasn't my car). In the UK we don't require an MOT until 3 years old but in this case it was for a third party safety check which is basically what the MOT is for.

Must have been an absolute steaming turd of a design to fail that in just 2 years.

I've taken a brand new electrical item out of its box and it failed a PAT safety test!

I think the suggestion is that main dealers might be *more* trustworthy than Del Boy Motors. I'm sure Mr Trotter is a fine upstanding fellow, but in my experience corners are more likely to be cut: from that sort of outfit I've seen cars with no oil in them, major rust problems and cars where the OBD tells you there's a major drivetrain fault, which have just been given a wash and laid out on their scruffy industrial estate site.

Which is not to say that main dealers are perfect, but at least they tend not to play in that market.

I'm sure there are also decent independents who trade on a reputation for quality, service and fair prices, and are infinitely preferable to the main dealers. It's just not always straightforward to tell them apart from the Del Boys.

Agreed, so I think it comes down to what the comeback is in case you aren't satisfied. If you are able to walk away from the deal for any reason then sight-unseen might still work.

Theo

my favouite back street garage was introduced as: "George - the only person I know who can weld two pieces of rust together"

My experience with main dealers is that in the main they are the biggest rip of merchants there are.

He now works for a dealership that charges £120 an hour instead

I am sorry to say that going to a main dealership is no guarantee of anything, There are honest service shops and there are dishonest service shops and you cannot tell from the outside.

I am afraid they do. Especially with older cars, where they will simply replace everything in sight to get the car up to perfection all with brand new guaranteed OEM parts, And claim that they wont do the work to a lesser standard.

The better ones are usually run by an educated tech.

Buy one with warranty from a main dealer. They will then fix the f***er for free.

In my nearest town, the Ford Main Dealer was relieved of their franchise after complaints about the workshop. This was in the late 1960s - it might not happen now.

I was happy with DriveTheDeal, you spec the car exactly as you want it, they know which dealers for which makes are likely to be desperate for a sale to hit their targets, and get the cheapest price from them ... as you say I paid the dealer and after it was built they delivered it (by a retired chap who said being a delivery driver paid for his golf habit).

The garage whose manager tried to rook me TWICE, is no longer a dealership The other one, has been a Peugeot dealer ever since I vowed never to go there again. 40 years ago.

Nope. I have signed up to MyVauxhall and get a discount on servicing and I definately don't pay 3x what a backstreet garage charges.

Main dealers are not interested in car over about 3 to 4 years old. Anything older traded in just gets passed out to the trade and ends up on a 2nd hand car supermarket and just given a flashy valet.

Sometimes they dont even bother to clear the errors if there is a problem (being the reason it was traded in).

Years ago, I would drive to British Car Autions, next to Blackbushe Aerodrome.

I would spend ages inspecting hundreds of cars before entering the appropriate hall and enjoy the choking smell of partly combusted car fumes wghile trying not be overwhelmed by the unpleasant scowls of the professional buyers who clearly hated private buyers.

I never came away with a bad deal.

BCA have got the market sewn up. The auctions are making it harder for private buyers. They own WeBuyAnyCar so they buy in cars that way, and they own Cinch so they flog their stock direct to consumers.

I don't know how they work out how to place stock (does Cinch cream off the good stuff?) but I'd be tempted to try one of the other auction places. Manheim looks a bit more friendly.

There are some 'auction buying services' that claim to let you use their trade account to place online bids, which you can't as a private buyer. This one (big presence on Youtube) went bust:

Theo

On 14 Mar 2023, pinnerite wrote

Good move. It reminds me of furnishing my first couple of houses in the 1970s and 1980s with solid, good-quality, old-going-on-antique furniture bought at auctions.

I recall comming across a common complaint by new auction-goers, that they didn't like auctions that were filled with dealers. That always confused me: as a private buyer, buying for myself and with no need to factor in profit margins, I could (obviously) outbid a dealer every time.

(40 to 45 years later, I still have some of the furniture.)

Unfortunately the effect of blanket coverage of auctions on daytime TV means the local one is basically a leisure activity for the retired, rather than a good value place to buy stuff. There was some secondhand furniture going for substantially more than the new price, for example. The place is turning into an antiques version of a garden centre, with an ever-expanding cafe and reducing space for the actual stock.

This may be why the car auctions want to dissuade private buyers.

I agree on the 'solid old-but-not-antique' furniture though. Perhaps the equivalent of buying a 3 year old car that's just off lease - good quality and most of the depreciation has been covered by somebody else.

The car auctions avoid that because private buyers have much higher fees than trade, which are based on the volume of sales. If you buy regularly as trade you pay a fraction of the private buyer fees.

Theo

On 14 Mar 2023, Theo wrote

That's sad to hear. I've not been to an auction for many years and wasn't aware of that, but I suppose it's a predictable development.

Interesting. I suspect the auction commission charged to sellers was always negotiable, with the rate differing between trade/repeat sellers and private/one-off sellers, but I was buying, and sold very few items.

The big change from my auction-going days was that in those days, auction houses didn't charge buyers for buying: the cost of selling an item was paid by the seller.

I remember the big fine-art auctioneers introducing a "buyer's premium" -- Mr Google tells me it started in England in 1975, and in the US in 1977 -- but I certainly wasn't charged for buying at my local auction rooms in the 1970s and 1980s, and it still seems wrong to me.

In what way? I haven't been for a couple of years or more, but never had a problem of making choices and getting a modest bargain.

That doesn't surprise me!

I was aware of these types of interfaces but never looked into it, and seemed complicated.

Hmm, yes, the buyer premium is painful, last time I think £250. What does 'dealer' pay?

I just bought my car remotely, did get a full video of car before deciding to buy ..... paid deposit and collected following week .... if it had not been as advertised I would have cancelled - it was and all was fine. IT was a main dealer so reasonably safe option.