BMW AUC / Autotrader - far fewer cars than a month ago?
Discussion
Hi All
By next weekend I'll be in a position to buy a facelift 120d / 123d so have been watching Autotrader and the BMW AUC website for the past 3 months as a bit of preparatory research, and I've noticed that since just before Christmas a lot of the cars I was watching have suddenly "disappeared", in lots of cases having previously been for sale for weeks on end beforehand. Obviously the odd one will have sold, but unless someone has bought about 50% of the entire UK stock in bulk on pretty much the same day, that doesn't seem to explain it. If it was just Autotrader I could understand it as I assume a lot of the dealers dont bother advertising over the Christmas period, but the cars have also disappeared from the AUC / dealer websites which I can't understand so much. Anyone have any inside dealer knowledge, is there some kind of big stock rotation scheme going on at this time of year or something?
cheers
By next weekend I'll be in a position to buy a facelift 120d / 123d so have been watching Autotrader and the BMW AUC website for the past 3 months as a bit of preparatory research, and I've noticed that since just before Christmas a lot of the cars I was watching have suddenly "disappeared", in lots of cases having previously been for sale for weeks on end beforehand. Obviously the odd one will have sold, but unless someone has bought about 50% of the entire UK stock in bulk on pretty much the same day, that doesn't seem to explain it. If it was just Autotrader I could understand it as I assume a lot of the dealers dont bother advertising over the Christmas period, but the cars have also disappeared from the AUC / dealer websites which I can't understand so much. Anyone have any inside dealer knowledge, is there some kind of big stock rotation scheme going on at this time of year or something?
cheers
What model have you been looking for? Will be interesting to know if its just 1 series or across the board?
The only other thing I could think of is that I believe BMW dealers have targets to meet every 3 months, one being the end of December. I believe they also have a 3 month selling policy whereby if a car doesnt sell within 3 months it will be put through the auctions or perhaps put back into the "pool" somewhere, so maybe its a combination of this as well.
The only other thing I could think of is that I believe BMW dealers have targets to meet every 3 months, one being the end of December. I believe they also have a 3 month selling policy whereby if a car doesnt sell within 3 months it will be put through the auctions or perhaps put back into the "pool" somewhere, so maybe its a combination of this as well.
Edited by LocoBlade on Sunday 4th January 11:41
The cars Ive been looking at are all a year old or newer and generally either ex demos or have come straight out of BMW corporate though, so I dont think the part ex situation applies here. Also it wasnt as if they dribbled away over a few weeks, they all literally disappeared within a couple of days, right before Christmas my Autotrader search showed I think 19 or 20 cars within the search criteria, all from Franchised dealers, then the same search mid week before new year showed 6.
One thing I will say is if you're using Autotrader, make sure the new year doesnt now mean it dismisses everything that it was finding late last year. For example I used to search for 1 year old cars which showed me everything I needed to see (07 and 08 cars), but now we're in 2009 that obviously only shows 08 cars.
Edited by LocoBlade on Sunday 4th January 22:17
Where did you hear that, sounds entirely plausible? Having registered my interest with a couple of local dealers who don't have exactly what I want, it will be interesting to see if they come up with cars from nowhere which could suggest something like this.
I wonder if BMW corporate employees will be keeping their cars a little longer now then, I work close to BMW finance and according to a friend of a friend who works there, all the employees on a car scheme (virtually all of them) get new cars every 3 months, presumably those then get sold into the dealer network as the nearly new cars we see on the forecourts.
I wonder if BMW corporate employees will be keeping their cars a little longer now then, I work close to BMW finance and according to a friend of a friend who works there, all the employees on a car scheme (virtually all of them) get new cars every 3 months, presumably those then get sold into the dealer network as the nearly new cars we see on the forecourts.
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