Bad taste - trade buying
Discussion
Hi guys, just wanted to see what you all thought of this situ,
I am going into business with one of my customers, also a big petrolhead. Anyway, were looking at getting into trading, not bottom end stuff, but capped at £20-30k vehicles, so we've been in touch with a few traders, and done a bit of bidding against other traders/underwritters, and landed ourself an E46 M3 in Estoril Blue with 56k on the clock. Brilliant, good spec, rare and premium worthy colour and relitively low millage for a 7 year old car. Anyway, the trader was helpful, and being our first real buy to sell, he guided us in the way it works and how he'd suggest going about selling etc.
Once we 'won' the bid so to speak, I rang and just said, obviously its a trade car, so it may need some work, tyres, front bumper painting and alike, but if we turn up and it's totally ruined, and needs a full service, and it's keyed all the way down, can we walk away? He said of course, it's down to trust in this business, I describe it as it is, and you take it if I've described it well - fair enough
Well, the car became physical today after it was p/x'd, so we went straight round (no money been exchanged, only agreed) to have a look. I took my paint depth gauges and set to work, all fine besides one panel reading very odd figures, upto 700microns compared to 120ish proving signs of filler work and the paint on this area was full on b
ks. We looked past this, we can sort it for about £500, it's a trade car remember so we need to allow for work.
Then the money shot, the 56,000 miles is infact 66,900. A typo apparently via email. At this point the car is not a 'ok' deal, were about 1500-2000 over priced and taking into account the work that needs doing, were almost running a loss on our top end sale price.
The seller didn't seem to react shocked when I said it's been in a rear end bump, or that the rear tyres were almost bald, or the discs and pads were like that of weetabix.
As I said, we expected trade cars to be cheap for a reason, but did I expect too much?
The seller got, not shirty, but a little blunt via email when we confirmed it as a 'no' in the end, because we had agreed we'd take it, but shirley it's his fault, 11,000 out of millage isn't really a typo :/
Discuss!
Thanks
I am going into business with one of my customers, also a big petrolhead. Anyway, were looking at getting into trading, not bottom end stuff, but capped at £20-30k vehicles, so we've been in touch with a few traders, and done a bit of bidding against other traders/underwritters, and landed ourself an E46 M3 in Estoril Blue with 56k on the clock. Brilliant, good spec, rare and premium worthy colour and relitively low millage for a 7 year old car. Anyway, the trader was helpful, and being our first real buy to sell, he guided us in the way it works and how he'd suggest going about selling etc.
Once we 'won' the bid so to speak, I rang and just said, obviously its a trade car, so it may need some work, tyres, front bumper painting and alike, but if we turn up and it's totally ruined, and needs a full service, and it's keyed all the way down, can we walk away? He said of course, it's down to trust in this business, I describe it as it is, and you take it if I've described it well - fair enough
Well, the car became physical today after it was p/x'd, so we went straight round (no money been exchanged, only agreed) to have a look. I took my paint depth gauges and set to work, all fine besides one panel reading very odd figures, upto 700microns compared to 120ish proving signs of filler work and the paint on this area was full on b
ks. We looked past this, we can sort it for about £500, it's a trade car remember so we need to allow for work.Then the money shot, the 56,000 miles is infact 66,900. A typo apparently via email. At this point the car is not a 'ok' deal, were about 1500-2000 over priced and taking into account the work that needs doing, were almost running a loss on our top end sale price.
The seller didn't seem to react shocked when I said it's been in a rear end bump, or that the rear tyres were almost bald, or the discs and pads were like that of weetabix.
As I said, we expected trade cars to be cheap for a reason, but did I expect too much?
The seller got, not shirty, but a little blunt via email when we confirmed it as a 'no' in the end, because we had agreed we'd take it, but shirley it's his fault, 11,000 out of millage isn't really a typo :/
Discuss!
Thanks
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