Ask a car salesman anything...anything at all.
Discussion
lord trumpton said:
Mileage correction, haircuts etc
Are people in the trade still clocking cars? I know it's difficult for you salesmen to answer on a public forum but I'm sure you could answer in a non incriminating way?
No, never, just not worth the grief later down the line.Are people in the trade still clocking cars? I know it's difficult for you salesmen to answer on a public forum but I'm sure you could answer in a non incriminating way?
What the traders do, once they have taken a part exchange of us, is up to them, never heard of it though.
Mexman said:
lord trumpton said:
Mileage correction, haircuts etc
Are people in the trade still clocking cars? I know it's difficult for you salesmen to answer on a public forum but I'm sure you could answer in a non incriminating way?
No, never, just not worth the grief later down the line.Are people in the trade still clocking cars? I know it's difficult for you salesmen to answer on a public forum but I'm sure you could answer in a non incriminating way?
What the traders do, once they have taken a part exchange of us, is up to them, never heard of it though.
In 2005 I bought a new 350Z from local Nissan dealer, on Monday I enquired about a Range Rover and the sales chap said have I still got the Nissan - that’s pretty good client data keeping, obviously his personal contacts and he recalled my business and that I gave him a set of phones as a thank you.
Didn’t get the RR though
Didn’t get the RR though
slk 32 said:
mylesmcd said:
slk 32 said:
jamiebae said:
papa3 said:
Corporate identity. It's a real cash cow for the manufacturer. Peugeot have long been on the lunatic fringe for showroom standards.
Indeed, except in France, where you can chuck some wicker conservatory furniture in a shabby old garage alongside a 208 and call it a dealer. The crazy thing is that the dealer has to spend the cash, but they don’t have the product to appeal to customers here. Their auto boxes are way behind the best, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have a single model available with 4x4 now, still at least the building is the right shade of blue for customers buying a 308 at a massive discount...
A peugeot dealer looked like a tin shed and the Mercedes one looked like something from the early 80s!. I thought all dealers had to have these glass palaces or is it just us on treasure island?
I was in the North (Udine) so not like it was a poor area or in the South.
The sad thing is we lost a lot of the smaller local dealers in the UK as the manufacturers insisted on these large glass palaces and the concomitant investment needed
Just a note on the small garages, you do still get some cracking local 'old man' garages that fix specialist cars and my goodness they are epic. Nearly worth a PH thread alone. like antique desk, topless female calandar on the wall and a 365 GTC with the bonnet open. Classic stuff.
papa3 said:
What is more common is continuous “adjustment” of mileage. Hi mileage driver does 30k a year. Just before service winds it back to 12k. No records of previous mileage and can save a fortune in monthly rental costs and mileage charges.
Yes. I private hire driver told me he clocks his car regularly to avoid being caught out declaring fewer miles/hires for tax purposes. Less miles when selling being a bonus. Edited by papa3 on Wednesday 22 November 07:15
I wouldn't be surprised if many PCP and lease cars are clocked if the user has gone massively over the limit.
irc said:
Yes. I private hire driver told me he clocks his car regularly to avoid being caught out declaring fewer miles/hires for tax purposes. Less miles when selling being a bonus.
I wouldn't be surprised if many PCP and lease cars are clocked if the user has gone massively over the limit.
As I understand it the bulk of clocking fits this profile - it happens annually, prior to the service or MOT and is done by drivers taking cars on a 10k per year lease but actually covering 30k+. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to trace and not like the good old days when someone would give the car a 60k haircut and lose all the old MOTs but it'd ping a mileage discrepancy on HPI. Computerised MOTs also make it hard to do in one chunk as there's an annual record of the mileage there.I wouldn't be surprised if many PCP and lease cars are clocked if the user has gone massively over the limit.
jamiebae said:
As I understand it the bulk of clocking fits this profile - it happens annually, prior to the service or MOT and is done by drivers taking cars on a 10k per year lease but actually covering 30k+. Unfortunately it's almost impossible to trace and not like the good old days when someone would give the car a 60k haircut and lose all the old MOTs but it'd ping a mileage discrepancy on HPI. Computerised MOTs also make it hard to do in one chunk as there's an annual record of the mileage there.
I'd tend to agree with this - the motor trade is generally pretty good in not clocking vehicles, but given how many rental vehicles we get back that have been clocked, it does suggest that the worst perps are the drivers exceeding mileage limits. We now check every vehicle upon return with a diagnostic tool to read the ECU mileage and match it to the dashboard reading. We also have a policy of not amending any mileages ourselves, even if it is to genuinely correct it and match to the ECU, we pass the vehicle back to the customer and it remains on hire until they decide to correct it themselves, and pay the relevant excess mileage charge, or buy the vehicle outright. There have been a few instances where we have had to auction the vehicle through a trade sale, and we make it clear that the display mileage is unwarranted. We'd still prefer to take the financial hit than be associated with clocking, even for noble reasons.
What we do not want is anybody seeing a mileage correction company operating on our defleet site, nor do we want any invoices with our name on it from a mileage correction company.
People are slowly learning that the leasing and rental industry is not a soft touch on these matters.
I've recently dealt with a clocked Shogun, Display read 7000 miles, ECU read 20,000 odd miles - in 6 months.
The driver was adamant that he hadn't done anything, and that it must be a faulty ECU, and we would be hearing from his solicitors if we continued to slander him.
We then presented his solicitor with the diagnostics report that showed not only the ECU mileage, but the GPS mileage from the multimedia system, the average fuel consumption, the number of fill ups, the number of DPF regens and the average distance between them....
We received a BACS payment for the vehicle the following day and it was collected it from our defleet site a week later - for export.
The driver was adamant that he hadn't done anything, and that it must be a faulty ECU, and we would be hearing from his solicitors if we continued to slander him.
We then presented his solicitor with the diagnostics report that showed not only the ECU mileage, but the GPS mileage from the multimedia system, the average fuel consumption, the number of fill ups, the number of DPF regens and the average distance between them....
We received a BACS payment for the vehicle the following day and it was collected it from our defleet site a week later - for export.
I worked for a brand that has one of the most popular pick-ups and we were offered cars in PX that were likely clocked regularly by members of a certain community who like pick-ups.
Unfortunately they did catch us out once with an E-Class that looked spot on but when the Merc dealer who underwrote it plugged it in, it revealed the car's true mileage. Thankfully we had been quite cautious with the value so we did lose a bit of trade profit and managed to dispose of it with only a small loss.
Unfortunately they did catch us out once with an E-Class that looked spot on but when the Merc dealer who underwrote it plugged it in, it revealed the car's true mileage. Thankfully we had been quite cautious with the value so we did lose a bit of trade profit and managed to dispose of it with only a small loss.
Edited by Nickp82 on Wednesday 22 November 13:09
mylesmcd said:
slk 32 said:
mylesmcd said:
slk 32 said:
jamiebae said:
papa3 said:
Corporate identity. It's a real cash cow for the manufacturer. Peugeot have long been on the lunatic fringe for showroom standards.
Indeed, except in France, where you can chuck some wicker conservatory furniture in a shabby old garage alongside a 208 and call it a dealer. The crazy thing is that the dealer has to spend the cash, but they don’t have the product to appeal to customers here. Their auto boxes are way behind the best, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have a single model available with 4x4 now, still at least the building is the right shade of blue for customers buying a 308 at a massive discount...
A peugeot dealer looked like a tin shed and the Mercedes one looked like something from the early 80s!. I thought all dealers had to have these glass palaces or is it just us on treasure island?
I was in the North (Udine) so not like it was a poor area or in the South.
The sad thing is we lost a lot of the smaller local dealers in the UK as the manufacturers insisted on these large glass palaces and the concomitant investment needed
Just a note on the small garages, you do still get some cracking local 'old man' garages that fix specialist cars and my goodness they are epic. Nearly worth a PH thread alone. like antique desk, topless female calandar on the wall and a 365 GTC with the bonnet open. Classic stuff.
I did intend to drive more in the summer but pretty much spent every day on the beach in Lignano Sabbiadoro..bliss!
slk 32 said:
mylesmcd said:
slk 32 said:
mylesmcd said:
slk 32 said:
jamiebae said:
papa3 said:
Corporate identity. It's a real cash cow for the manufacturer. Peugeot have long been on the lunatic fringe for showroom standards.
Indeed, except in France, where you can chuck some wicker conservatory furniture in a shabby old garage alongside a 208 and call it a dealer. The crazy thing is that the dealer has to spend the cash, but they don’t have the product to appeal to customers here. Their auto boxes are way behind the best, and I’m pretty sure they don’t have a single model available with 4x4 now, still at least the building is the right shade of blue for customers buying a 308 at a massive discount...
A peugeot dealer looked like a tin shed and the Mercedes one looked like something from the early 80s!. I thought all dealers had to have these glass palaces or is it just us on treasure island?
I was in the North (Udine) so not like it was a poor area or in the South.
The sad thing is we lost a lot of the smaller local dealers in the UK as the manufacturers insisted on these large glass palaces and the concomitant investment needed
Just a note on the small garages, you do still get some cracking local 'old man' garages that fix specialist cars and my goodness they are epic. Nearly worth a PH thread alone. like antique desk, topless female calandar on the wall and a 365 GTC with the bonnet open. Classic stuff.
I did intend to drive more in the summer but pretty much spent every day on the beach in Lignano Sabbiadoro..bliss!
DSLiverpool said:
In 2005 I bought a new 350Z from local Nissan dealer, on Monday I enquired about a Range Rover and the sales chap said have I still got the Nissan - that’s pretty good client data keeping, obviously his personal contacts and he recalled my business and that I gave him a set of phones as a thank you.
Didn’t get the RR though
Blimey. When did Nissan dealers start selling Range Rovers ?Didn’t get the RR though
Buster73 said:
I've given bottles out over the years to the salesman or sales manager in the last case when I've bought a car , just a little token of appreciation knowing I'm not the easiest to deal with when haggling.
Also given the driver a few beers when dropping a car off .
Its all take in this world now , folk have forgotten to show gratitude when deserved.
Last time I was in my service dept I took the boys in a big tin of biccies just for the hell of it, they don't really get much thanks I don't think!Also given the driver a few beers when dropping a car off .
Its all take in this world now , folk have forgotten to show gratitude when deserved.
Osinjak said:
Buster73 said:
I've given bottles out over the years to the salesman or sales manager in the last case when I've bought a car , just a little token of appreciation knowing I'm not the easiest to deal with when haggling.
Also given the driver a few beers when dropping a car off .
Its all take in this world now , folk have forgotten to show gratitude when deserved.
Last time I was in my service dept I took the boys in a big tin of biccies just for the hell of it, they don't really get much thanks I don't think!Also given the driver a few beers when dropping a car off .
Its all take in this world now , folk have forgotten to show gratitude when deserved.
Whenever I have cause to use my local dealer (unfortunately more often than I'd ideally like, due to a less than perfectly reliable 640d and 440i), I always try to take some choccies in - usually only a couple of Cadburys grab bags - for the service desk staff.
They've always been very helpful, and I see no reason why I shouldn't say 'thank you', even in a small way - it's not their fault my cars have been a bit flaky.
They always seem to sort me out one of their nicer courtesy cars, too.
They've always been very helpful, and I see no reason why I shouldn't say 'thank you', even in a small way - it's not their fault my cars have been a bit flaky.
They always seem to sort me out one of their nicer courtesy cars, too.
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