Ask a car salesman anything...anything at all.

[mylesmcd]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

We have a Renault Product Genius in the House!

[OddCat]

Re the other thread running about the £310 'first 5 year' Road Tax surcharge on post April 17 cars with an original list price of over £40k, have any sales people on here had incidents where a sale is being completed and the Road Tax being £450 (or whatever) has been a surprise to the buyer ?

Or do you tell the buyer about the surcharge before they agree to buy the car ?

[Butter Face]

OddCat said:

Re the other thread running about the £310 'first 5 year' Road Tax surcharge on post April 17 cars with an original list price of over £40k, have any sales people on here had incidents where a sale is being completed and the Road Tax being £450 (or whatever) has been a surprise to the buyer ?

Or do you tell the buyer about the surcharge before they agree to buy the car ?

I haven't personally but I would suspect that it would take a serious cock up for someone not to realise the car they're selling is in that bracket, and if the customer hasn't been informed/doesn't know then it only makes the salesman look a bit like a plank.

[Dan W.]

silentbrown said:

Dan W. said:

Its an odd one with test drives, I tend to have a real laugh with my customers so the test drive is usually just conversation and a bit of a giggle about stuff and when we get back they say I must of enjoyed it I laughed a lot.

...
my old place we did unattended test drives and it did work ok... until a customer smashed a car up driving too fast lol

Oh, sure. For a 15-30 min drive it's usually a bit of chat and fun. but for an hour or so "test" you're not actually going to be driving it every last second. It'll be down to the shops, maybe pick kids up from school, etc.

As for customers trashing cars, I'm sure that must happen with sales and service staff too

Of course it does, we just had a complaint due to a mechanic driving a car too fast on inspection.

personally I drive like a granny so never thrashed a car not interested but yup seen some pretty bad examples from co workers.

[Dimebars]

renmure said:

Well, I think we had a typical "poor experience" at a dealer today. A MINI main dealer in the nearest city who we had actually bought 2 MINIs from in the past although the last was a few years ago. They've always got a lot of stock on the forecourt, about 30 cars today, so we felt fairly comfortable going to browse with intent. We have a few cars but Mrs R would like another MINI. She currently drives a Fiat 500 as a train-station car and because its picked up a few dings and scrapes we were minded to just keep that as well to save the same thing happening if she used the MINI.

I tried to use some of the stuff I've learned from this thread so even when we got "pounced on" almost immediately I saw that as a sign of attentiveness and tried to be as helpful as possible. I made it clear we were actively looking to buy a car but initially we just wanted to browse. I said we didn't have a p/x, I gave the budget (around £14k) and said that we were less fussed about deciding on 3 / 5 door or even diesel / petrol and were really just looking for something that jumped out at us as being a good looking car and if it was fairly new, fairly low(ish) miles, still in warranty and seemed to have decent interior options and in budget then we would give him a shout and we could get more information and see where we ended up.

Jeeze. Would he leave us alone? Nope. We got the whole "qualifying" spiel, the whole "monthly budget" spiel, every car we even glanced at which was within £2k of our budget was "great value." After about 10 mins Mrs R had to politely ask him to give us some time just to look round ourselves. That lasted about 3 mins then he was back asking if we wanted to come in and have a coffee and hear the benefits of buying an Approved MINI and see if any of the finance options might widen our budget. It was as if there was a tick-box form somewhere where he had to tick every box, no matter what information we gave. Neither of us were rude enough to say anything directly but the only upside is that the business card that he insisted we take as we left had his day-off printed on it.

Car salesman tries to sell customer car

Shock horror

[Dan W.]

Little Pete said:

Butter Face said:

DSLiverpool said:

Any Renault dealers here? (Butter / HTP?) I’m thinking of a Koleos for the Mrs - she’s ok with big stuff and I like the look of them.
Is the route to buy nearly new? Gets a 2017 signature about £20k
Will I lose my shirt on it? Anything else?
Cheers

Simple answer is that the 4 year residual on a Koleos is around the same as a Kadjar, the koleos is more expensive so expect to lose more money.

They are superb cars, we have a Signature 175 manual and I absolutely love driving it.

Are you sales guys on here car fans or is it just a job? I’ve been around cars for a long long time and some days I could easily walk away. Then a particularly difficult job will come in and I get a lot of satisfaction from fixing it. I suppose it’s a question about job satisfaction as much as anything or is the satisfaction in the bonuses?
Keep up the good work in the thread.

Suppose im the odd one out, find cars pretty boring and have no real interest in them.

just a job and it pays well so I enjoy it, have sold Citroen Suzuki Volkswagen Honda.... could care less about the cars build quality or being snobby they all work and do the same job.

[OddCat]

Butter Face said:

OddCat said:

Re the other thread running about the £310 'first 5 year' Road Tax surcharge on post April 17 cars with an original list price of over £40k, have any sales people on here had incidents where a sale is being completed and the Road Tax being £450 (or whatever) has been a surprise to the buyer ?

Or do you tell the buyer about the surcharge before they agree to buy the car ?

I haven't personally but I would suspect that it would take a serious cock up for someone not to realise the car they're selling is in that bracket, and if the customer hasn't been informed/doesn't know then it only makes the salesman look a bit like a plank.

Yes, because in the adverts the car dealers are making it really clear that the surcharge applies...….

Anyway, where a car is subject to it, does the surcharge make a that car worth less than a similar slightly earlier car ?

Example: two cars identical in every respect. Both 17 plate cars but one registered March 2017 and not subject to the extra £310 pa and the other April 2017 and is subject to it. Surely, based on simple maths / logic, the later car is worth, say, £750 less than the earlier one just to equalise the cost of ownership ? Otherwise why would anyone buy the later car if it were the same price ?

ETA: what I mean is, as a dealer if you had the two cars above on your pitch would you price the earlier car lower ? If not, how much would the surcharge have to have been in order for you to think about doing so ? £600 per annum, £1,000 per annum ?

Edited by OddCat on Friday 24th August 10:47

[lornemalvo]

Dimebars said:

renmure said:

Well, I think we had a typical "poor experience" at a dealer today. A MINI main dealer in the nearest city who we had actually bought 2 MINIs from in the past although the last was a few years ago. They've always got a lot of stock on the forecourt, about 30 cars today, so we felt fairly comfortable going to browse with intent. We have a few cars but Mrs R would like another MINI. She currently drives a Fiat 500 as a train-station car and because its picked up a few dings and scrapes we were minded to just keep that as well to save the same thing happening if she used the MINI.

I tried to use some of the stuff I've learned from this thread so even when we got "pounced on" almost immediately I saw that as a sign of attentiveness and tried to be as helpful as possible. I made it clear we were actively looking to buy a car but initially we just wanted to browse. I said we didn't have a p/x, I gave the budget (around £14k) and said that we were less fussed about deciding on 3 / 5 door or even diesel / petrol and were really just looking for something that jumped out at us as being a good looking car and if it was fairly new, fairly low(ish) miles, still in warranty and seemed to have decent interior options and in budget then we would give him a shout and we could get more information and see where we ended up.

Jeeze. Would he leave us alone? Nope. We got the whole "qualifying" spiel, the whole "monthly budget" spiel, every car we even glanced at which was within £2k of our budget was "great value." After about 10 mins Mrs R had to politely ask him to give us some time just to look round ourselves. That lasted about 3 mins then he was back asking if we wanted to come in and have a coffee and hear the benefits of buying an Approved MINI and see if any of the finance options might widen our budget. It was as if there was a tick-box form somewhere where he had to tick every box, no matter what information we gave. Neither of us were rude enough to say anything directly but the only upside is that the business card that he insisted we take as we left had his day-off printed on it.

Car salesman tries to sell customer car

Shock horror

No, car salesman tries to sell customer car, badly. With salesmen like this, I would have been polite initially, then less so

[Butter Face]

OddCat said:

Butter Face said:

OddCat said:

Re the other thread running about the £310 'first 5 year' Road Tax surcharge on post April 17 cars with an original list price of over £40k, have any sales people on here had incidents where a sale is being completed and the Road Tax being £450 (or whatever) has been a surprise to the buyer ?

Or do you tell the buyer about the surcharge before they agree to buy the car ?

I haven't personally but I would suspect that it would take a serious cock up for someone not to realise the car they're selling is in that bracket, and if the customer hasn't been informed/doesn't know then it only makes the salesman look a bit like a plank.

Yes, because in the adverts the car dealers are making it really clear that the surcharge applies...….

Anyway, where a car is subject to it, does the surcharge make a that car worth less than a similar slightly earlier car ?

Example: two cars identical in every respect. Both 17 plate cars but one registered March 2017 and not subject to the extra £310 pa and the other April 2017 and is subject to it. Surely, based on simple maths / logic, the later car is worth, say, £750 less than the earlier one just to equalise the cost of ownership ? Otherwise why would anyone buy the later car if it were the same price ?

ETA: what I mean is, as a dealer if you had the two cars above on your pitch would you price the earlier car lower ? If not, how much would the surcharge have to have been in order for you to think about doing so ? £600 per annum, £1,000 per annum ?

Edited by OddCat on Friday 24th August 10:47

It wouldn't be priced any differently because of a RFL difference no, to a dealer that doesn't really make any difference, it's not a cost to us and is really no more of a barrier to sale as a different colour, interior difference etc.

We have sold cars to people that are now in the £140 band introduced last year, these people previously had Nil RFL cars so it's a much bigger mental jump than from £140-£450 IMO and it's not been an issue in any case AFAIK, people understand and accept that RFL must be paid. The argument is that if you're buying a more expensive car then they should (like it or not) be able to stretch to the extra costs involved in running that car.

[OddCat]

Butter Face said:

……... AFAIK, people understand and accept that RFL must be paid...….

Hmmm. If they had introduced an extra £310pa for all cars (retrospectively) then I'd agree.

But if I'm looking at two near identical cars and one has the lower RFL then I'm buying that one. Obviously. Why wouldn't I ? I'm buying the one with the higher RFL only if it is correspondingly cheaper.

Clearly, if there is a blasé attitude to it among buyers then the economy can't be doing too bad after all. There's Martin Lewis trying to get everyone to switch energy providers to save £50 a year but there are hoards of people happy to pay an extra £310 per annum RFL (rather than buy more wisely or negotiate an appropriate reduction in a surcharge liable car to offset). Most odd.

[Dan W.]

The problem is its not really the salesman wanting to do it that way, its the way his company want him to do it.

Used to work for a company who had a full script we had to go through with every customer, road to the sale it was called and you couldn't leave the customers side....


very outdated way of selling but shocking its still in use.

[renmure]

Dimebars said:

renmure said:

...... Well, I think we had a typical "poor experience" at a dealer today.....

Car salesman tries to sell customer car

Shock horror

Car salesman manages to tick every box in the company car sales methodology flowchart and probably thinks he did well despite failing to take onboard anything that the customer said.
Car purchaser walks off without purchasing car.
That a good end result?
Nope. Didn't think so.
Hey ho.

[Butter Face]

OddCat said:

Butter Face said:

……... AFAIK, people understand and accept that RFL must be paid...….

Hmmm. If they had introduced an extra £310pa for all cars (retrospectively) then I'd agree.

But if I'm looking at two near identical cars and one has the lower RFL then I'm buying that one. Obviously. Why wouldn't I ? I'm buying the one with the higher RFL only if it is correspondingly cheaper.

Clearly, if there is a blasé attitude to it among buyers then the economy can't be doing too bad after all. There's Martin Lewis trying to get everyone to switch energy providers to save £50 a year but there are hoards of people happy to pay an extra £310 per annum RFL (rather than buy more wisely or negotiate an appropriate reduction in a surcharge liable car to offset). Most odd.

I think the difference (as I see it) is that RFL is set by the Government, in the same way as the large majority of the general public accept income tax as an inevitable part of life, RFL is seen as the same. The large majority of car buyers (new and used) don't focus on the RFL, it's the tiny part of the overall transaction.

As a case in point I sold a Megane this morning, £195 to tax, customer didn't bat an eyelid when I told them, they had negotiated a price on the car, were happy with the car and it's just seen as the price they pay for it.

[anonymous-user]

Butter Face said:

OddCat said:

Butter Face said:

……... AFAIK, people understand and accept that RFL must be paid...….

Hmmm. If they had introduced an extra £310pa for all cars (retrospectively) then I'd agree.

But if I'm looking at two near identical cars and one has the lower RFL then I'm buying that one. Obviously. Why wouldn't I ? I'm buying the one with the higher RFL only if it is correspondingly cheaper.

Clearly, if there is a blasé attitude to it among buyers then the economy can't be doing too bad after all. There's Martin Lewis trying to get everyone to switch energy providers to save £50 a year but there are hoards of people happy to pay an extra £310 per annum RFL (rather than buy more wisely or negotiate an appropriate reduction in a surcharge liable car to offset). Most odd.

I think the difference (as I see it) is that RFL is set by the Government, in the same way as the large majority of the general public accept income tax as an inevitable part of life, RFL is seen as the same. The large majority of car buyers (new and used) don't focus on the RFL, it's the tiny part of the overall transaction.

As a case in point I sold a Megane this morning, £195 to tax, customer didn't bat an eyelid when I told them, they had negotiated a price on the car, were happy with the car and it's just seen as the price they pay for it.

Surprising, whether I'm spending on a £40k+ list car or not I'm not going to piss money away for the hell of it. Mar 31st '17 reg or Apr 1st, I'm clearly not going to opt for the higher tax one. I would have expected people buying in that bracket to be smart enough to take it on board / for the additional cost to be reflected in the price. Perhaps if you're buying based solely on monthly payments you just don't care.

[rovermorris999]

Butter Face said:

The large majority of car buyers (new and used) don't focus on the RFL, it's the tiny part of the overall transaction.

Probably the one exception for used buyers is the £555 rfl for bigger-engine cars from 2006 to 2017 as it such a large proportion of the value of the car each year for the cheaper, older stuff. You can rightly argue that is already priced into the car value when bought but it still hurts.

[Butter Face]

Schmed said:

Surprising, whether I'm spending on a £40k+ list car or not I'm not going to piss money away for the hell of it. Mar 31st '17 reg or Apr 1st, I'm clearly not going to opt for the higher tax one. I would have expected people buying in that bracket to be smart enough to take it on board / for the additional cost to be reflected in the price. Perhaps if you're buying based solely on monthly payments you just don't care.

I see your point, but if you're buying a car in that bracket then the extra £310 (£26pm) is a tiny fraction of the overall cost of owning that car, the depreciation will cost many many times that (in most cases) so whilst people buying in that bracket may be assumed to be 'smart' (they're not all, just like any other price bracket) some of them either A, don't give a fk about the extra £26pm, B, are happy to pay it to get the car they want, or C, see it as a neccessary evil.

Your argument about if two identical cars have a difference in road tax is a bit of a moot point, as it's very rare you'd find two cars that fall into that exact argument IMO.

rovermorris999 said:

Butter Face said:

The large majority of car buyers (new and used) don't focus on the RFL, it's the tiny part of the overall transaction.

Probably the one exception for used buyers is the £555 rfl for bigger-engine cars from 2006 to 2017 as it such a large proportion of the value of the car each year for the cheaper, older stuff. You can rightly argue that is already priced into the car value when bought but it still hurts.

Well yes, it does, but it's a tiny amount of cars affected by that banding (and mostly higher power or larger cars which actually make up a small part of the market) and one could argue that it can be seen as a cost of running a car like that, along with likely more expensive tyres/brakes/fuel etc etc.

[rovermorris999]

Butter Face said:

Well yes, it does, but it's a tiny amount of cars affected by that banding (and mostly higher power or larger cars which actually make up a small part of the market) and one could argue that it can be seen as a cost of running a car like that, along with likely more expensive tyres/brakes/fuel etc etc.

Sadly exactly the sort of car I like and buy. Illogical really. I'm happy to buy petrol which is mainly tax but rfl just sticks in the craw.

[Sheepshanks]

renmure said:

Car salesman manages to tick every box in the company car sales methodology flowchart and probably thinks he did well despite failing to take onboard anything that the customer said.
Car purchaser walks off without purchasing car.
That a good end result?
Nope. Didn't think so.
Hey ho.

The main snag for salespeople is it becomes very boring. I sell in a different field and we used to have sales trainers come out with us sometimes, so you'd rigidly go through a standard sales flow and it's amazing how often it worked.

Of course there's also the element of the customer wanting to help the sales guy out. I guess that happens in car sales when "the manager" gets brought in.

[JimmyConwayNW]

OddCat said:

Re the other thread running about the £310 'first 5 year' Road Tax surcharge on post April 17 cars with an original list price of over £40k, have any sales people on here had incidents where a sale is being completed and the Road Tax being £450 (or whatever) has been a surprise to the buyer ?

Or do you tell the buyer about the surcharge before they agree to buy the car ?

I surprised both a customer and myself when I came to tax one. Luckily they were paying on direct debit and could not have cared less.

We don't normally sell 2017 used cars so caught me a bit unaware and I am usually very thorough.
March 2017 cars should be popular for a while though.

[Wooda80]

OddCat said:

Hmmm. If they had introduced an extra £310pa for all cars (retrospectively) then I'd agree.

But if I'm looking at two near identical cars and one has the lower RFL then I'm buying that one. Obviously. Why wouldn't I ? I'm buying the one with the higher RFL only if it is correspondingly cheaper.

Clearly, if there is a blasé attitude to it among buyers then the economy can't be doing too bad after all. There's Martin Lewis trying to get everyone to switch energy providers to save £50 a year but there are hoards of people happy to pay an extra £310 per annum RFL (rather than buy more wisely or negotiate an appropriate reduction in a surcharge liable car to offset). Most odd.

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet about this but it seems the majority of people don't seem to care.
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=0&...

Lets look at your point about pricing from a different perspective.

Car A is your perfect spec car registered in April 2017 with the extra £310 tax
Car B has lower tax, either because it's older or because it's a lower spec and <£40k new,

How much more would you be prepared to pay for car B, bearing in mind that its older and / or not quite your ideal spec, in order to save £25 per month on tax?