Cars for sale stating sold / deposit taken
Discussion
I'm gently searching for a particular make/model and have an alert setup.
Quite often I get cars already advertised come through on the alert as new, assume the advert expired and dealer / seller bumps or re-advertises it.
One incredibly unhelpful thing however is those marked, particularly by one dealer, as sold or deposit taken.
I called one up that was showing as 'deposit taken' for a number of weeks, to be told it was indeed sold.
There are typically a number of cars with that same dealer updated as sold but advert is left up, and at times bumped and comes through as a fresh alert.
I get they are trying to advertise themselves but it's really unhelpful that the dealer doesn't properly update as sold, and bumping a sold car is utterly unhelpful.
As a user should these ads be reported? Are PH concerned by it or happy with the practise?
TIA.
Quite often I get cars already advertised come through on the alert as new, assume the advert expired and dealer / seller bumps or re-advertises it.
One incredibly unhelpful thing however is those marked, particularly by one dealer, as sold or deposit taken.
I called one up that was showing as 'deposit taken' for a number of weeks, to be told it was indeed sold.
There are typically a number of cars with that same dealer updated as sold but advert is left up, and at times bumped and comes through as a fresh alert.
I get they are trying to advertise themselves but it's really unhelpful that the dealer doesn't properly update as sold, and bumping a sold car is utterly unhelpful.
As a user should these ads be reported? Are PH concerned by it or happy with the practise?
TIA.
sociopath said:
They're probably hedging their bets for people who change their minds and then post on here complaining they can't get their deposit back.
They're also car dealers not IT specialists so probably only come on PH once a week or so to update
At least one dealer manages to come on and edit sales text to say 'sold' or 'deposit taken'. As a user I'd expect if they are updating to sold they would mark it as sold. If I wanted to look at sold car's I can filter that on the search. I don't, pretty sure many others won't too.They're also car dealers not IT specialists so probably only come on PH once a week or so to update
If it says deposit taken I wouldn't bother calling about the car. I did once only to be told it was sold and collected., it had been marked as deposit taken for weeks hence I called in case the sale hadn't gone through.
Whilst it is annoying, unfortunately it's not a new thing and was going on even when Haymarket were the owners of PH.
The most obvious one most of us will remember back then was RS Direct, who used to have a monopoly on Mk2 & 3 Focus RS - they used to bump / relist every single ad of theirs on a 24-48 hour basis pushing any new trade / private ads back at least 2 or 3 pages. I remember at the time another business did complain about it on here, but it was generally accepted that based on how much RSD were spending on advertising with Haymarket, including banner ads, wraparounds, fees, etc, they had a free pass.
Most of the time the ads were for cars that had already been marked as sold, in some cases for a month or more as the new owners were already posting on the relevant FRS forums, but were tagged with text stating they due to their buying power / contacts that a similar car could easily be sourced, etc, etc.
The most obvious one most of us will remember back then was RS Direct, who used to have a monopoly on Mk2 & 3 Focus RS - they used to bump / relist every single ad of theirs on a 24-48 hour basis pushing any new trade / private ads back at least 2 or 3 pages. I remember at the time another business did complain about it on here, but it was generally accepted that based on how much RSD were spending on advertising with Haymarket, including banner ads, wraparounds, fees, etc, they had a free pass.
Most of the time the ads were for cars that had already been marked as sold, in some cases for a month or more as the new owners were already posting on the relevant FRS forums, but were tagged with text stating they due to their buying power / contacts that a similar car could easily be sourced, etc, etc.
Gassing Station | Website Feedback | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff