Skip to main content

How to ruin the car buying experience

A car (not the one I bought)
I have just bought a car and I hated the experience.

It wasn't for me, it was for one of my daughters. (Of itself, this is just wrong. You shouldn't be buying cars for people whose nappies you have changed.) Now, apart from one disastrous experience that put me off buying privately for life, I have always bought cars from a proper dealership. It's a process in which you feel cherished. I know they're only after your money, but they take it off you very nicely. Unfortunately, dealers don't sell cars of the sort of age I was looking for, so I had to look elsewhere.

Specifically, I looked at the Car Shop, a huge secondhand car 'supermarket' that apparently has over 1,000 cars on site. And that's where I bought the car - but I wish I hadn't.

I didn't mind too much the strange Argos-like operation. You specify the kind of thing you want, the salesman writes it on a card, goes away and comes back with a list of matches. You then sit and wait while the cars you like are brought round to the side of the building so you can take a look at them. It felt odd, but I could cope. However, what I found really unnerving is that they won't licence the car for you.

What I've always done before is got the insurance, take it to the dealer and they sort out the licensing. The way the system works here, you are forced to drive the car away before it is licensed. (They do provide Aviva 7 day insurance, though I'm not sure this is valid if the car isn't licensed.) There is no other way to get a car from them. You have to break the law. Now, I'm the sort of person who will get back in the car and repark if the tyre is touching the white line in a car park. Driving is something I can't do outside the rules. I literally lost sleep over the thought of having to drive the blasted thing home without a licence.

And it gets worse. When I'd decided to go for the car, I went into the usual car buying mode, briefly feeling wonderful at that point. Because car buying is one of the few opportunities British people have to haggle. I'm quite proud of my haggling skills. I was taught by a gypsy on a Croatian market when I was 15 (no, really), and I love doing it. But then the Car Shop people killed it dead. They don't move on price. They can't, any more than the supermarket checkout person at Asda can. They are constrained by their system. There is no haggling. If I hadn't got a very excited daughter waiting for the news, I would have walked out there and then. Seriously, had I been buying the car for myself, however much I wanted it, I would have walked away. I don't buy cars without haggling. It spoils the whole experience.

So there you are. I bought a car from Car Shop, I think I got it at a reasonable price. But I would not touch them again with the proverbial barge pole. They are killjoys.

Comments

  1. While I respect that the dealership might have their own reasons for not budging on the prices of their cars, I totally agree with you that cars should be haggled for. If you know how to play your cards right, you usually end up getting a little more, whether it’s savings, extra features, or accessories on the car. Haggling for a better price also helps to dictate just how much the car really is worth, which usually helps narrow your choices down, if you’re choosing from a list.

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's true - but most importantly for me, haggling is fun! It gives you that 'caveman' satisfaction of hitting the prey over the head and bringing back the prize.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It is definitely worth haggling still, while they may not move on the price, the extras and even valuation of any part-exchanges can be done... but then haggling on used cars is will never yield the same results as on new.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As it happens I didn’t have a part exchange. And, yes, I got a free set of mats out of them. But it wasn’t the same!

      Delete
  4. True my friend! Today's generation is a bit more advanced and smart so it's difficult to guess about their choices. Yeah, car shops charge comparatively higher than the dealers. A huge amount of tax you need to pay here. Well, no issues! It's completely in budget but the actual expenses starts now with the servicing and maintenance of your brand new car. As you can’t ignore the maintenance, you have to spend for it.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My Dad, has just purchased a car from the car shop, what a miserable set of people to deal with. the salesman had to go back and forth to speak with his manager every time we asked a question ? why not have the manager on the shop floor and do away with the salesmen.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's recent gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some ex

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5.  However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope