Price of cars at garages/dealers

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

Ocean Breeze

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Is it basically impossible to get a car at a garage or dealer for the same price as a private seller?

I am using autotrader app to give be a rough idea of a cars value so obviously the ones at garages etc seem over inflated.

If I was getting a good deal how much percentage higher than the cars value would it be?

Thanks
 
Main stealerships will barely budge on price, best I've done is knock £1000 off a 2 year old S4 when buying cash. Maybe i'm just rubbish at negotiating though.
 
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For most cars up to around £15k you're looking at £1,000 premium to buy from a dealer. Roughly.
 
So if I add £1k on to what auto trader valuation is telling me, that’s roughly what I should be paying?

Iam looking at cars between £11-13k.
 
Depends how desperate the dealership are in selling a car that has been sat at their forecourt for x amount of days and how much cash you're willing to throw at them on top of part exchange.
 
Ocean Breeze said:
Is it basically impossible to get a car at a garage or dealer for the same price as a private seller?
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Why wouldn't it be? A private sale essentially has no comeback, whereas a dealer/trader legally has to resolve any issues or accept the car back if the customer "rejects" it.

It's also the reason why there are generally very few <£1k cars available from dealers any more - it isn't worth the time/risk for the dealer to sort any issues the buyer may have.
 
vanpeebles said:
Small independents are your best bet for haggling deals.
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i found they wouldn't budge at all not even give me a tank of petrol which is only £40.

the car however i have now found out was massively underpriced. i could have sold it a year later and lost nothing on it. they sold second highest spec at the lowest on the market for it's age. mileage was a bit higher than usual though but still well within extended warranty allows.

i think i got lucky and as i say the price was really good. so no idea what other garages offered the seller for these guys to make a decent profit on it. i think they gave us £2500 for our trade in value and tried to sell it at £4500. probably got £4000 for it. so just shows you that at the low end they are looking to make £2K. they offered us £2K initially and i said you wouldn't be getting the alloys on it but the originals. they wanted the ones on it as they were immaculate and looked amazing. i said well they are £1800 from BMW I would want £500 for them at minimum as i can get £600 for them any day second hand in that condition. Little did they know I bought them second hand refurbed for £400 so I made a profit on them taking them for £500.

I was due some luck as that car had cost us thousands in repairs more than what it was worth. I now will never let anyone else apart from me choose our cars. The wife wanted that one over a more reliable one because it was a nicer colour. It was cream vs racing green iirc.
 
TheOracle said:
Now is the time to buy, end of March when dealers trying to hit sales targets

Just got 7k off a £30k car....brand new 19k plate cheaper than a used one
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You'll get similar deals all year round with the likes of Carwow and Drive the deal. £7k is quite strong but it would depend on the car.

Have a look at the discounts page of the special offers on DTD, they're usually consistent:

https://www.drivethedeal.com/SpecialOffers.aspx
 
Ocean Breeze said:
So if I add £1k on to what auto trader valuation is telling me, that’s roughly what I should be paying?

Iam looking at cars between £11-13k.
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It's really a how long is a piece of string type question.

Unfortunately with so many variables when buying a car, it's not really as easy to say that it will be 1k on top of private, it could be significantly more.

If that's your budget, personally i wouldn't even be looking at private sales regardless of how much of a bargain they seem. Just imagine the scenario where you've parted with 13k cash/BT, and driven it home, and the following day something majorly goes wrong. You take it to the garage and they price up a 2-3k repair bill. You can't go back to the seller and ask for your money back because they've sold you a lemon. So you're now stuck with a hefty repair bill.

You're more than likely to find a better deal at an indy garage over a main dealer. I know when i was looking for my current car, and i'd kept a log of hundreds that had popped up on AT, it was very typical that main dealers were asking the ceiling price for some that were even quite high mileage. I found an exact matching spec at an Indy with 40-50k miles less for the same money. Although they wouldn't budge on price at all. The guy said to me that they can keep their prices a bit lower than a main dealer because they don't wear suits to work, or have a flashy office with a coffee machine. This place was literally just a forecourt with a cabin on the side, although it was said in jest, it does make you realise that the premium you are paying at a main dealer is also to fund the 'look' of the salesmen and the flashy office.
 
Semple said:
it does make you realise that the premium you are paying at a main dealer is also to fund the 'look' of the salesmen and the flashy office.
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And a (longer, likely 12 months rather than 3) warranty that's likely to actually be worth something. :)

And probably drive-away insurance, breakdown cover, and many other benefits if you go approved used (e.g. Network Q etc)
 
It seems quite hard to actually buy a car private now even if you wanted to. Philip Schofield has done a good job of convincing everyone to throw their cars at We Buy Any Car... that said my one experience of selling a car privately I will probably do the same in future as well!
 
Yes it is 'impossible' or rather extremely unlikely that a trader with a bunch of overheads and post-sale commitment can match private sale prices, that wouldn't make any sense under normal circumstances. Rather than think in percentages I would say there is more like a minimum markup on a trade-in of around £1000-1500 obviously with a bit of variation around that.

The only time see a dealer being competitive is on price versus private sale is a franchised dealer selling ex-demo cars, due to there simply not being that many cars sold privately less than a year old.
 
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