Selling car to family

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nlel1975

nlel1975

nlel1975

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I bought a 2007 Smart Fortwo Passion 84bhp back in June 2015 from a dealer for £ 5000. In February 2019 I bought a new Smart car costing £ 15000. The dealer offered me a part exchange price of £ 600 for the old car but I decided to sell it to my niece for £ 1000. This was back in February 2019.

I did consider just giving it away for free but decided to ask something for it and I thought £ 1000 was fair. It had only done 19383 miles from new. In a recent email exchange with my brother I revealed that I was offered £ 600 part exchange for the old car therefore was happy with the £ 1000 I got for it.

The fact that I was happy ****** him off and he suggested I could have let her have it for £ 600 rather then sell to the dealer for that price. This ****** me off and made me feel like he didn’t appreciate that the £ 1000 was a fair price.

If you look on eBay now at the sold listings the cheapest went for £ 1181 and this had 72719 miles. See here https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/Smart

His argument is that cars are cheaper in Jersey because of the lower VAT rate therefore you can’t compare UK prices to Jersey ones. Which is partly true I guess.

At the time my niece had just started work so £ 1000 was a lot to her. She managed to give me £ 400 to begin with and my brother gave me a further £ 200 with the final payment of £ 400 to follow when she had the money.

I let her have a few months to pay it off but when I finally did ask for the money she tried to make out that I was only interested in the money and that the brakes were knackered which wasn’t true as no faults were found when they serviced it.

It seems to me that they were the ones who were only interested in the money otherwise I could have asked at least £ 2000 for it from someone else. I just feel ****** off with it, they never appreciated they got a good deal or said thanks or anything.

On the contrary I could have sold it for £ 600 making out £ 1000 wasn’t fair.
 
Kenai said:
Whether the £1000 was a good deal at the time or not, letting on that the only other firm offer you'd had on the car was £600 is never going to end well. Why even mention it?
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Was just being honest didn’t expect him to react this way.
 
I gave my 30” Dell monitor to my nephew for free a couple of years back when I bought the monitor in my signature. Was going to sell it for £ 150 but my brother asked for it for free and I felt obliged to let him have it for nothing.
 
CapitalOne said:
Your brother sounds like a bit of a leech if you don’t mind me saying. If I was being kind I would use the word “entitled” unless of course he’s given you some decent items for free instead of selling them.
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To be fair he did offer me his 55” top of the range Samsung TV that he paid £ 2000 for, for £ 200. I didn’t take him up on the offer because I knew it was worth more and didn’t want to take advantage of him.
 
Let’s face it if the main dealer had stolen it off me for £ 600 she would not have been able to buy it from them for £ 1000. By the time they’d serviced it and got it ready for sale with some kind of warranty they’d have been looking at £ 2500.
 
dLockers said:
The thing you have done is muddied the waters on where your principles lay. If it was money, sell privately. If it was helping out family, sell it P/X or less.
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I didn’t really need the money otherwise there is no way I would have sold it for £ 1000. Private selling prices are always higher than p/x and I did not feel like I was ripping them off. God forbid that.
 
dLockers said:
Okay but in terms of "two in the bush one in the hand", your mythical "£2k offer" never existed. So your brother is comparing the £600 offer you had in hand to the ask you gave to his daughter.

Are you both due an inheritance in the future from your parents? Please tag me when you make that thread :D
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It’s not my fault if he had no idea how much it was actually worth. He got a bargain end of.
 
It’s not my fault she did not have the funds available to pay me straight away, I let her have a few months. When I did finally ask for the rest of the money she got all annoyed. I think she thought she had gotten away with it.
 
Diddums said:
Sigh.

Whose fault it is, is irrelevant. As you seem to be struggling with the polite way, let me be a bit more blunt:

Despite being able to get double the money for the car, you knowingly screwed your family.

Better?
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Like he screwed me out of that 30” monitor and the fact I didn’t want to take advantage of him when he was selling his TV for less than it was worth.
 
Diddums said:
I suspect the happiness that would bring her would be worth a hell of a lot more than £400 tbh. There's more to life than money, and as you've said yourself, you don't really need it. She does. Do the right thing and feel good about yourself :)
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She’s been working for three years now in a good job so doesn’t need the money. On the other hand I’m on income support.
 
It’s ok my brother said both my niece and his ex-wife are happy with their little car. He said there’s something wrong with it which will cost £ 200 to fix but it’s not dangerous so they haven’t bothered to get it fixed.

So after three years they’re not bothered about the money anymore.
 
Most p/x prices are higher because they absorb it in the new car price so you’re not really getting such a great deal as you think you are. The p/x price I was offered by the main dealer was straight up, no ******** and was the max they were prepared to pay and would have genuinely been deducted from the new car price.

What they would have done with the car is anyones guess, they could service it, clean it, get it ready for sale and offer some kind of warranty. Probably retailing it at around £ 2500.

Or they could have sold it to another dealer in the trade for them to sell on. I don’t think it would have been scraped let’s put it that way.
 
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