Quote:
Originally Posted by vigsom Corporates, company executives, businessmen prefer to sell their cars to/through reputed dealers so that the dirty work of finding the right owner rests with them. For this "service" they earn good margins.
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I was never pro used car dealer in my early enthusiast years. I also now realise all my pre worshipped buys have been 'good' cars which came from the dealer (for an obvious margin) because these never came to the open market.
I used to hate the dealers for charging their margins and wondered why the owners didn't bother selling on the open market.
Somewhere along the way I had to sell a couple of cars to make way for new purchases and chose to advertise direct in keeping with my belief for a win-win for both me (seller gets higher price) and the buyer (he gets a direct deal and a lower price due to zero markup by a middle man).
Will focus on my recent Superb V6 sale (sold last month to an enthusiast) which made me realise the amount of hassle an individual seller has to go through screening from a pool of morons/seemingly serious 'enthusiasts' who talk from their backside and are only in the picture to make a cheap deal (their philosophy is to crack a too good to be true deal at the expense of the seller, car quality be damned!Heck these people don't even know what car they want, they give offers for everything from a Nano to a Meecedes) till the seller reaches a serious buyer who puts his money where his mouth is.
No I am not even referring to the olx/cartrade type low-ballers ('apka final kya hai? Main apko x lacs cash me kar dunga' where say one's advertising price is 2x). My priority has always been to deal only with a Bhpian/enthusiast in the hopes of finding a good home for my car. Not a flipper/dealer. My previous Octavia RS was also sold to a Bhpian from Bhopal.
And here it is that I came in touch with a Bhpian (amongst others) who claimed to be a Skodafan (his handle on the forum is something very similar and I would not like to name him). The guy took all information out on the car from me, to the extent of my sharing screenshots of my E-RC which has chassis number, most recent tyre purchase bills in addition to me allaying all his doubts on the car where he categorically told me he was coming to pick the car up the next day if I agreed to x price. I did agree as I wasn't in the deal to make money but was rather happy to be able to find a home for my car.
At the same I had been reached out to by another guy from nearby my neighborhood who had known my car through a common friend. I put on hold the deal with him as this Bhpian was so interested in picking my car up to the point of assuring me on a whatsapp text at 12 am or so that he knows this was his car and that he would pick this up the morning after making payment on the spot. Morning comes and this guy drops in, makes checks on the minutest things like the headliner, dashboard alignment, has a drive, chats up on maintenance etc. After the drive he casually steps out and says that his father was to send him money but he does not know whether he is sending the money now and can't commit on the deal.

Not a word during the drive, or prior to the drive.
I did not know what to say and was at a loss of words but the topping on the whole story was the way this guy went on dropping references of Zac Hollis, how he is in touch with the Skoda India head and how he 'would have' picked up the car but doesn't have the budget. Apart from wasting my morning, the other potential buyer too started playing on the fact that I could not make a sale elsewhere and therefore revised his quote(fair enough, I had put him on hold and was honest about it). I did eventually manage to find a buyer the next week and that buyer was someone who did not even come to see the car before finalising (exact opposite of my experience with the Bhpian) but all I am saying is that in a pool of 20 there is maybe one genuine buyer. The other 19 are time passers /low ballers. The reason I highlight the experience with the BHPian was that when one experiences such a transaction with a Bhpian, what expectation does one have from the olx crowd? The guy shamelessly keeps rehashing his stories to me even now asking me for advice on everything from used Yetis to supercharged Audi A6s (This when he did not have the budget to buy a Superb) , the crux of the matter is that I soon realised he was never in the fray to buy a car, it was to crack/lowball into a good deal. That's what 90% of the market is at, all talkers.
Any surprise then that people sell their car to dealers (the dealers bargain yes, but there are some that put their money on the table and bargain)?What the dealer charges is essentially a first mover premium for putting cash on table where all the others are 'deliberating/getting back to you' etc. Yes the premium is high sometimes and I do not support that but it is a reward to the dealer for risking their capital/holding inventory and most importantly discharging the seller's monetary dues. What is fair and what is not is matter of debate but I am just saying end of the day we give dealers far less credit than is due for 'making the market'. In today's times especially (post COVID) where money to close a car deal is hard to come by, the dealer margin also factors in the dealer's cost of capital which may /may not be recovered in a long time (time till the car gets sold).
Last but not the least,while exceptions of dealer stubbornness are there, a good dealer will always give merit to a serious buyer and will close the deal at a negotiated price which is fair to him once he sees cash on the table. It is a matter of going all out to close the deal from the buyer's end as well rather than phonecall/sms window shopping. Sitting accross the table with chequebook in hand works more often than not unless the differential is too wide to bridge.