Sorry to digress: So, when I get an insurance payout and my eyesight is cleared, I will need to buy a car. My family (especially my older brother and his wife) are big on going green. I looked at electric cars but quickly discarded the idea. My brother might be willing to shell 50k for a Tesla but I'm not! My intention is to go second-hand Italian - Fiat or Alfa, probably. In perusing Autotrader, there seem to be some individuals masquerading as dealers. Autotrader must know this and accept it (presumably, as long as you pay they could not give a f***). Anyone else noticed this - I guess that there is no "Proper Trader" button, rather than "Guy Operating In The Road Outside His House"?
I think there are quite a few who do this. An individual running a business using their driveway and/or grass verge as their showroom. BTW when I first saw the title of this thread I read it as something else but realised that had another letter. I must be a bad person...
So, you have to ring the guy on his (easily discarded and replaced sim) mobile to "arrange" viewing, ie give him a chance to get it from wherever it is abandoned (a field, empty industrial unit, road around the corner) and then you get to see it outside the guy's house. There must really be people who fall for this because it seems to be quite the thing! So, knuckle-heads drive away pleased with themselves, for they have bought a car from a "dealer"?
He is a registered LTD company trading in motor vehicles. He lives in a £Million house here according to companies house: Upper Lodge, Knoll Hill, Bristol BS9 1QU Which appears to run as a child care agency. This is his business address as a motor trader: 1-21 Bedminster Down Road, Bristol, England, BS13 7AB which seems odd on Street View, unless it's an office in a shared building. These are his other companies: https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/officers/onIub08tTcxfRDmdetwQ3k6L648/appointments
In some ways , things were simpler in the pre-internet days . You'd see something you fancied in the classified ads of the local paper and pick up the phone , but the canny buyer would choose his words very carefully - " Hello , I'm calling about the car for sale " .... no mention of make or model , and if the seller said " which one ? " , you got some valuable info , straight away ! Step two .... tell the seller that you want to view the vehicle as early as possible one morning , and to please not start it until you arrive . Then get them to open the bonnet before anything else .... more valuable info ! It tells as much about the seller as about the vehicle ....
So some quick research shows that this is dodgier than a very dodgy thing but I guess that it must work. So, you think that you are buying form a dealer and end up in some random road with no car dealer premises in sight. "Oh, this looks right!", you say and are taken to the cashpoint to get tenners out as their card machine has inexplicably ben dropped in the gutter. It must work as there are many doing it with the full collusion of Autotrader, who must realise I am genuinely confused.
It could be my age: I dunno how long Autotrader has been going, but somebody set up what was once a worthy and worthwhile mag. And now it gets taken over by scammers. You, as the current editor, sit back in your chair and put your feet up on the desk. "This is going quite well", you think, as you flip through the ads checking out all of the scams. Obviously, the World has changed but I got left behind.
I keep doing that now - and I named the thread! Bad choice of title It should of been, "Awfully Honest People Now Using Autotrader To Help You and Save You Money - And Not To Trash Your Customer Rights - Honest!"
Interestingly (well, for me, anyway): The first scam used to be dealers pretending not to be dealers but private sellers. That has moved on to private sellers pretending to be dealers. I guess that if you live long enough, then you get to see it all - and I may get to see a Ducati range of electric bikes. Would be nice if they found a way to keep costs down, but we are talking Ducati here...
I had the same issue with a trader masquerading as a private seller when I bought my 911 a few years ago. It turned out that when I'd asked him “Are you a private seller?” and “Does the car have any oil leaks?” the answers should have been “No” and “Yes” rather than the other way round. Tbh, I’d clocked that he might have been a trader before I parted with the cash but as I liked the car and as of I’d had more bad experiences with private sellers than trade, I wasn’t too bothered. It turned out that it did have an oil leak which a few months later I had to have fixed by way of a £3k “engine out” job as I didn’t want to risk a trip to and then a thrash around the Nurburgring with it as it was. I made investigations and discovered info which tended to show he was a disguised trader and was making some progress towards painting him into a corner and getting a settlement out of him when other stuff came along which derailed me and I never pursued it. I had some success searching for previous sales on eBay, by his name on Companies House, plus of course not having the V5 in his own name was a dead giveaway, but what really put the wind up my guy was the possibility of Trading Standards getting involved because IIRC, I found some provisions in the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008 which makes using misleading and unfair trading practices a criminal offence.
I'm a bit confused too - he's a registered limited company and is trading as a car dealer, and also advertising as such. Companies house shows his private and business address. What is the issue exactly or am I missing something? Sure he might be dodgy, but how do we know?
Autotrader came out when I was in my teens I think, early 80's - I remember seeing an Ex Tony Pond Works TR8 for sale for about £2500 and then seeing it a few years ago in Classic & sportscar for nearly £200,000 - why didn't I buy it
