query about trade/private sellers

Honest John Back Room » Motoring discussion
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Sun 11 Nov 2012 21:00
query about trade/private sellers - drahcir74

Hello everyone, hope somebody can help me out with this one. I've found a car i really like on autotrader listed as a trade sale. so went to have a look, when i found the place it was a normal house in an estate. the gentleman assured me he was a motor dealer just based at home. which seems reasonable.

i've heard of people pretending to be private sellers when they are trade but never the other way round.

however i can't find anything about such a company any where on the web and there is only one car listed on auto trader. I've done a check on the car itself and that all seems fine.

The only benefit (for him) i could see is that people are possibly happier to buy from trade which i would. the downside of course would be lack of comeback after the purchase.

Am i being overly paronoid?

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Sun 11 Nov 2012 21:26
query about trade/private sellers - Bobbin Threadbare

I bought my car from a chap with this set-up in the summer. He traded from his driveway and said he had a lock-up for the other cars. He had some on his drive too. He was an ex-F1 engineer so I trusted his vehicle knowledge! He had no website, and a lot of his business seemed to be Autotrader or word-of-mouth based. I found the car on Autotrader.

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Sun 11 Nov 2012 21:45
query about trade/private sellers - drahcir74

Thank you for the quick reply, the car itself seems really good and an excellent price. Were you happy with your dealings then?

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Sun 11 Nov 2012 22:55
query about trade/private sellers - bathtub tom

Could be trading standards got on his case if he advertised more than a certain number of cars in a certain period.

I got them calling me when a daughter and I both sold cars from my house. I was able to prove we'd both had them for a number of years.

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 11:11
query about trade/private sellers - 72 dudes

If I remember correctly, if you sell more than 6 cars per year from your home address, you are a Trader.

Treat with caution but if the car stacks up (history/price/not on HP/not written off etc) it's worth considering.

Try and contact the previous owner from the details on the V5.

Will be little comeback if anything goes wrong.

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 14:35
query about trade/private sellers - Ed V

I'd ask him for the telephone numbers of 10 previous clients, and if he can't give them to you fairly quickly, scarper! Cynic, maybe. But with no other way of guaranteeing honesty, what else can you do.

There's so many other ways to buy a car, why take the added risk?

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 15:14
query about trade/private sellers - madf

I have bought a car from a trader from home BUT

he was clearly a trader - more than one car in his drive.

He had a HPI account on his laptop so could show the car's credit history was OK.

He had a mechanic working on one of his cars.. (A Renault GTI iirc - new clutch.

I bought from him with no qualms as he was clearly kosher.

But if you rang before you arrived, your trdaer could have borrowed the house to sell the car. If anything goes wrong and you cannot trace him......

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 18:45
query about trade/private sellers - pd

But if you rang before you arrived, your trdaer could have borrowed the house to sell the car. If anything goes wrong and you cannot trace him......

Hmmm...if you don't ring he could also not be there - like the idiot customer I had last week who had arranged to come all the way from Glasgow to Essex on Wednesday and then decided, without telling me, to come on Tueday instead. That would have been fine, except I was in Cardiff. He had a long journey back!

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 17:01
query about trade/private sellers - rebel

I'd ask him for the telephone numbers of 10 previous clients, and if he can't give them to you fairly quickly, scarper! Cynic, maybe. But with no other way of guaranteeing honesty, what else can you do.

So if you went ahead with the purchase and all was well, you would be happy for him to give your telephone number to his next ten clients then?

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 18:41
query about trade/private sellers - pd

Funnily enough, if you start giving out people's names, phone numbers and addresses to random people without their permission they sometimes get a bit pi**ed off. It is also breaking the data protection act.

The problems arise with traders pretending to be private and avoid tax, VAT, trader liabilities etc. not the other way round.

The fact that this bloke was upfront and declared himself trade is a positive side, not a negative one.

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Mon 12 Nov 2012 21:02
query about trade/private sellers - drahcir74

Well, i may of bottled it or had a lucky escape, i found a better car for a similar price at a dealer that i know has a history.

i'm sure that the one from home was probably a genuine dealer its just a lot of money for me and the family and i just couldn't take the risk.

things just didn't feel promising, there was absolutely no record of him or a dealership anywhere, not even something in the yellow pages, he wanted cash or a bankers draft, there was just the one car on autotrader.

thank you all for your comments it did help with what was a tricky decision.

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