Motorpoint

...on my own experience, is Motorpoint of Derby. It is a car supermarket, which means it sells a variety of new and nearly new cars. Most seem to be either imported from Europe (the new vehicles) or are ex-fleet vehicles from the UK (with a few thousand miles on the clock) A similar operation is Direct Cars of Sheffield. I visited this too, and found it to be very similar to Motorpoint, but as I ended up buying from Motorpoint I will confine my assessment ...
...Motorpoint is that it competes on price, so it has no need to use fancy sales gimmicks. It is quite possible to save several thousands of the UK list price of a new vehicle by dealing with Motorpoint. If you decide to buy a car which is a year or so old (with up to about 10k on the clock), you can make even bigger savings on the list price. And no haggling! The price you see is likely to be the price you pay.

No pushy salesmen: this ... more

One should never tempt fate. On Christmas day I was discussing motoring at a party and I announced that I had never had an accident in thirty years' driving. I also mentioned that I had had my car for over a decade and had no intention of changing it: the subtext of my remarks - I'm a careful driver, careful with my cash!

You guessed it, the very next day the fates intervened to mock me. While driving on a dual carriageway, the car in front braked sharply and bang went my unblemished accident-free motoring record.. My own car was judged by the assessors to be a write off.

Although I have little interest in cars and even less in car salesmen, I was therefore forced to enter the car market. The prospect of having to descend into the netherworld of Swiss Tonies, Arthur Daleys and puffa-jacketed spivs didn't appeal to me at all..

As I had not bought a car for many years, I was hoping that the car trade's notorious reputation for deception and dubious sales gimmicks was a thing of the past. However, I was to discover that these tricks of the trade are alive well and living in most of the car showrooms I visited. - tricks, such as: 'I can only hold this price for today, so you must sign the contract now' and the backroom trick - where the salesman disappears to have a word with his boss in the backroom, to get him to approve the generous offer he is bending over backwards to make; and then there is the financial origami of hire purchase interest rates, which are seldom quite what they seem in the advertising literature etc.

And last but not least there is the problem of haggling. Why is that that the purchase of a car, either new or second hand, means having to haggle with the salesman as if we were transported back in time into a medieval bazaar? Some people no doubt like the mind games involved in the haggling part. I suspect many others dislike it intensely, not least because car salesmen do it for a living and have a lot more experience and finesse at playing these mind games than we do. No wonder therefore that many people don't feel comfortable about entering car showrooms.

So it is with some relief that I can report that some things have changed in the world of car retailing since my last purchase many years ago. This seems to be primarily due to entry into the market of new types of retailer, to compete with tied dealerships, to the opening up (to some extent) of the UK market to competition from Europe and to the advent of internet retailing. Put bluntly, there are now more ways to buy a car than ever before and some of the new ways in my opinion are distinctly superior to the methods which have given the car trade a bad name.

An example, based on my own experience, is Motorpoint of Derby. It is a car supermarket, which means it sells a variety of new and nearly new cars. Most seem to be either imported from Europe (the new vehicles) or are ex-fleet vehicles from the UK (with a few thousand miles on the clock) A similar operation is Direct Cars of Sheffield. I visited this too, and found it to be very similar to Motorpoint, but as I ended up buying from Motorpoint I will confine my assessment to this firm.

The main point about Motorpoint is that it competes on price, so it has no need to use fancy sales gimmicks. It is quite possible to save several thousands of the UK list price of a new vehicle by dealing with Motorpoint. If you decide to buy a car which is a year or so old (with up to about 10k on the clock), you can make even bigger savings on the list price. And no haggling! The price you see is likely to be the price you pay.

No pushy salesmen: this is another attractive feature of Motorpoint. One of the salesmen told me that they only get a very small amount of commission on every new car sold, so there is no great incentive for them to push a sale. In any case, at these prices, the cars more or less sell themselves. I found the salesman I dealt with to be helpful and informative, without being overbearing. The way the system works is that, if you see a vehicle you like, you ask for the keys and you can have a good look at it inside and out (although without having a test drive). I had already read a lot of car reviews and so knew more or less what I wanted.

Lots of stock to choose from. Motorpoint's Derby site is large and almost every available space is filled with cars. They appear to focus on the more well known brands and makes (i.e. the kind which are easy to import in bulk or to buy from fleet operators) so don't expect to find anything too fancy. Motorpoint also has a good internet site, so you can check out the stock before you visit (although don't expect the internet stock to match precisely what they have, as they appear to rely on moving stock fast: you can, however, check to see if a particular car is still available and put a deposit on it over the phone).

When I visited, I was looking for either a Ford Focus Ghia or a Toyota Corolla T3, either new or nearly new. They had no Corolla T3s left, but they did have a new Ford Focus Ghia in the colour I wanted. I bought the car for just under £10k, whereas the list price in the UK is about £13.5k. The deal only took a few minutes. This involves putting a £300 deposit on the car. As the car is an import (from Belgium) you get a European warranty, valid in the UK, which is likely to be two years from the date it was first registered in the country of origin. This is of course less than the three years warranty you would get from a UK sourced dealership. However, if you take into account the considerable savings on the list price, it is in my opinion well worth it (you can also buy an extended warranty, although I didn't bother). When I got home I noticed that the bill included a £52.80 valeting charge which I had not agreed to. I didn't think a new car would need valeting. I rang up Motorpoint and without any quibble they removed the charge: I was impressed with the speed and courtesy with which they dealt with my minor complaint.

I picked up my new car at the beginning of March, in order to get the new 03 plate. You have to pick it up on a weekday, as weekends are reserved for viewing for safety reasons (there are a lot of cars in a confined space). The guy who gave me the keys was very helpful and patient as he showed me the controls. It was a very rainy day, so I was particularly concerned to understand how the multi-speed wipers worked. He went through the routines until I was satisfied that everything had clicked and even drove it for me to the gates, as I was a little concerned about bumping into other cars in the confined spaces of the Motorpoint forecourt. Although the car was sourced from Belgium, the manuals are in English.

This is a very positive review, so I had better make clear that I have no relationship to Motorpoint, except as a very satisfied customer. Of course, Motorpoint may not cater for everyone's needs. For example, if you are looking for an old banger, Motorpoint will not be for you (all the cars I saw were new or nearly new and certainly less than two years old). Nor is Motorpoint likely to suit you if you are looking for a rare or classic car. Moreover, I didn't need finance, so can't comment on their hire purchase arrangements.

I would definitely buy from Motorpoint again, which really says it all.

 

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