I have bought 2 cars from Trade Sales so far. The first was a used car (six months old) for my husband, the second a brand new car for myself.
Before purchasing both vehicles, we checked Trade Sales website to see whether they had the cars we were interested in in stock. In both cases, we knew which types of vehicle we wanted and we found the website very user-friendly and were able to locate specific models immediately. Under each make of car, e.g. Peugeot there is a list of each model available; under these sub-sections the web-site will tell you how many cars of each colour are in stock, how many have been reserved, how many are on order, etc. etc.
It is much easier to buy a new car from Trade Sales rather than a used car as they are, basically, new car importers; that is why the cars are so cheap. For example, if I had bought my car from a main dealer it would have cost me £14000; from Trade Sales it cost me £11,000 for exactly the same car!
One point to note when buying from a car supermarket is to not expect too much from the salesman - they are nothing like normal car dealers. By this I mean that they are quite scruffy, very to the point, are not interested in much interaction with the customer and are not at all pushy.
Because we knew which cars we wanted, we literally found a salesman who took us to one of the cars in stock, said yes we want it, sat down at his desk and filled in a form. He then sent us to the main office where they took our credit details, organised the car tax and warrantly (if required) and 3 days later we picked up the car.
I suppose the main concerns people have with not buying from a main dealer are car warranties and servicing. When you buy from Trade Sales they give you a year's warranty on the vehicle with the option of buying extra years from their chosen warranty company if you want to. I have had one small problem with my car which was fixed by a main dealer near where I live for no charge and no problem whatsoever.
Servicing is another matter entirely. Main dealers, in general, do not like people buying from car supermarkets; they are very short-sighted and should realise that they could make quite a lot of money out of servicing. I recently had to book my car in for a service and the first garage I tried were so rude when they found out that the car was from Trade Sales, that I decided to take my business elsewhere. Luckily the second dealer I tried was much more polite so I will be taking my car there again.
One minor problem with buying from a car supermarket is the inability to test drive the vehicle beforehand. The only way around this that we could find was to go to a main dealer first and drive the vehicle(s) we were interested in. The down side to this is that you get hassled by the salesman and have to make an excuse not to buy the car.
I can honestly say that I could not be persuaded to buy from a main dealer again unless their prices matched Trade Sales.
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Dec 9th, 2002
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