General Auto Trader dot co uk

[DaveMcT]

Autotrader.co.uk is the well respected place to advertise your car. So you might think.

Put your own reg number into the valuation tool and it will give a figure. Now go and find a similar car (age, miles etc) at a dealer's advert.

In my case, there was a £900 difference between what the tool says my car is worth and what a current dealer's advert is asking for a similar age and mileage car. Disappointing, but whatever.

Now put the that dealer's advertised car reg into the tool and it shows the same value as the sticker price.

Hmmm.

I don't mean to diss the car dealers they have margins to cover and nobody expects a "sold as seen" private sale to be the same as a dealers deal. But this pricing advice looks pretty dodgy to me.

 

[koalar]

post the advert. Let see what's going on

 

[DaveMcT]

I don't have a beef with the advert. The price is in the same range as all the others for 100HPs. But I do have a beef with the Autotrader valuation tool.

Enter the reg number for a dealer advertised car and the valuation it displays is exactly what the current advert is showing.
Do the same for your own car (which on face value is the same as the advertised car) and it comes out at £1000 lower with trade in value lower still.

If you really wanted to sell, your advert would be hugely under-priced. Even allowing for fair dealer margins that cannot be right.

 

[SPORTPACK50]

Isn't VAT that the dealer has to charge the main reason for the difference?

 

[DaveMcT]

Isn't VAT that the dealer has to charge the main reason for the difference?

A car very similar to mine was priced at £2800. Entering the advertised registration into the valuation tool showed exactly the same figure. VAT would be £466 on £2800, so the car was really making £2333. But the valuation on mine was £1700 and just £1000 for a trade in. I expect the private sale figure to be lower but not by that much.

 

[koalar]

put in the wrong mileage and see what happens


i can put the wrong milage for my car but not one there is an advert for.



It must look it its adverts database


anyhow the three I tried came out the same ish.

 

[koalar]

board now

2005

Dynamic


Mine plus the most expensive advert and three others come out at the same price if you use the back arrow and adjust the mileage to the same

 

[jrkitching]

If you really wanted to sell, your advert would be hugely under-priced. Even allowing for fair dealer margins that cannot be right.

I'd expect a 100HP sold privately to fetch about £1000 less than an independent dealer's forecourt price, and about £500 more that you'd be offered as a trade-in. £1500 is about the going rate for a dealer's margin on this sort of car. Negotiate hard and you might get £500 of that off the windscreen price. That would put the private sale price midway between what you'd be offered as a trade-in, and the best deal you could likely negotiate on a forecourt, which to me seems fair and reasonable.

I've no problem with that; dealers are offering a service and need to make a reasonable profit. Advertising a privately sold car for dealer forecourt money is, in most cases, just a waste of time and energy (though a quick glance at the classifieds shows it doesn't stop lots of folks from trying).

But what's being reported here regarding the autotrader valuation tool is well into Arthur Daley territory .

 

[DaveMcT]

Ive just completed my negotiations with the insurance. The car is not economic to repair and I was offered £2300. Fair enough but none of the adverts right up to nearly £3000 mention stuff like recent expensive stuff like cam belt. At at 70K to 80K the clutch won't be far behind (another £500 when hydraulics are added to the bill).

So rather than get railroaded into buying the first one that crops up I've taken the buy-back option. Not madly keen as insurers take a non negotiable 25% claiming that's what they get as salvage value. Bearing in mind car breakers will struggle to pay £50 for a scrap car I think that's another rip off.

Anyhow. The insurer's valuation team said the car is worth £2,300. Considerably more than the £1700 that AutoTrader would have folks think they should ask in a private sale. Bear in mind any 1/2 decent buyer will haggle the price down.


For anyone selling a car, I suggest take the average prices of similar spec cars currently on sale and lop off £500. That should be enough to attract attention and get a fair sale price. Ignore the AutoTrader valuation app.

 

[clockworks]

AFAIK, VAT is only payable on the profit made when a dealer sells a secondhand car (Margin Scheme), so £250 VAT if the profit is £1500 on a £4k car, rather than £666 on the sale price of £4000.

It wouldn't surprise me if Autotrader's valuation tool does a quick check of all the cars being sold on it's website before doing an actual valuation, to avoid upsetting advertisers. If it finds the reg number, it throws back the advertised price.

What happens if you put in the reg of a car being sold on Autotrader by a private seller?

 

[jrkitching]

Ive just completed my negotiations with the insurance. The car is not economic to repair and I was offered £2300.

I'm glad you've reached a resolution to this - at least you now have certainty about the outcome and can move forward.

I've taken the buy-back option. Not madly keen as insurers take a non negotiable 25% claiming that's what they get as salvage value. Bearing in mind car breakers will struggle to pay £50 for a scrap car I think that's another rip off.

I think it is too. But pragmatically you have to ask yourself if the car as is, with a known history and in its current condition, is worth £575 to you. IMO that's a no-brainer, since any other 100HP you could buy for less than £600 is likely to be a complete shed. The insurers know this, so they aren't going to sell it back to you for scrapyard money.

With your skill set and from what you've posted about the damage, I'm sure you'll get this fixed up to a high standard for less than the £1675 you'll get back from the insurers.

It's still a load of hassle I'm sure you could well do without. Unfortunately these days, any incident involving an insurance company is likely to leave you out of pocket, even one in which you could in no way be considered to blame. How much out of pocket you'll find out at renewal time when they tell you the loading they're putting on for making the claim. If they ask for something silly, shop around.

At least be thankful you had the good sense to protect your no claims bonus, and, more importantly, weren't injured. Folks have been killed before in collisions with deer.

I drive regularly along unfenced roads with wandering deer, horses and cattle; this is one of my own nightmares.

 

[jrkitching]

AFAIK, VAT is only payable on the profit made when a dealer sells a secondhand car (Margin Scheme), so £250 VAT if the profit is £1500 on a £4k car, rather than £666 on the sale price of £4000.

Correct; VAT registered traders need only pay VAT on the difference between the buying and selling prices when selling used private cars. See this website for a detailed explanation of the secondhand margin scheme.

The insurer's valuation team said the car is worth £2,300. Considerably more than the £1700 that AutoTrader would have folks think they should ask in a private sale.

Insurance settlements are supposed to be made based on the forecourt price of an equivalent car bought from a motor trader. I'd expect to see a £600 difference between that figure and the guide private sale price.

 

[DaveMcT]

I'm glad you've reached a resolution to this - at least you now have certainty about the outcome and can move forward.

I think it is too. But pragmatically you have to ask yourself if the car as is, with a known history and in its current condition, is worth £575 to you. IMO that's a no-brainer, since any other 100HP you could buy for less than £600 is likely to be a complete shed. The insurers know this, so they aren't going to sell it back to you for scrapyard money.

With your skill set and from what you've posted about the damage, I'm sure you'll get this fixed up to a high standard for less than the £1675 you'll get back from the insurers.

It's still a load of hassle I'm sure you could well do without. Unfortunately these days, any incident involving an insurance company is likely to leave you out of pocket, even one in which you could in no way be considered to blame. How much out of pocket you'll find out at renewal time when they tell you the loading they're putting on for making the claim. If they ask for something silly, shop around.

At least be thankful you had the good sense to protect your no claims bonus, and, more importantly, weren't injured. Folks have been killed before in collisions with deer.

I drive regularly along unfenced roads with wandering deer, horses and cattle; this is one of my own nightmares.

Thanks for this. You have indeed echoed my own thoughts. The insurers were not going to pay for a car as "good" as mine as that would cost around £3000 and even then, many adverts "forget" to mention the costly stuff like cam belt replacements.

In the end, I had to be pragmatic - and (as you say) the insurers know this. The car is structurally undamaged and a forum member is helping me out with some parts; eBay will find a few more.

In the short term, I intend to fit a standard Panda bumper - probably sprayed black with rattle cans. Soon enough a decent 100HP bumper will turn up for sensible money. I also plan to add a steel tube to the chassis under the bumper to protect the radiators. The car has a solid front beam under the bumper, but the rad tops are very exposed to impact damage.

Regards the event itself - the road was fenced and I've never before seen deer along there (though I know there are deer in the area). The animal jumped a fence from my left and landed right in front of the car. It's feet can have barely touched the ground before impact.

Had I been just 1 metre further along the road it would have gone into the windscreen.

Had I been on the motorbike, financial costs would have been the least of my worries.

 

[koalar]

when cars get to this age very little affects the price.

I can see an early 2007 100HP up at £1.2K

£1.580 that auto trader quotes for an average codition seems fair enough

 

[DaveMcT]

The price estimator put mine at £1700, but anything close in mileage and quality was +/- £2500. Insurance said they would pay me £2300 to scrap the car. OK-ish, but I know the cars for sale at that level will need cams belts doing and probably a clutch very soon.


There is one for sale at £1250 but its done 160,000 miles.

 

[jrkitching]

The price estimator put mine at £1700, but anything close in mileage and quality was +/- £2500. Insurance said they would pay me £2300 to scrap the car. OK-ish, but I know the cars for sale at that level will need cams belts doing and probably a clutch very soon.

The system isn't fair, and places far too much emphasis on book values. I've said this before, but the book valuing system overvalues bad cars, and undervalues good ones. When determining the real value of a 10yr old car, condition is everything.

If you'd tried to sell your car to the trade for cash, pre-accident, you'd have been lucky to find a dealer who'd have given you £1000 for it. To buy one from that same set of dealers and put it into the condition yours was in would likely have cost you at least three times that.

Some years ago, Ladykitching had the misfortune of having a 3yr old car written off (through no fault of her own). It had just passed its first MOT, but needed a full set of tyres, brakes, pads, discs, and a full service including a cambelt - the local franchised dealer was quoting the best part of a grand for the work.

Insurance settled for about £1500 more than we'd likely have got if we'd traded the car in pre-accident; we managed to haggle another couple of hundred from the first offer, but that was clearly the limit and they said they'd source a similar replacement car if we didn't accept it.

If she'd had all the work done, it wouldn't have affected the settlement at all, and I remember thinking she'd have been £1000 worse off if the accident had happened a week later.

Life isn't fair; if you're running an older car which you've spent time and money on keeping in exceptional condition, you're always going to lose out if you have a no-fault accident, as you'll be offered pretty much the same settlement you'd have got on a complete shed.

 

[DaveMcT]

:yeahthat:

Dead right life isnt fair. Just watch out and take care especially when using "helpul" tools when valuing a car for sale. Check the adverts and price your car to fit that range. If you need to sell it yesterday then by all means use the valuation figures.


The least costs cars are those around 3 years old with FSH. New enough for most stuff to be well within life and the service is up to date. Older cars cost less but need more stuff doing to them and (can) stuff you over if you need to sell sooner than expected.