OV9

Saw this today - interesting.

If I were a dealer, I think I'd stop advertising on Auto Trader. They pay enough to AT; there is no point pandering to this.

However, if there were a dealer who I didn't like, it could be amusing to prevent them selling their stock for 3 weeks. Would only cost £1100 - I'm not interested in reserving a Civic I assume the reservation fee is refundable.

Jobbo wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:16 pm If I were a dealer, I think I'd stop advertising on Auto Trader. They pay enough to AT; there is no point pandering to this.

However, if there were a dealer who I didn't like, it could be amusing to prevent them selling their stock for 3 weeks. Would only cost £1100 - I'm not interested in reserving a Civic I assume the reservation fee is refundable.

Yep, if you were selling a rare car with only a few for sale, you could quite easily pay a few hundred quid and take the others off the market for 3 weeks.

It does seem crazy to allow the reserve to take effect without qualification or consent from the seller.

Jobbo wrote: Thu Nov 06, 2025 6:16 pm If I were a dealer, I think I'd stop advertising on Auto Trader. They pay enough to AT; there is no point pandering to this.

However, if there were a dealer who I didn't like, it could be amusing to prevent them selling their stock for 3 weeks. Would only cost £1100 - I'm not interested in reserving a Civic I assume the reservation fee is refundable.

This was my exact first thoughts. Couple of fake accounts setup and a few quid on a returnable deposit.

Yeah, does seem unfair to dealers, but equally I dislike his suggestion that whilst you’re sorting out finance/part-ex on the car you believe you’ve reserved, the dealer can sell it to someone that pays cash for example.. especially as I imagine if I’d reserved a car, I’d probably have stopped looking at alternatives and maybe agreed the sale of my old car to a third party.

Like he says, autotrader is a voluntary service that dealers use, so you either comply with their terms or use a.n.other.. (was it Bryn that set up Motorway?)

Doing the reserving via a (basically free) click with no actual discussion/qualification does seem to be a massive over reach - especially if the full control of this is in the consumers court.

Would people be as keen if the £99 went to the dealer and wasn’t refundable?

Daft idea in the extreme. And..

1: it’s mandatory
2: they’re charging for it.

Have AT forgotten who their customers are?

Another vid complaining about this appeared on my tube feed today. Lots of (entirely understandable) pushback from car dealers apparently - many leaving the platform. Which made me go and check the AT UKshare price. You’ll need to manually select a 6month / 12 month view to see the impact*.

Ouch!

* May be other factors. Not an analyst. Share prices can go up, down, sideways or numberwang etc.

Crikey, they'll be reversing this decision fairly soon surely? Absolutely fucked it for shareholders.

Wow, that’s pretty dramatic. my company is doing a big project with them and i remember looking at their finances - their profit margins are pretty insane. I can’t believe they’d want to rock that boat with stupid ideas like this!

Rich B wrote: Wed Dec 10, 2025 11:30 am their profit margins are pretty insane. I can’t believe they’d want to rock that boat with stupid ideas like this!

Yep.

This is the vid that appeared on my feed earlier. In addition to this deal builder pish, they are also removing dealer logos and contact details, so the ads are anonomised and the only easy option for buyers is to hit the “reserve for £99” button or walk away.

This guy says some things that don’t make much sense to me, but he described this model as “trying to be the Amazon of car sales” which resonated.

Share price over 5years suggests it's returned to 2019-2023 levels. So, it could just be an interim over valuation I guess. But it looks pretty damning in reality.

Seems a good opportunity for a bunch of the larger car dealers to get together and make their own system. They’ve got the money and contacts to make it happen.

Mito Man wrote: Wed Dec 10, 2025 1:00 pm Seems a good opportunity for a bunch of the larger car dealers to get together and make their own system. They’ve got the money and contacts to make it happen.

I mean, Pistonheads has been around for ages, as has Motors, and others. It'd take something massive to get traction away from people defaulting to Autotrader. And I'm not sure this is it.

If you, as a small dealer, stop advertising there, but find you're not selling to Joe public (who, let's be honest, 95% have no idea about any of this) stop seeing your cars, they'll just end up buying from the dealers who still do.

Still, I suspect they'll end up rolling this back. I still can't believe how expensive it is to list cars there these day! I still remember paying £10

Needs aggressive advertising. No NCGs know about Pistonheads. But when we had all those rubbish online car supermarkets pop up everyone knew about them in a short space of time.

Logbook man says they are U turning a bit on it.

Mito Man wrote: Wed Dec 10, 2025 1:00 pm Seems a good opportunity for a bunch of the larger car dealers to get together and make their own system. They’ve got the money and contacts to make it happen.

I had lunch with a chap who has been in the industry for years and was a consultant who advised four chains together to try to get something like this off the ground 20 years ago. It failed, in the same way as estate agents who try to challenge Rightmove have all failed. His view is that Auto Trader won't make a U-turn and will win this battle.

As per Scott's post above mine, they will make some concessions initially as a sop but the direction of travel seems inevitable.

They've made a U-turn

tim wrote: Thu Dec 11, 2025 2:04 pm They've made a U-turn

Linky-McLink-face?