OV9

Went car shopping at the weekend as my girlfriend wants out of her 2 year old Cupra Leon for something more SUVish. We've narrowed it down to an XC40 and found a really nicely specced B3 mild hybrid at a local Volvo dealer. They were happy for us to take it away for 90 mins by ourselves so had a good go around the local area in it. I was hugely impressed with it far more so than I thought I would be, and this feels like the right car for her.

So the car is listed at £23,790. Whilst we were out they set about deciding how hard they were going to kick us in the nuts/fanny with the p/ex and had produced a quotation for the change.

The p/ex was abysmal (3k under WBAC) but not unsurprising. What was rather excuse me what? about the whole thing was the £23,790 car was now £25,500, but only if we took their 9.9% APR finance - having explicitly said this is a CASH purchase we do not want or need any finance - and if we didn't it was a few hundred quid more.

"Delivery package" £500 - this comprises of basic shit you'd bloody do to sell a fucking car in the first place you theiving cunts. Like washing it, putting plates on it (couldn't help noticing it already had registration plates on it funny that) some admin shite and licking the windows.

The rest was a combo of alloy wheel insurance and "minor damage" insurance, which was "discounted" if you pay three times more than the discount by financing it. Yes no thanks. All of this assumed to be part of the deal.

Is this common now? We don't want any insurance products and fuck off if we're paying £500 for the pleasure of you selling the car to us. This seems like price gouging on an epic sale.

Anyway she wants the car so we'll have to argue the toss over it all with them.

That sounds bizarre, which dealer was it?

I bought from Marshall Volvo and the price was the price. I did take out finance but only because there was an offer which included a years extra warranty and two years servicing. I paid it off after checking it wouldn’t affect the offer.

The local Renault and Dacia dealer has dynamic pricing and don't put prices on the cars on forecourt anymore. They go up and down depending on supply and demand etc but they did say they would honour the price we had screenshotted if it had gone up on my dads new to him Duster.

The other stuff is just skull duggery and a practice I would walk away from.

Negotiate with taking the finance, pay the finance off in the cooling off period, do not tell them you intend to clear the finance.

None of this is new - it was introduced at H.R.Owen in 2004 when I was a business manager there and I'm sure that others did it before them.
Dealer groups drop in and out of doing this, depending on their profitability and senior managers.
I disliked having to ask my salesman to present prices in that was and dislike it now when it's offered to me! It's easy to understand whay they do it - For a dealership to be considered a success it makes 2.5% profit a year (very few do).

I can't remember my H.R.Owen figures, but at Stratsone I got a bonus if my sales team averaged more than £2000 total profit on each used car, which was surprisingly hard to do after paying for prep, warranties, commission and price aligning with the cheapest equivalent car in the country to ensure that it actually sold. I had 50 used cars in stock and they each lost about £400 every month that they didn't sell.

In an ideal world you would: buy them in at £3500 less than retail, £350 for a used car check, £350 service, £600 warranty, £vat on the difference between the cost and sale price = less then the £2k needed, even before negotiation, so you couldn't meet the profit target without the 'platinum pack' or whatever it was called that week, was sold with the car.
Finance profit would be taken back if it had been cleared off by the customer before the third payment.

The alloy wheel insurance and the interior protection is ‘offered’ by all dealers now. I’ve had some who’ve sent me videos on it then a tick box to opt out.

It was Holden Volvo. Anyway the deal is done now, they didn't push back really on removing the £500 delivery bullshit. Hopefully Friday is new car day for Vicky.