The internet is a great place to buy a car. There are some fantastic deals out there and the majority of the companies you find on the net don't have big showrooms, no huge rent to pay on the buildings, the pitch and on keeping stock. Therefore, they can pass on some great savings to you, the customer.
Most of the people that you may come across on the World Wide Web are reputable people who have a background in car sales and have seen the future of utilising the internet as a good vehicle to sell their products in a very cost effective manner.
However, it's not always like that. I worked for a reputable company about 5 years ago who were selling imported cars from Europe to consumers in the UK. The cars were great, built correctly and most of the customers I sold to were happy with the car and the service they got. When the Euro dipped against the pound, the cars became more expensive and the savings and profits went, near enough overnight. Our wages went down and the company's future looked extremely sketchy.
At the time, all we could really sell were Range Rovers. Every enquiry that came in for Range Rovers was jumped on and given the saving of about £5,000, even with the bad currency exchange rate, the deal was there to be had. So we kept selling as we were told to. The delivery time for a range rover was about 12-14 weeks and we'd take a 10% deposit on the cars, but if we couldn't get the £5,000 out of the customer, we were told to get as much as we could, we were negotiating with the customer.
The deal was that after paying the deposit, you had nothing to pay until the car was on your drive. It was a fantastic way of buying your new car. During the whole process, you didn't even have to leave your house, only to post the cheque for your deposit and 14 weeks later, the car turns up on your drive and you pay the balance. Easy.
Collectively as a company, our sales force of about 6, were selling about 40 cars per month, sometimes more. At least 50% of those were Range Rovers. So 20 cars at a value of £50,000 – you work it out. The company were struggling to even pay our wages, let alone £50,000 for a car. The backlog of cars at the dealership on the continent was so immense that they would not accept any further orders. But still, we were told to keep selling them. They started bringing them in 4 at a time, but the majority apparently never got delivered.
Thankfully, by that time, I had seen the decline in the company, the drop in morale, and by having a delay in wages until a driver had returned from delivering a Porsche and got paid from it, we then got paid. 4 days later. I was out of there, hot on my heels. The company kept trading for about 3-4 months after and some people, unfortunately, were left without a car and without the deposit they had paid.
Various other rumours flew around, such as £3 Million owed to the VAT man and of course, the knock-on effect that made other companies bankrupt.
Want to hear more? Ok.
After an unsuccessful bout of selling cars on a commission only basis with the ex-colleague I mentioned earlier, who incidentally, had a major phobia of his phone bill and wouldn't let me build relationships on the phone, which I am very good at and a strong point of what I am about, I started working for one of the biggest internet car retailers in the UK.
There was a sales force of about 30 people that I was a part of which was run by a 23 year old know-it-all who swaggered about like he was king dick. He shied away from customers and never spoke to them, leaving his ‘team' to sort out problems. They held more weight in the morning meetings and setting targets for the rest of the day than customer service.
The ‘team leader' was another kid who did nothing but sit at his desk and look busy, walk around the sales floor and chat to girls, exercising his authority and on occasion standing over you while you're building a rapport with your customer shouting like a two year old, having tantrums and throwing items of stationary across the desk at you to get your attention. This was just to tell you that that person wasn't going to buy a car there and then and move onto the next person who might.
Where I worked was a state of the art centre where they prepared the cars for sale. It was a nice place to work, with great people other than the managers. Many cars that were for sale were sold without checking that the car was actually there and many mistakes were made regarding the specifications. Deposits went back to the customers, but rather than focusing attention on repeat business and providing a great service, it was almost like a conveyor belt effect where the customers were just numbers, not names and the customer service desk was inundated with calls from angry customers rather than doing what they were there for, which was getting cars out to customers. I don't work like this.
The worst experience of my working life was with a business that I set up.
Picture this...
You're sick of working for other people, seeing them make money and paying you a pitiful amount every month while they treat you like a selling machine. You're sick of all the calls from irate customers, so you set up a business to provide great service and be everything the car industry is not.
I did just that. After I parted company with the big boys, I had built up a contact base of around 900 trade customers and sent regular emails to them offering cars that some of my select few good contacts had. These cars were 100% available, and I knew that they existed. I sat at my computer for 4 months, making no money, but had a part time job that barely covered my rent and just kept me ticking over.
As those four months went by, I built myself a very basic website that looked awful but did the job. I promoted the hell out of it and it started getting visitors, but very few enquiries. So four months down the line, I secured my first sale. Not for one car, but two. I was over joyed at this and when the money came through celebrated a little and at that time, an ex-workmate left his job at the same place I worked and came and joined me.
We set out some ground rules and agreed that we were never going to make the mistakes that we had seen other companies make, and decided that we were going to be business partners with a 50-50 stake in the business.
This was mistake number 1 of a list too long to write here.
Against my better judgment, we secured an office in a suburb of the City we lived in. My gut said no because it was in too close a proximity to his local, to his family, to his home. It was less than ideal and although the office was ok, it fit the bill and it was a place to work from. It was nothing like I had imagined, but it was just ok.
Things started to go wrong from then. We continued to make money, although there were times where we had a very tight time or two. At first, I controlled the accounting, the websites, the marketing and promotion, the trade side and select retail customers. He just read the paper and did some selling. Something had to give, so the accounting became his domain.
This was mistake number 2.
There were alarm bells ringing in my head and since I had made the decision to take on a business partner, who could not put up any sort of funding, I kept in mind that he was an asset because he was a bloody good sales man. I can't and won't take that away from him. The fact was that things started to go wrong very early.
We vowed that we were not going to make the mistakes that we had seen from others and it was my PR skills that came into play calming customers down when they cancelled cars and wanted their deposits back and hadn't received a cheque. Over promising on delivery times was another habit that I didn't want to get into. Selling cars that didn't exist was something that I didn't want to get into but we did it.
Yes, I said WE. I felt pressured into doing it and no matter what I had said before, it fell on deaf ears and it was either play the game or be played myself. I'm not proud of it and I know the errors and the backlash I got from it and it made me extremely unhappy doing it. This continued to happen when we got into financial dire straits. It got to the point where I would not sell any cars and put my name or promises to the deals because I knew that if that customer was going to pay a deposit, it was going to be used to pay another customer their deposit back. Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.
That was another mistake.
I carried on, de-moralised, thinking back to 18 months ago when we had agreed to be different, to build a business with a bloody good reputation, that people would recommend to others and build a good repeat customer base. That was my aim. It didn't happen.
I took 2 weeks out to go to America in summer 2005when things were looking up. We were back on an even keel after selling a few cars and spending the spring selling 1000 pairs of trousers at a great profit. I left with the business account looking good, we were owed in excess of £5,000 and the money had started to come in and make us buoyant again. when I got back, things could not have been more different. When I questioned where the money had gone, I was met with a brick wall and a matter of fact statement saying 'We owed it out.' I know we had a £500 phone bill and the rent needed paying, other than that, there was nothing. Business was so slow after that and instead of having money to see us through, we had none. I mean, none.
The deal that was the straw that broke the camel's back for me, was for four Range Rovers. Each £50,000 cars that we used to sell a lot of and make a little money out of them, although we had the potential to make more, but we were lucky to see £500 - £1,000. It was pitiful.
So, a few short days after I returned, he was in the middle of putting this deal together and selling the cars with so little profit, I said I wanted no part in it. £500 had to paid to a contact that put us in touch with the guy that wanted the cars, we had to register the cars and we had to transport them. This cost a lot of money. Money that wasn't in the deal to start with. After countless trips to the DVLA to register them and PR exercises to the customer's offices, the deal wasn't complete 3 weeks after the cars were delivered.
Cut a long, boring story short, when all was said and done, the tiny profit there was in the deal went and it was now costing us money. This should have been so straight forward that the deal should have made at least £4,000. Not to be. What actually happened, which happens a lot in the car industry was that the VAT money on those cars was used and the his plan was that it was going to be paid three months later when the money had been made back.
To this day, over a year later, the VAT man is still chasing him for the money. After that episode, there was nothing left of the business that I had started to be something special and unique, it was taken away from me and I felt like an employee that was not pulling their weight. Every sort of responsibility was taken away from me, every decision was made for me, it was like I didn't have a voice.
Then the inevitable happened. I walked out.
I couldn't stand by when my name was pulled down and dragged through the mud and I didn't want my name associated with something that was sinking faster than the Titanic.
Yes, I hang my hands up and be honest and say 'I made a mistake.' I made a few. I poured blood, sweat, tears and nearly 3 years of my life into that business to have it, in effect, pulled out from under me.
Do you know what? There are some things that I did wrong, yes. There are things, that of I had to go through it all again, I would not have done. There are things I did that I am not proud of. There are some things that given the chance, I would do the same again. I had fun for the most part, but the bits that weren't fun, were a total nightmare that I would never want to happen to me again.
The dispute of the VAT is still ongoing, as I recently received a demand in the post for a large sum of money. After being told that the amount was being chipped away at and half had been paid, the demand on me was for the full amount. He lied to me and tried to spin it and make me liable for the full amount. So, I told the truth of the situation to HMC&E and of course, the rightful person is still liable.
Over the past year, I've done extensive research and sought legal advice over this matter to make sure that I, being the person who started the business, am not liable in this matter and given the legalities, I washed my hands of this a long time ago and it's a place in my past that will stay exactly that. In my past.
There are more stories that I could tell that would make your hair curl about the motor industry. To be honest, I hate it. I hate the backstabbing, I hate the one-upmanship, I hate the chase, I hate a lot of the people that are involved in it and most of all, I hate the people that try and lift your leg and turn round and stab you in the back.
Some would say that I have done that. Some would tell me to practice what I preach. Some would say that I am not a true car salesman and that I should go and choose a different profession.
Well, I'm not a car salesman. I don't sell cars. I'm proud to say that.
People buy from me because they want what I can get hold of. People come back to buy from me because I'm no nonsense, honest. People buy from me because I don't try and sell to them. People buy from me because they don't have the hassle of dealing with a schiester.
I have a small customer base that keep coming back to me because they know that they are going to get the truth from me. I tell them the way it is and if I haven't got what they want I advise them to go elsewhere. The truth is, I don't want a large customer base. I don't want to have to deal with the logistics of 100 cars a month. I don't want to sell out to a corporate machine that treats every customer like a number. I don't want to sound blasé about it all, as I want to grow my customer base, but I'm not willing to compromise who I am, my hopes and dreams to become a faceless corporate sell out.
I want people to be comfortable with dealing with me and comfortable in the knowledge that I'm not ripping them off, comfortable enough to know that they are going to be looked after, time and time again. Comfortable to tell their friends about me and the service I provide, so that they are comfortable that they are not going to be ripped off. Comfortable that I am going to protect their reputation, by using my integrity and professionalism.
Underneath it all, I am just a human being who loves cars. I'm not the corporation you hate to deal with, I'm just a scruffy guy that you would see on the street anywhere, in any city in any country.
I know the wrong way to deal with people and I know the right way.
This is my naked truth...
