buying used car - admin fee

[mwatsonxx]

Hi guys, I've noticed some dealers are asking for admin fees (£50 - £95), what's it all about. Is it a scam to release them from their responsibilties. Whereby, a price is agreed for the car, they then try to charge the admin fee, punter refuses to pay, and later if there's a problem they refuse responsibility because the transaction was incomplete, or something along those lines.

 

[terryplumb]

is it associated with them arranging finance for the buyer ,with a third party finance company ?

 

[DaveHerns]

Ask them what you get for the money. It's basically a con to get more money out of you. Tell them there's no legal basis to charge you and you're not going to pay it. They won't argue, they need sales.

 

[mwatsonxx]

is it associated with them arranging finance for the buyer ,with a third party finance company ?

No it appears to be a general condition of any sale, a bit like Tesco adding £5 to your shopping bill.

 

[HERTS P&D]

Why would Tesco add £5 to your bill?

Andy

 

[DaveHerns]

Isn't it just the saleman's bonus? A bit like all the add-on insurance policies they try to sell you? Normally £399 but £299 on special offer ! You can get them anywhere for far less. That's where the sales staff make their money these days.

 

[Bullet-Proof_Biscuit]

I would ask why the admin fee was not included in the gross sale price advertised, as 'surely it is a hidden extra charge falling foul of trading standards regs?'

 

[Mottie]

I would absolutely refuse to pay it and be prepared to walk away if they wouldn’t remove that cost.

 

[TicTac]

It's another rip off fee designed to get more money out of you. It's a bit like Ryanair charging you for an air ticket, and then adding a fee for printing the ticket.

Car Giant etc, will just tell you to sod off, as they've already priced the car as low as possible, and they'll happily lose the sale, but some of the more normal dealers who are trying it on, may reduce the price of the car to cover the admin fee, but then leave it in place so the boss thinks they are doing their job properly.

Gone are the days when you got treated fairly and honestly.

 

[freddiemercurystwin]

Yep I can speak of this with bitter experience, wound up buying from Evans Halshaw (OK lesson learned) about 9 years ago now, I wound up settling on a car, as mentioned they are priced competitively so it's hard to haggle, they simply don't need to, you arrive having sorted insurance, made whatever arrangements for your old car etc, it's a **** ton of hassle to deny them of their poxy admin fee once you reach that stage but there it is, they had no issues with me walking but there it is. This time round the twenty something exceedingly pretty Lebanese sales lady had me rolling over like a puppy! At least this time around it wasn't a dud!

 

[Ian H]

Car-petright add on an admin fee for fitting, £70 ontop of £270 cheeky gits!!!

 

[DaveHerns]

I trust you refused to pay it.

 

[Ian H]

Yes, I went somewhere else and paid £750 less for the exact same car-pet.

 

[Sandtree]

Isn't it just the saleman's bonus? A bit like all the add-on insurance policies they try to sell you? Normally £399 but £299 on special offer ! You can get them anywhere for far less. That's where the sales staff make their money these days.

I once worked with a finance company that worked with a lot of car dealerships. Many of them wanted the convenience of buying their finance and insurance from the same company but we didnt write GAP insurance or such but we made some enquiries and found for the average policy that the dealer charges £400 for (exc tax) we could buy wholesale for £100 (considering our buying ability). So we said to the dealers that we can indeed provide them their insurance at £200. Added nothing of value at all in the supply chain (we did absolutely nothing as the insurer just rebadged a version of their site to us and did all the calls, billing, policy setup etc) but collected £100 per sale ontop of our finance fee.

Outside of taxes anything else you pay a dealership should be considered in the entirety, in 99% of cases it makes no difference if you pay £5,000 for a car and £100 for delivery of £2,000 for the car and £3,100 for delivery (unless you buy return to invoice GAP insurance and the car is written off).

From a sellers perspective there can be some "advantages" of cutting up your costs in certain ways... everyone loves free P&P, some even pay higher prices for it... and so getting people over the psychological hump that they "will buy the car" probably means adding an extra £50 on as admin has a higher success rate than adding £100 to the asking price and £50 to the selling price of all cars.