TMW - Car pricing and why you should keep away from main dealerships, or should you ?

Buying a new car is probably the second biggest purchase the majority of people make in the UK, so, making sure that you buy the best car, at the best prices is something that you should take your time in working out, so, where is the best place to get your nice new car from ?

The Dealership

Buying from your main dealer is always a consideration, they like to make out that you can not buy your car any better than from them, but they have to make money so they will try and make out they are the best, but that's not strictly true, the dealership, will have a lot of overheads, they will have to abide by the brand's terms and conditions, the way that building looks, how many cars they have in the showroom, decoration and so on, all this has a value, and this has to be paid for.

And it is you, the customer that pays for this out of your nice new car, so when you see that sticker price, advertising your nice new car, you are paying for far more than the car, however, you get the backup of that brand, when you have any issues, or you would like to think you do, if you have any issues within the warranty period, the dealership should be the first point of call to go to, to get your issue sorted, but these days, you will find a lot of dealers will try their best to get out of repairing the fault, especially when it is a recall issue, time is not your friend in that case.

The Car Supermarket

The Supermarket is a relatively new way of buying a car, up until the last few years these businesses have mainly dealt with second hand car sales, but more recently they have been selling new cars, MG is one brand that has moved into the Supermarket arena to sell cars, unfortunately number are not available to see if this is working or not, but for a Supermarket like Motorpoint to have a brand on their books it gives them some kudos.

But can it work, well, it is far harder to sell a nice brand new car from these sites that from a main dealer, why, well, say for argument sake you have £10k to spend and you go to one of these sites, do you buy a nice top of the line MG3 or do you buy a 2015 (65 Plate) Volkswagen Polo, personally I know which one I would go for, a supposed quality brand, with the remainder of it's warranty

Online Purchase

The best way to get a car in my opinion, as I have gone the route and purchased a car online, quite successfully, the dealership was dire, but the online company could not have been any better, it was simple, to the point and you have the price take it or leave it, as an example for this report I have chosen one car make and model, the 1.5 Litre. TDCI, Ford Fiesta Five door, 

Dealership      -   £16,795

Supermarket   -   £12,699 -£4,096
Online Purchase £12,252 -£4,543

So you can clearly see the price difference, £4,543 difference between the dearest and cheapest for the same car, all three are brand new, unregistered, UK cars, with only one option, the city Pack, and the this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are other differences that amount to in excess of £10,000 in savings, in fact, a quick check found this car, the AUDI A8 with a discount of nearly £20,000 on dealership forecourt pricing.

But just because you can get a discount online, does not mean that you can't take that figure to your dealership and get them to match it, or, to offer a range of benefits to equal the price through Zero % APR, free servicing, free grade uplift etc, not that I am saying every dealer will be able or willing to do this, some are able, others are not, so, it depends on the relationship you have with that dealer.

If you don't have a relationship with a local dealer, and are happy to buy at the best price possible, and you don't mind travelling to collect your car, then online is probably your best bet, like I said, the Online company, Carfile.net, where we chose to purchase our car through could not be any better, unfortunately the Citroen dealership, Bristol Street Motors, could not have been worse. 

The lack of communication, the lack of pleasantries, the general rudeness of the salesman and the fact that we didn't even get anything as a gratitude for spending so much money with them, shows the total lack of care and concern from this dire business, we won't be using them again, even if it means spending more elsewhere, they put enough fuel in just to get us to the petrol station, as the low fuel signal was on as soon as we started it up, there was NO hand over.

The salesman refused to even show us, yes REFUSE to show us how various switches, dials and buttons worked, his comment that because we bought it through the Internet, we were not entitled to be shown how the car worked, was really dangerous, and to be honest if anyone has asked us to rate the dealership, they get told without any shadow of doubt that these people should be avoided at all costs.

Overall Verdict

Online is the way to go, regardless of the issues we have had, the pricing is simple to understand, you can get all the info on the car from the brand's website, and then from there you can get a price from the main dealer, which you can use to compare against the supermarket, if you have one local to you, or online, if you chose that route, but this is the route we will take next time around when we are due to change cars.

However we will enquire more so, into the dealership that is selling the car, and to make sure that they are better suited to dealing with customers from an online sale way, so, whatever option you chose, you can see that there are savings to be had on virtually every single brand and model, if you are willing to put in some time and effort, and we wish you luck in whatever option you choose, and please do let us know what option you chose and how much you save.

The Motoring World Blog

Jon Mower

No brand, model, Car Supermarket or Online sales outlet are being promoted within this report, all pictures are used for illustrative purposes only, and no affiliation is to be considered as part of this blog post.