Validity of Parkers and Glasses prices?

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As a general rule, cars always sell for a thousand off- the seller knows he could have gotten a thousand more, and the buyer knows he could have done a thousand better. It's a tax on being human.

One of the most real guides to values is the completed auctions on eBay.
 
Dealers use either Glass's or CAP, sometimes both. And yes the guides can be out by several hundred pounds if not more. It all depends on the model you are looking at. If your car cannot be retailed by the dealer then they will give you what ever they get for it or use CAP to have a guess at what they are gonna get at auction. Each dealer/group will have their own disposal policy. With regards to Parkers, in over 10 years in the trade I have never come across a dealer which uses it.
 
That wasn't the queston. The question was is it a reliable guide?

well, I guess the real underlying question is:

"can I walk into a used car dealers and expect my negotiations on the purchase of a new car to be based on a value for my car looked up in an available guide, ie parkers or glasses?"

ie if parkers and glasses say my car is worth £X000, then should I assume that to be a realistic estimate to determine the cost of change? (subject to anything I can knock off the price during negotiations)

while the place with the car I want is not at the other end of the country, I don't want to go over there if I can only expect £X000-2000. if that's going to be the case, I might as well stick with what I've got.

As I said before, when I sold my old BMW 320td to buy the SLK, the garage offered me almost exactly what parkers said as a valuation on my car(and I didn't show them the valuation), which gave me confidence and a nice warm feeling that I wasn't being ripped off. When I went into a garage the other day, the guy offered me £2k less than the guide values I'd read.

this does not give me a good feeling about getting value for money. If it's just that one garage being stingy then I'll go elsewhere, but if it's a country wide thing that the glasses values are no-longer trusted then I'd like to know so I can plan what I should do about my next car.

:)

dave
 
Just looked at www.wisebuyers.com for a valuation of my car which of course shows that my car is worth a lot less than I bought it 18 months ago. Really makes me wonder if I should just lease rather than buy the next car ??

Everytime I change car and PX I always get a lot less for me exchange car than I hoped for. Obvisouly I dont let the sales guy screw me and ensure that he discounts the car I am buying to get the best overall deal.

Would I not be better off selling my car, putting the cash into an account to earn interest and then get a lease car and pay the monthly fee, might be cost effective ?

mmmmmmmm
 
Parkers has never seemed terribly reliable, I've come unstuck once or twice buying from auction intending to sell on, without checking the "Market" price first... It's generally lower than theirs!

Especially at the moment, too.

IMHO you are best off really trawling the market on all available media, you'll have a much better idea about what things are actually selling for.
 
Depending on too many variables, I would say a dealer wont deal for less than £1K in his bin.

Make that more like £1500 - £1800

They need to make profit and cover things going wrong which they are obliged to cover under their warrenty.
 
Be aware that selling to a dealer right at the end of a month (within 2 or 3 days before the end) will prompt the salesman to factor in the monthly value drop to the following month. CAP and Glass's usually send out their monthly guides about 2 or 3 days before the start of a new month. VERY FEW cars go up in value - the vast majority come down in value at an alarming rate.
 

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