Am I being Conned?

[mainman]

I bought an ex demo CLK Kompressor Advangarde AUTO in March with 5K on the clock. Extras included leather seats, parktronic and lower suspension.

Being a wheelchair user I'm exempt from VAT, as such, I paid £23,400.
I'm now in the process of exchanging it for the new E Class and have been offered only £22,000 in part exchange (currently mileage is 8k). Considering this car cost over £34,000 brand new 9 months ago, I think the part exchange deal is rather harsh.

Any views would be greatly appreciated.

 

[jberks]

It all depends on how the prices and vat are calculated.
How does the VAT figure when you sell. Presumably you can't sell it with VAT? Otherwise you could make a killing buying vat free, selling with VAT and keeping the difference?

To be honest, if they charged you 23,400 and are offering 22k five months later, I'd say thats a fantastic deal! If its a vatted figure then it's painful, but basically realistic.

I always calculate that best case, on a 25-30k used car, you've lost £3,500 the moment you turn the key, due to the dealer's mark-up. We all whinge at their profits and prices, but to be fair, I didn't complain when the serviced mine, put a set of tyres on, installed mats and a phone cradle and knocked £1k off the screen price. They do have to earn a living after all.

 

[mainman]

Thanks for your response.

No, I'm not allowed to sell the car privately because of the VAT exemption. However, I can part exchange it for another new or fairly new car.

 

[Rory]

A few random thoughts:
I'm slightly bemused that a wheelchair user can buy a car like CLK VAT free (a wheelchair adapted van, fine, but a CLK?).

Presumeably the E Class would be VAT free too, so this is effectively a 'zero sum' game - your price to change is pretty similar whether you pay VAY or not. I guess you do save 17.5% on the difference in the 2 values.

Does the dealer reduce the p/x price a bit, on the basis that you got the car cheap (in the same way they might do for an import?). Perhaps the dealer has to pay VAT on the whole car (rather than just the profit) when they resell it?

On the price itself, I bought a 5mth old 6000 mile C Class Estate from MB Direct that would have listed at £34000 new. I paid £23500.

 

[littlebrooklyn]

To be honest, if they charged you 23,400 and are offering 22k five months later, I'd say thats a fantastic deal! If its a vatted figure then it's painful, but basically realistic.

I think it sounds like a good deal too based on those figures. We bought our Mercedes for £18,000 and when we sold it 8mths later we lost £4,000 on it

We then bought a VW Golf which we sold after less than 4mths and we lost £1,000 on that too

 

[hawk20]

I think it sounds like a good deal too based on those figures. We bought our Mercedes for £18,000 and when we sold it 8mths later we lost £4,000 on it

We then bought a VW Golf which we sold after less than 4mths and we lost £1,000 on that too

So what are you driving now Lilb?

 

[hawk20]

I bought an ex demo CLK Kompressor Advangarde AUTO in March with 5K on the clock. Extras included leather seats, parktronic and lower suspension.

Being a wheelchair user I'm exempt from VAT, as such, I paid £23,400.
I'm now in the process of exchanging it for the new E Class and have been offered only £22,000 in part exchange (currently mileage is 8k). Considering this car cost over £34,000 brand new 9 months ago, I think the part exchange deal is rather harsh.

Any views would be greatly appreciated.

You do not say engine size or whether Cabriolet or coupe. I assume 1.8 litre and coupe. Glass's Guide says £20,500 in good condition and £22,500 in excellent condition. You are being offered the same price as any of us would get who do pay VAT. Because you bought the car VAT free and can sell it back at the same price as those of us who do not get the VAT concession, you have been able to buy a car from a dealer, run it for 4 or 5 months and only lose about a grand. The rest of us would have lost 3,4, or 5 thousand being the dealer's margin plus depreciation over 4/5 months. So be happy.

Here are the links so you can check I haven't made a mistake.
http://www.glass.co.uk Here you can plug in every extra and get a detailed valuation. Then show it to the dealer. I did. It helped.

You can do a basic check with Glass's for free via Vauxhall's website http://www.vauxhall.co.uk/vx/finance/valueyourcar.do
There appears to be a strange anomaly which as an economist I regard as odd. I know a case of a disabled man who buys a new ML and sells it back to the dealer every 3 months and has virtually free motoring. I do not believe this is what the concession was meant to do.

 

[littlebrooklyn]

So what are you driving now Lilb?

Whilst looking for a VW Golf with leather interior for my son on Autotrader I came across a beautiful indigo blue 2.3 V5 VW Golf which not only had leather interior but was automatic too :grin:

I had to have that car, it was just soooo pretty

Of course I lost another £1,000 when I traded the TDi in, but it's only money

 

[hawk20]

Whilst looking for a VW Golf with leather interior for my son on Autotrader I came across a beautiful indigo blue 2.3 V5 VW Golf which not only had leather interior but was automatic too :grin:

I had to have that car, it was just soooo pretty

Of course I lost another £1,000 when I traded the TDi in, but it's only money

I'm confused. I thought you got rid of a Merc you loved to save money! And buy trains not cars?

 

[littlebrooklyn]

I'm confused. I thought you got rid of a Merc you loved to save money! And buy trains not cars?

There are times when I am confused too I can tell you

I guess the bottom line is that we really couldn't afford to buy the Mercedes and keep on buying expensive model trains too. However at the time we bought the car I wasn't aware that my partner was still buying trains

Our intention then was to just concentrate on paying off all my partners debts and just buy a cheap runaround until we could get some money together to buy something decent. However my mother very generously stepped in and gave me some money to buy a car for me. I wanted an automatic, having had one for years, but we couldn't find an automatic Golf at that time so ended up with a manual Golf TDi, which to be honest I was never terribly happy with, so when I saw an automatic one with leather I paid the difference in price with my own money.

On reflection I guess we should have stuck with our very pretty Peugeot 206 Roland Garros as the spec was pretty much the same as the car we have now. We would certainly have saved ourselves an awful lot of money