Carcraft/car superstores

(nationwide)

yeah - it's important to shop around first then go last to carcraft etc. or you won't get best value.

they cannot use Experian etc. without the customers express permission, customer has to be told because a record is made. They will have their own database for HP check on the cars, and the customer will be checked against a register of their own credit companies and the public CCJ records I would guess. They don't care as long as the customer has not defaulted against a lender that they use they will get credit against them. Again they will have their own database. If they do a check with Experian (and there wasn't one on my records) or the other big one (can't remember the name) then they are breaking the terms of use of those services. I've used Carcraft in Sheffield a few times, buying cars for family members. I also check my credit record every year or so and it does not show up even though Carcraft have had my details multiple times.

And I reckon the profit per deal will be about 30-40% per car at sticker price, plus 1-5% on the finance deal, so after a bit of haggling I reckon on £2000 per sale, so think of the money... They don't own all the cars on site, it's block financed by the companies that lend the money to the punters - it's a huge finance brokerage.

Tim S Kemp waffled on in a quite bewildering manner to produce...

Well, one of the majior points of the whole presentation they give you when hiring salesmen is that they own every car on all their sites, there's a whole video they make you sit through at the recruitment days, goes on for about 20 minutes, about 5 of them are just this point alone.. The big things they use to recruit sales staff are the that they own all their cars, and that once you sell a car to someone, you don't ever have to see them again, everything is dealt with by aftersales staff. There's even people employed to hand the cars over to the customer once bought. Stops the sales staff feeling guilty about shafting people I suippose.