Used Cars NI - Private sales pricing

[AMG]

Auto Trader had the same attitude a few years back, thought they were untouchable, but that soon changed with cheaper competition, and left them with next to nothing over here.
It's only very recently that they have started to claw back, and I'd say the main thing in that was cheaper pricing.

 

[davyk31]

Did seem quite an arrogant reply to me. Clearly their market is traders and aren't that concerned about private sellers except offer a few free ads to bulk out their numbers of ads to give some big headline figures. Is very odd as WSM says to asks for feedback and seem as if you care and then ignore all.

He also dismissed the private number thing that I really like with Autotrader. I'm guessing that's because it costs money to operate and he doesn't want to pay.

 

[RickyB]

@amg306 and @WSM both your replies hit the nail on the head!! Auto Trader took exactly the same attitude a number of years ago and lost a lot of customers so much so that they closed up their office in Belfast and cut staff. They now admit they got it wrong and have accepted the N Ireland market is completely different. The main reason I left UsedCarsNI in the end was not due to cost but as pointed out on here the arrogance and negativity!!

 

[KyleR]

Oh well, after that reply I guess it’s up to us to respond with our wallets and take our business elsewhere. When they have half the market share AT has in NI they’ll maybe listen.

 

[lackingBHP]

Yeah because we all love being able to receive texts about a car we have for sale

 

[Woodcutter]

Yeah because we all love being able to receive texts about a car we have for sale

"How mch 4 cash danite m8?"

 

[gixermark]

The free adverts for cheap stuff is a good marketing play - on paper, you are giving free advertising..... And will then be able to claim you have xxx thousand cars advertised compared to auto trader... But I think your missuing the point on that, and ultimately the site will end up will scrap like gumtree.

I don't understand the pricing at all... And 2 weeks is a joke frankly

I'm guessing there are enough trade customers to pay the bills, so you don't really 'need' private advertisers.

Personally I think unless the site, features and pricing get a serious rethink its unlikely ucni will be around for the long haul... But who knows, I hope it does survive as its great to have an NI platform for cars/bikes/boats etc etc.

The app/site isn't great to use.... I put my car on it and didn't appear despite being charged.... Turns out it had t been categorised correctly.. In fairness the beauty of the small company thing meant I could actually phone them.... And talk to a real person (shock horror) which is sooooo refreshing in this day and age.

I just hope they take at least some!! Advice on here, as I think we'd all agree we need a platform locally...

 

[slapshot_99]

Hi there,.............

The mobile experience is an interesting one. Most of the comments we get about it in reviews are very positive, but we do get the odd negative one. There is a constant round of improvements happening and that will continue.............


All the best,


Cecil, MD

The odd negative review !!! Quite a few to be honest and the "app" doesn't seem to have seen any development for a long time.

Also seems to have been removed from Play Store.

 

[suckindiesel]

Interesting thread. As some have said its the apparent attitude of "We're doing well so don't overly care what you think" that is annoying - you never know when you need the support of the public. I have been back on Usedcarsni as a trader for about a year now (after a years break having got fed up with constant price increases!), I pay £230 per month. I THINK it is reasonably successful for some of the cars I sell - hard to tell as I always ask customers where they saw a car advertised and most will say they saw it on 'NIusedcarfinder.com' or some random non-existant amalgamation (so it ain't a household name just yet!), and it would be rare that they haven't seen the car on my website or Autotrader as well (they don't get the 'Autotrader' name mixed up by the way ). Not once in the past year (or the 7 years prior to that) has anyone phoned me to see how I was getting on, if there's anything I can be helped with, reporting back with market findings etc. When I came off the site for a year there was no attempt to accept or learn from the reasons why, no attempt to keep my business and was never any attempt to get me back on board. Currently I said I would give it a try for a year, which is now up, and am weighing up whether it is worth it or not. Autotrader offer so much more of a service to the dealer, fantastic market analysis for example (including dealer masterclass days FOC), which really helps when buying or trading in, and my representative is very helpful in trying to improve my business with advice and tips, going through my performance and changes in the market, and what other dealers are experiencing (rarely does this involve any additional costs might I add!). Also, the market coverage is so much bigger - we are part of the UK, the barrier of buying and selling cars throughout the UK is really very small - Plenty of cars head from NI over to the mainland every week and vice versa, and its naive to think that is not the case, for me that is entirely facilitated by Autotrader.

 

[AlpineF30]

Also, the market coverage is so much bigger - we are part of the UK, the barrier of buying and selling cars throughout the UK is really very small - Plenty of cars head from NI over to the mainland every week and vice versa, and its naive to think that is not the case, for me that is entirely facilitated by Autotrader.

So true, any time I am looking for a car its onto the AutoTrader rather than Used Cars NI as I have more choice and in this day and age its not a disaster getting to England to pick a car up. And if I want to just have a NI search AutoTrader has an option for only NI adverts

 

[Used Cars NI]

Hi all,

I must be some sort of masochist to enjoy all of this . Let me make a few comments that will hopefully add something useful, trying not to come across the wrong way. Our approach to this thread has been mainly about letting you know what were doing and thinking at the same time as asking for feedback and ideas. If I don’t engage with individual comments that may look as if I’m not listening and if I do I’m in danger of getting into an argument. It’s a fine line! But hey ho, it’s worth a go.

One point made was that we have the luxury of doing anything we want. I’d put this a different way and say we have a responsibility to do what we think is right after listening to all of the different opinions that come our way. For us the first responsibility is to the market as a whole. The biggest single group there is the ‘general’ public that isn’t on RMS but just wants to change their car. They may not have thought about cars for 5 or 6 years before that. It’s the retired lady who wants to upgrade her Fiesta, or the teenager applying for their test, or the family man having a 4th child and moving from a Focus to a Zafira. Other big players for us are the franchise dealers, the independents with 50 or so cars, the person trading in a car that may end up selling it privately to get a better price, the tech-savvy millennial, etc etc. What we find is that each group has a different set of concerns and priorities and we have a big job to do even to sort out where we should be applying our minds in terms of changes. Even within RMS you’ll find different groups of user type and different priorities, as you see in this thread. What we don’t do is react immediately and in a knee-jerk way to any one viewpoint. Stuff has to brew and get tossed about for a while at the very least because it’s very important that we don’t flip-flop around with changes to the site and overall service. We try to inch forward in a deliberate way.

Where we are with extra search fields is that our basic philosophy has always been that simplicity and a clean interface for the casual browser are key features of the site that we need to be very careful with, and so each field needs to earn its keep in terms of usage in order to justify space on the page. Also, you have the point that since the NI market is much smaller than the UK market, you don’t need as much granularity to get down to a reasonable number of cars to scroll through (compared to AT for instance). These are the reasons for our reluctance to add extra fields. Having said that we have added number of doors, engine size and a few others in recent times and it has worked well. We get that it makes sense to keep looking at this and adding more where people are asking for it and we can justify it.

The protected number thing is a good one for us to look at again based on this feedback. We tend to take an all or nothing approach to stuff like that, deciding whether a change is a good thing (and so apply it to everyone) or a bad thing (and don’t do it at all). What I’m now realising is that this one is neither good nor bad in itself but is a matter of opinion for the seller. Some people don’t mind texts about cars and some people do. That suggests that the best thing to do could be to offer private number as an option, but not make it compulsory. Leave it with me.

On the issue of account management we have recently beefed up the team. In the past year we have added two permanent members of staff to the telephone support team, and in the past month we’ve brought in a fourth full-time account manager to work on the road, visiting dealers. That gives us more resource to be pro-active with dealer visits. Our general approach though is light touch when it comes to account management, we do admit. We find that some dealers like regular visits, some don’t really want them, and some don’t care either way. The best way for a dealer to get us to come out is to just give us a quick call or drop us an email and ask.

All the best,

Cecil

 

[Dave..]

Where we are with extra search fields is that our basic philosophy has always been that simplicity and a clean interface for the casual browser are key features of the site that we need to be very careful with, and so each field needs to earn its keep in terms of usage in order to justify space on the page. Also, you have the point that since the NI market is much smaller than the UK market, you don’t need as much granularity to get down to a reasonable number of cars to scroll through (compared to AT for instance). These are the reasons for our reluctance to add extra fields. Having said that we have added number of doors, engine size and a few others in recent times and it has worked well. We get that it makes sense to keep looking at this and adding more where people are asking for it and we can justify it.

This for me is a pain in the a@se, It makes trying to find a vehicle a very long experience. simple is good if it works but in your case it doesn`t.

 

[wes]

Prices up in £500 instead of £1000's and a saved searches option

 

[purplea4T]

Prices up in £500 instead of £1000's and a saved searches option

Just to bump this up, I’ve put a Polo on it, I’m allowed 6 photos but the dealer with the ad below mine has at least 12. Hardly a balanced selling platform.

 

[Michael M]

Has the saved searches been dropped or am I just blind?

 

[MarkM]

Has the saved searches been dropped or am I just blind?

Crap isn’t it? No saved searches, just holds your last 5 searches at the bottom (app)

 

[Daviddunlop83]

Just sold a car there after being advertised on UCNI and auto trader for a couple of weeks.

Several enquires etc from auto trader but not a single one from UCNI which is disappointing

Infact the ad dropped off UCNI the other day but auto trader add is much longer and the car sold today

 

[Michael M]

Sure it’s ok, they’re ‘listening’ to feedback

 

[Turks]

Just sold a car there after being advertised on UCNI and auto trader for a couple of weeks.

Several enquires etc from auto trader but not a single one from UCNI which is disappointing

Infact the ad dropped off UCNI the other day but auto trader add is much longer and the car sold today

I don’t even advertise on the site anymore. It’s to dear and same as yourself got no response from it.

 

[NMN]

had my car advertised on UCNI for probably 9 weeks in total and only had 1 call about it. Put it on Autotrader had numerous calls and was sold and away inside a week.

 

[KyleR]

I do hope UCNI are listening to this recent feedback and realise that each one of us who successfully sells using other, cheaper websites, won't see the point in using them again.

 

[Dervhead]

Just thought I‘d bump this and jump on as I’ve a car listed for several weeks now on UCNI @ £17.99 for 2 weeks, so it’s not cheap nor is there any value in it. I get around 1 call per 2 weeks out of it. Awful expensive pricing Imho.

Had a Google about the price and up popped this thread, so here I am, complaining…

 

[Deezer-D]

Just thought I‘d bump this and jump on as I’ve a car listed for several weeks now on UCNI @ £17.99 for 2 weeks, so it’s not cheap nor is there any value in it. I get around 1 call per 2 weeks out of it. Awful expensive pricing Imho.

Had a Google about the price and up popped this thread, so here I am, complaining…

Yeah, I’ve mine listed on there and it’s really not worth the fee considering AutoTrader is under £5 for 8 weeks. I’ve had 1 response from UCNI and 5 from AT.

 

[Dervhead]

I also don’t like the notice of how long the car has been on the site and especially the prices changes/number of price changes etc

The money must keep rolling in, so they are happy enough I guess.

 

[Lyons]

I always put a car up on it too just for fear of missing some local interest, but I always begrudge it! Not only is Autotrader FAR better value, it’s also much more pleasing to use.