Today i'm bitching about...The Used Car Trade

Sorry to divest from my usual job related rants people, but bear with me on this one! i'm going to ask a small, maybe personal question, and you don't have to contact me with an answer, but how much did your car cost, that is if you drive?,
£10k? £5k? £1500?

Now, let's face it, even if you haven't been in the position to buy a car for less than £300, just be glad you don't, it's a joyless, depressing episode. I sold my old Volvo recently as it wasn't going to make it through another MOT so i let someone else buy it to run it into it's grave because i doubted i would be able to afford to put it through another MOT.

I got a reasonable £300 for it, and started trawling the small ads to find alternative transport, one dealer had some stuff that looked cheap and promising so off i tootled to have a look.

Most of his stuff was dross, real heaps, including a mystery mondeo: "I don't know nothing about it, just came in on a trailer, no log book though."

So this was a man who really knew his stock inside out, always handy that. I said a straight no to what he had but he notified me that at his house, a few yards away, he had a Citroen ZX Diesel with a broken clutch cable. I used to work in the motor trade, and do a bit of car tinkering, where relevant so i thought it might be worth a look if it was cheap enough.

And shown it i was: it was grubby, the rear wheels didn't sit right and the rear window mechanism had broken, and so had the clutch cable, as said to give it it's due, it started "on the button" as they say and sounded very sweet. I thought it would be worth, to myself, with the extra work of putting a new clutch cable in, about £100-£150. So i asked the fine purveyeor of cost-effective automobilia how much he wanted for this shed of dreams.

£200 was the breathtaking reply. Ok, it had tax and mot but putting in a clutch cable without ramps etc would be hard work, so it was a "i'll have to think about it then" from me. You just can't really say "no, it's a bag of shit, mate and i don't want to be lumbered with it like you obviously are..."

Apparently, according to Arthur Daley here, it was worth £350 "all day" when fixed. That i doubted, Citroen ZX's are now obsolete and have a wildly differing value system where they can be worth £50-£500.

So, with my refusal in his ears, the vendor turned off the engine, shut the car door, and said sharply: "I've got things to do", walked in his house and shut the door. What a arrogant git. I didn't mean to annoy him, it's embarassing enough having to look for cheap wheels, but i didn't deserve being snubbed like that.

Trouble is, the used car "game" is full of people like this, more sinner than saint. It's a shame really, ok, at £300 you aren't buying the bells and whistles of a full customer service led dealer experience, but that dosen't mean that every customer has to be treated with, at best, contempt and at worst, the feeling of being treated like dog poo by them.

I once went into a part-worn tyres warehouse, four of the fitters stood there looking at me like something they'd stepped in, with grubby mugs of tea in their hand, i asked about having a couple of tyres slapped on my trusty Volvo, they said nothing but one miserably pointed to a chap in the office. At least i got joy from him.

It's enough to make you puke sometimes.