NigelTalbott
Standard Member
Hi all, has anyone else received an invitation from their dealer offering them an upgrade on their current car citing a, and I quote, superior financial package to support the upgrade of your current car to a brand new or approved used model at a significantly reduced price.
We did, by post, email and text, multiple times, and were offered appointments starting today 12th September until 26th September.
So, my curiosity piqued, I booked in for one of the sessions today and was amazed, not in a good way, by the offer made to us.
We have a 2 year old PFL MG5 Excite LR in white and were looking to find out what they would offer us on a like-for-like FL SE model.
We made it crystal clear, at the outset of the meeting, that we were only looking for a deal which reduced our monthly PCP cost and worked for both them and us.
The salesman, only 2 months in the job, had done no homework, had no idea which model we owned, when we bought it, what kind of finance we had used, what our monthly cost was etc. and, quite frankly, it was embarrassing, we felt he had been set up to fail.
Having answered all his questions he then took my keys and went to look at the car to evaluate its condition and value and then took his findings to his manager to put together a deal which, he and I hoped, would be acceptable to both parties.
While his manager was working his magic we were shown a new MG5 Trophy, asked for our impression (very similar to our Excite with a few extra bells and whistles), we declined a test drive as we know how the car drives and took the opportunity to talk to the salesman to find out a little more about his journey to becoming an MG salesman. It turned out he had previously worked for Currys/PC World and this was his first car sales job, he had also never driven any of the cars he was selling as he was still in his probationary period.
The upshot was, when he eventually returned with his manager's offer, they had valued the trade-in of our car at £21,000, less the settlement figure for the finance of £18,974, leaving a net part exchange called of £2,025.
The cost of the new base model was £30,995, less the £2,025 leaving £28,969 to be financed.
Bearing in mind we clearly expected the outcome to be less than we were currently paying, £320 / month with an £11,000 balloon payment, their monthly figure came out at £553 / month (@ 8.9% APR) and a £9,000 after the 49 payments.
Suffice it to say, we politely declined their offer, explaining that our message had clearly not even been listened to, that we had obviously been called in far to soon for any deal to work as the finance settlement value would clearly never leave enough p/e balance to make the finance costs work, even if you overvalued the p/e value of the car by a good £10,000!!
On the way our I spoke to some of the more experienced salesmen to share my feedback and they agreed the deal was unworkable on our MG5, and that the special discounts were model specific, i.e. not on our choice of model, but this was never mentioned during the initial discussions.
I am not sure if this is a national upgrade/exchange program, and I would love to hear other owners experience, if anyone else was curious enough to put themselves through this.
I felt embarrassed for the new salesman, he was clearly out of his depth, and having been in sales and selling for most of my working life (now retired) we did our best to guide him but he obviously lost control when his sales manager was working the numbers and he was simply told to give us the results, in the hope that we didn't notice the almost doubling of the monthly cost, and the extra almost £10,000 cost of ownership of the new car.
It has been an interesting, and enlightening, day out.
Anyone else done this exercise yer?
We did, by post, email and text, multiple times, and were offered appointments starting today 12th September until 26th September.
So, my curiosity piqued, I booked in for one of the sessions today and was amazed, not in a good way, by the offer made to us.
We have a 2 year old PFL MG5 Excite LR in white and were looking to find out what they would offer us on a like-for-like FL SE model.
We made it crystal clear, at the outset of the meeting, that we were only looking for a deal which reduced our monthly PCP cost and worked for both them and us.
The salesman, only 2 months in the job, had done no homework, had no idea which model we owned, when we bought it, what kind of finance we had used, what our monthly cost was etc. and, quite frankly, it was embarrassing, we felt he had been set up to fail.
Having answered all his questions he then took my keys and went to look at the car to evaluate its condition and value and then took his findings to his manager to put together a deal which, he and I hoped, would be acceptable to both parties.
While his manager was working his magic we were shown a new MG5 Trophy, asked for our impression (very similar to our Excite with a few extra bells and whistles), we declined a test drive as we know how the car drives and took the opportunity to talk to the salesman to find out a little more about his journey to becoming an MG salesman. It turned out he had previously worked for Currys/PC World and this was his first car sales job, he had also never driven any of the cars he was selling as he was still in his probationary period.
The upshot was, when he eventually returned with his manager's offer, they had valued the trade-in of our car at £21,000, less the settlement figure for the finance of £18,974, leaving a net part exchange called of £2,025.
The cost of the new base model was £30,995, less the £2,025 leaving £28,969 to be financed.
Bearing in mind we clearly expected the outcome to be less than we were currently paying, £320 / month with an £11,000 balloon payment, their monthly figure came out at £553 / month (@ 8.9% APR) and a £9,000 after the 49 payments.
Suffice it to say, we politely declined their offer, explaining that our message had clearly not even been listened to, that we had obviously been called in far to soon for any deal to work as the finance settlement value would clearly never leave enough p/e balance to make the finance costs work, even if you overvalued the p/e value of the car by a good £10,000!!
On the way our I spoke to some of the more experienced salesmen to share my feedback and they agreed the deal was unworkable on our MG5, and that the special discounts were model specific, i.e. not on our choice of model, but this was never mentioned during the initial discussions.
I am not sure if this is a national upgrade/exchange program, and I would love to hear other owners experience, if anyone else was curious enough to put themselves through this.
I felt embarrassed for the new salesman, he was clearly out of his depth, and having been in sales and selling for most of my working life (now retired) we did our best to guide him but he obviously lost control when his sales manager was working the numbers and he was simply told to give us the results, in the hope that we didn't notice the almost doubling of the monthly cost, and the extra almost £10,000 cost of ownership of the new car.
It has been an interesting, and enlightening, day out.
Anyone else done this exercise yer?
