Why anyone believes that a garage or motor manufacturer is going to give you a special trade in deal is beyond my comprehension.
It was still worth a try. You and i did not know for deffinate it was a con. Anyone can be smart after the act.
This is true. They keep finding new ways of dressing up a sale with one goal - to sell you something - something you may not necessarily need.
The sale may not have short term benefits to the seller either. The perfect example is the PCP story in the article above. The idea is to lock you into a low monthly repayment with a large final payment (balloon payment) at the end. You can't afford the balloon payment so you get locked into another PCP. Once you are locked in then the terms and conditions of the agreement change.
One of our customers had this with Skoda. A sweet deal on a new car to be handed back and after 3 years and a new deal. Unfortunately the deal wasn't explained and he thought it was a repeat of the previous arrangement. It turned out to be a PCP with a final balloon which was the responsibility of the customer to settle. Unfortunately Skoda only offered him a trade in value which was half of what they set his balloon at.
PCP gets them another sale now and makes it more difficult to get out of later down the line.
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PCP is a great money maker for the dealer as it makes the car sell twice. You basicly pay the depreciation, (sale one) hand the car back with low miles and they transfer it to their approved used department and flog it again for 60% of the original price.
Example
20k car on PCP for 3 years (example)
They get your deposit of (£1500)
They get 36payments of £350 or so (£12600) sub total of your money £14100 and you dont even own the car at all. so balance left £5,900 against original price their ballon payment probbably £9500 if not more say you pay the ballon payment to take ownership of the car. They make 3k above origninal sticker price.
Say you hand the car back and get another pcp. They take that same car that made them £14,100 so far and flog it again for £13,000 if not more so on one car the dealer make two sales and make 7k above sticker price on the same car. And they keep a pcp contract going for the next time.
It's a con and it's a way to hold onto profits by extracting two sales from one product.