claytrapmatt wrote:

This is my opinion and im sticking to it

And in general I fully agree with you.

Prices are dropping and in order to keep the same profit margin as before, the dealers are dropping the part-ex prices even further. Any decent salesman should know that coldy offering such a low price (even if it is the current market price) is likely to pi$$ off a potential customer.

We're talking about buying/selling cars so ethical doesn't need to come into it. It's more about having a bit of respect for a customer that's previously spent a shedload of money with the brand. There is no way that the salesmen would have thought "I'll send bluebarchetta this valuation and he'll be so happy that he'll be on the phone first thing tomorrow".

Yes, most of us have bought a D3 because we wanted to and we can, but it still doesn't mean that it was an easy decision to part with so much money.

I applaud their ingeniuity, but kicking your customer in the nuts with an unsolicited valuation is not the way to go.

It would have been better to simply send him an unsolicited offer for a new D3 at a similarly reduced price and ask them to 'pop-in' for a coffee and to discuss the trade-in value on his second-hand D3.

And I'm sticking to this

PaulP wrote:

I like the idea of a dealer being pro-active and doing stuff like this up to a point.

What I don't like is the bare-faced cheek of basically telling a customer (who probably spent 30-40K there a few years earlier), that their 'investment' has gone down the pan and isn't worth $hit.

Whilst it's good that they're trying to get sales and beat the crush instead of whinging about it, sending a cold letter to a 'valued' customer telling them how much their 'expensive' D3 isn't worth is just wrong.

They could have just pulled you to one side and offered a verbal no-obligation valuation if you were interested instead of doing this....

discocuzzy wrote:

Nothing wrong with a salesman testing the waters, its tough at the moment and he will have targets etc so cant say i blame them for trying.

Just be polite and say no thanks if its not what your looking for.

Thats exactly what I was doing with you roof rack Steve so get the sellotape out and stick you comics back together and pick your dummy up.