And it's goodbye from me - Again. "Interesting" sales story though!

Well it's time to say goodbye again, just like to say how much I've enjoyed visiting this site and the helpful and friendly place its been during my ownership of my MK2 Superb (4.5 years) and my MK3 (Just shy of 1.5 years), thanks to all contributors.

I've recently sold my red Mk3 2.0 Superb saloon, I was never very happy with this car due almost completely to the behaviour or the dealer, Simpson's Skoda Preston, who made ownership a miserable experience.  This is really unfortunate, although I did have some 'issues' with the car it was/is fundamentally a nice example just that they were badly handled.  There were a few issues which the dealer would just not accept but wouldn't have been deal breakers just that they handled badly (the Start/Stop which wouldn't) and other issues which they claimed were not present but actually came back fixed (leaking window washer reservoir).

I'd already made the decision to sell when they tried to scam be at the recent service but if not that would have been the final straw.

Anyway, what's the "interesting" part?

I didn't want to try and sell the car privately with all the grief that can entail, plus I don't think there's a great private market for cars in the £20k region so I initially got a  price via webuyanycar and then had a punt on Carwow which was suggesting £1k or so more so decided to try that way.

For those unaware of how Carwow work (I was at the time), they take on you car at a suggested price and then effectively auction it out to dealers where that sugggested price effectively becomes the reserve.

Decided to give it a go and just after the time of the auction got a mail to indicate a dealer had bought the car at £50 over the suggested price.  All good.

The only issue I had is that the car then has to be collected which I thought would happen within a day or two but in fact too around 3 weeks, partly due to rail strikes and partly due to a poorly thought out challenge on the mileage.

Not sure if this is due to dealer or Carwow.  Let me know if you want more details, it's an 'interesting' story in itself.

Anyway pickup was eventlyally made and cash paid up, including settlement of finance and off the car goes.

A short while later I'm looking through ebay (just out of interest) and see an advert for a similar car, in fact it was more than similar it was 'my' car.

At that point it was up for £1100 more than I got for it.  Now I know many people may think this is the dealer making a quick grand flipping the car but given that they've had costs such as transport, possibly some preparation (although I did supply the car very clean) and probably have to put some form of warrany on it,  I actually thought it was quite reasonable and I'd done quite well.

But it gets stranger.  The car is still for sale (must be around 2 months in now) and the price has dropped £300, so now I really do think I did well.

Why am I telling this story?

Well I know we often hear of how dealerships fleece us poor customers but I think this highlights that they (in some cases at least) manage on very slim margins.

I also find it surprising that the car is still for sale, I thought it would fly 'off the shelf'.  It's a well spec'd car (Sportline with the addition of a sunroof) with low, genuine miles.  The previous owner only managed around 7000 as he owned it during the COVID days or possibly just wasn't a high mileage user (I got the impression he was possibly a retired gent who looks after his cars well, as do I), I put another 10,000 or so on and it was always serviced correctly, in fact given the mileage the car had been over serviced.

I know I started by saying the car had some problems but most of these were simply glitches with the way these cars work rather than anything broken, I was actually sorry to see the car go.  So I can only imagine that car sales are not too brisk at the moment, I'm glad I'm not still sitting on it.

The only thing I would say is that the advert is not very good, reads more like it's selling the dealer rather than the car which is a shame as the car has a lot of good selling points, pictures are not the best either.  Maybe there's some detail I'm not seeing here, any thoughts?