HI

Any comments on buying 2nd hand car from garage Vs from the owner directly?

Regards

Garages give guarantees.

Tom

Garages also keep a sweet Swiss margin for themselves. Why not buy from an individual but have a garage or TCS check out the car before making an offer?

With garages, you pay for the lower risk and the guarantee, and for them to do all the paperwork. From the owner - caveat emptor, you might still be paying over the odds, and you have to do the paperwork yourself. I prefer the greater certainty of buying from the garage.

In addition, when we last changed cars, we got a good P/X deal (surprisingly) on our old car, which would have struggled to make the same privately (and possibly difficult to shift), and was much better than another dealer had previously offered against a similar purchase model.

I know there are those who would say that the purchase price was bumped up to compensate, but having studied the market (in general) and the model bought (specifically), over several weeks (months?) prior to buying I was confident the price paid was the "normal" dealer price.

As we bought well out of area, I believe the market to sell-on our old car was better there, than locally to us - or he may have already had a prospective buyer.

Plus we got a very good finance package, to boot.

A genuine good guy, looking to make a living, without shafting the buying public.
Maybe less few-and-far-between here, than in other parts of the world.

By dealing with other individuals, you can get more for your old car and pay less for your new car. It's that simple - garages offer peace of mind, but if you have a mechanic check out a car before bidding you are getting the same without paying a silly premium for a few months of repair insurance (what a guarantee is, in effect).

Dealers may be honest or they may not be, but they are all professional salesmen and tough negotiators. Individuals may actually be more forthright about their cars, and there is much more wiggle room in the price with them since they don't have a margin to preserve and fewer people check out their wares.

Buy hey, I shouldn't be trying to convince anyone of this, since the more people are afraid to buy from individuals, the more money I can save by continuing to do so.

one advantage of the dealer (i.e. garage) is that you will have a lot of options and dont have to spend weeks if not months to buy a car, but you will pay extra for the convenience (i dont care much about their guarantees)

So do some owners. We got a three month garantee with my car & when something went wrong with it during that time the previous owner gave the cash over to cover the bill.