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What are we all about?
We set up at the end of 2004, having all come from the contract hire & leasing industry, and 2 car manufacturers, to remove the fear about using a bone fide broker to arrange a car purchase - with so many other web based sellers knowing that drivers don’t know what to ask regarding the conditions with a price, or what to spot might be missing in a website list of assurances, to protect themselves.
We give you as much information as we can, on pricing or availability issues affecting any car brands and models that others may not warn you about in their haste to take your order and your money.
Our staff do all they can to help your car order go smoothly with a normal franchised UK dealer - it’s no wonder we’re enjoying great recommendations and repeat customers. Our priority is to make everything easy and safe for the buyer. We want to make you smile because you found a great way to order a car at a brilliant price, and not pay anything (or impart your card details)to anyone other than a main franchised UK dealer.
Our offices are open to the public, we have nothing to hide. How do you know where other brokers operate from if there’s no evidence of bricks and mortar premises and a limited company?
Good honest advice is all part of the service, we’re not allianced to any particular motor group or manufacturer.
We display simple transparent prices, most models also show all the factory extras prices too, so you rarely need to ask us for a quote - our dealers’ prices are on the model pages, right in front of you..that is your quote. If you want finance figures from the dealers we’ll help too.
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What DON’T we do?
We aren’t one of the many brokers whose websites manage to convey the message ‘new cars’ ‘brand new’ etc without ever mentioning the important phrase ‘first registered owner’ - those websites rely on you not noticing that missing phrase.
We don’t, like many, masquerade as a rental company to offer dodgy pre-reg’ deals, and our dealers will never withold a logbook from you. If a website does not shout out loudly that will be first registered owner with an immediate logbook - you must assume you won’t be. Don’t just look at prices and words like ‘brand new’, you must ask if the car will be registered to anyone else, and will the logbook take longer than 2 weeks from the DVLA to get to you? If you don’t get the right answer, walk away from the deal. Anyone selling the car without the logbook going in your name right away is hiding the fact they’ve sold it. It is not normal practice (even though some motoring forums/columns display the deals - as they are rather hungrier for that seller’s advertising money than ensuring you know what you’re buying into!) and it is totally unacceptable to prevent you fulfilling your insurance and DVLA obligations to notify them as the registered keeper.
Neither do we display misleading pricing that does not make it clear if it is part of a finance package deal only
We only take your contact details to enable our dealer to call you, we never take, or hold, your credit card number for a new car order.
We never, ever sell our customer enquiry data. You’d be surprised at some of the big ‘recommended’ brokers who do. Try asking! The MD of DealDrivers Ltd was totally against going down that route from day one, most can’t resist it as a little extra revenue, but we’ve stayed true to our promise back in Dec 2004.
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So, how does this work?
If you can see the pricing of the car and extras you want on our website, you don’t need to ask us for a quote...you are looking at the on-the-road price from our partnered dealers. The prices on our website are those of main dealers, correct based on manuf’rs current offers.
Prices are shown from normal main dealers and motor groups who want to reach a wider audience than their own locality, to get more customers. We enable them to do that at no advertising cost, without their staff time taken up running quotes...we do all that legwork for them.
You just have to decide if you want to order the car, tell us, and we’ll put our relevant dealer in touch with you.
As we are feeding order requests from new UK-wide customers to the dealers whose pricing you see, the resulting high volume of sales they get helps them hit their quarterly sales targets with car manufacturers. So - although they give away more discount to get that volume, the resulting bonuses they can earn by hitting their targets makes up for not making a profit in each single car sale.
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How do I Order?
You use our webpages to get your price, or our staff to help you, then when you are ready to order - having got all the pricing and spec’ of your car confirmed from our website or by talking to us over telephone or using our enquiry form to check availability etc, we simply put one of our dealer partners in touch with you on the day you want to go ahead and confirm your order with a deposit. The main UK franchised dealer will take over from that point and look after you and your order direct, just as when you buy from a dealership closer to your home.
Car dealerships are simply shopfronts for a brand of car, you can buy from any of them. You simply arrange your car order with our partnered dealers by telephone (if you take their manuf’rs finance offers you may have to visit them to sign finance paperwork, but we can advise you appropriately).
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Do I ever have to pay you anything??
You pay us nothing to use our new car service! That is important. If you are paying a broker/web based company money, how do you know they are financially secure to hold your credit card details or deposit? How do you know they’ll pass it to a dealer, and when?
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But there’s loads of internet brokers I can choose from....
Not like this there’s not. There are probably only 4-5 in the UK who operate a process where you don’t hand them any money at all. We are one of them, we simply put you and a dealer offering a high discount in touch so you can buy direct. We don’t charge you an intro’ fee. Most brokers require you to hand credit card details, deposits, or final balances to them (so you are buying from a re-seller, not a dealer, this may not be apparent until it’s too late)...and many will be less than clear on their website that this usually means the car’s logbook may not be made available to you for some months to enable you to have your name put on it (this disables from you from meeting your obligation to inform the DVLA that you are now responsible for the vehicle, and may also affect your insurance policy).
It’s very easy for these re-sellers to set up, but if you hand your money to them, you need to know its safe and they are passing your money on to the supplying dealer. Many UK drivers found out the hard way in May 2008 when a large broker who took deposits and final balances direct from customers had not, in fact, then paid the dealers for the cars. The drivers could not get their cars and had to try and obtain money back from their credit card companies or other funders.
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I want to buy from a franchised dealer
You are doing!
We simply put a normal franchised dealer in touch with you once you are happy with the price etc. You aren’t buying ‘on the internet’ - we just have a website to show you the prices our dealer partners are happy to sell at, but we are a normal business with staff and office premises which are open to the public (you aren’t buying from us...our websites simply display pricing normal dealers have offered in return to get the volume of sales we can bring to them)
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Will you part exchange my old car?
We do have a part ex-trade buyer quote page where you can fill in your car details and an external trade buyer contact we trust will try to help you. He’ll offer a trade price if he can find a home for your car. He can’t guarantee to help but its worth a go!
Bear in mind our new-car dealers are putting ALL of their available cash into the new car deal so can rarely help by taking any risk on a part ex. Our Citroen dealers will often try to offer a PX price and sometimes our Toyota dealers can help too..but that is about all. Bear in mind our dealers have no chance to even see your car so have to ‘bid blind’ on it and take a huge risk (and have often been bitten by less-than-honest owners descriptions unfortunately)..so the offer won’t be ‘retail value’ wonderful...!
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Surely I have to visit a dealership to order a new car?
No..just like ordering anything these days, all the ‘shop’ needs to know is what you want to order, your contact details and a deposit! You don’t have to endure 2hrs in a showroom to do that...order your car by telephone. The dealer simply sends you a copy of your order and deposit receipt, and talks you through arranging your final a balance payment at the appropriate time. The only instances where you’d need to attend the supplying dealer is if a) it is one of the brands where we price the cars based on collection rather than delivery (each page tells you if delivery is included), or b) where you want to take up the manufacturer’s finance..so you’d need to sign the finance documents on the dealer’s premises to comply with FSA regulations etc
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Why won’t my local dealer offer the same deal?
Think of it this way, would you be able to buy a single item cheaper from a retailer by offering them just one sale - than someone offering the same retailer 100 orders in the same week? Not hard to work out who’ll get the cheaper per-unit price! That’s what we do- funnel orders into a small number of dealers per brand, meaning every driver gets a discount based on the combined (and very desirable!) volume we can give the dealers who partner us.
Other points to bear in mind... all or just one may be relevant in your own local dealer’s case:
1) He may not want to try and reach his volume targets as he knows his small local customer base is not big enough to enable him to do that very often, so he decides to make a profit in each single car sale instead, meaning lower discounts locally. Nothing wrong with his decision, it is each dealers’ own business choice.
2) He may not want, or have, any broker supply relationships to get that extra volume he needs to make up for needing to give more discount away.
3) All dealers are given the same profit margin and bonuses on vehicles by their manufacturer. It is up to each dealer to set his own discounts based on what he needs to cover his premises and staff overheads, and what he thinks his local marketplace can stand - in terms of price...hence so many geographical variances.
4) If we do, by coincidence, put a local dealer in touch with you whom you’ve already approached, the price we get is lower simply because he’s getting dozens of orders from us, whereas the salesman you approached individually could only discount based on the fact you’d only be buying one car.
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