Top tip if you are buying a new bike

[myfirstsv]

Sorry if this is too obvious....

Number 1 son has just bought a new Honda CBR 125R which is being delivered tomorrow on a 61 plate. Which is cool if you are 17.

We got a really, really good deal on the new bike, which involved trading in his moped because the dealer needed to shift the stock to get his bonus from Honda. That is from the sales guy

So if you are buying a new bike:

End of the month is good anyway
End of the half year for registrations is perfect

So find a dealer who needs to shift a bike to get his bonus and save a load of money.

[HoL]

I've only ever bought cars from a dealer & can't help but think they'll promise anything for a sale, a friend works as a salesman for BMW & they call themselves LLB's (lying lying B*st*rds).

On the whole are bike dealers any different? I've only bought one privately.

[Lozzo]

It makes no odds to our dealership what time of the month we sell a bike, but there are times when we'd rather a particular bike was being sold rather than order in a different one of the same model - that wouldn't be a good enough reason for discounting it though. We also don't discount a bike purely because it will be registered on the 1st of March or 1st of September, in fact, we rarely discount a bike at all but sell at full retail and give the customer a long list of ongoing benefits like heavily discounted servicing that we'll honour for their length of time with that bike and extended manufacturers warranty etc etc.

I think your Honda salesman was just using an old sales spiel to convince you to buy there and then.

[Bluefish]

Dealer always wins, it's in the rules :( They may make you think you got a bargain though :D

[Villers]

It makes no odds to our dealership what time of the month we sell a bike, but there are times when we'd rather a particular bike was being sold rather than order in a different one of the same model - that wouldn't be a good enough reason for discounting it though. We also don't discount a bike purely because it will be registered on the 1st of March or 1st of September, in fact, we rarely discount a bike at all but sell at full retail and give the customer a long list of ongoing benefits like heavily discounted servicing that we'll honour for their length of time with that bike and extended manufacturers warranty etc etc.

I think your Honda salesman was just using an old sales spiel to convince you to buy there and then.

Swings and roundabouts to be fair, I wouldnt pay full price for a pre reg 6 month old model when theres a current model for the same price purely because when I sell it Im getting less from whatever tightfisted bugger Im trying to sell to. I like your policy of cheaper servicing but a dealer that wont move on a bike wouldnt get a sale from me. Especially if theres a dealer elsewhere with the same bike for a similar price.

Hopefully that doesnt sound like Im having a pop! You obviously know what you are doing and know what you are doing works, Im just a fussy get at times!:D

[myfirstsv]

Tis a fair point. I'm just quoting what the guy told us cos it seemed plausible.

The other local Honda dealers would only sell at list price and with similar trade in price on the moped. Any way we think we got a deal and number 1 son is like a dog with two d***s. Spent most of the day going up and down our close on it. So everybody's happy including the Police dog handler who lives opposite, like bikes and doesn't care that 61 plates haven't hit the road yet.

[Lozzo]

Swings and roundabouts to be fair, I wouldnt pay full price for a pre reg 6 month old model when theres a current model for the same price purely because when I sell it Im getting less from whatever tightfisted bugger Im trying to sell to. I like your policy of cheaper servicing but a dealer that wont move on a bike wouldnt get a sale from me. Especially if theres a dealer elsewhere with the same bike for a similar price.

Hopefully that doesnt sound like Im having a pop! You obviously know what you are doing and know what you are doing works, Im just a fussy get at times!:D

I didn't see it as a pop, everyone has their own agenda when looking for a new bike, and everyone needs to be treated differently.

What you haven't understood is that someone somewhere has to pay for the servicing. Now if we discounted the bike down through the floor, we wouldn't be able to offer heavily discounted servicing, the extra 2 years manufacturers warranty and a retail value at px time rather than a trade value. It may seem like you are paying a lot for your bike at retail, but the cost is usually spread over a 3 year term on finance so it doesn't hit you in the pocket hard in one go. You'd feel it more paying £99 for a service when you could have it for £49 and when you have a bill for something in 3 years time that would have been covered by the extra warranty you get with our deal. Another factor is the 0% finance deals we offer on certain models - that means that little extra you pay to buy the bike is interest free, where a lot of dealers would have you paying for it at x%, effectively cancelling out your 'discount'. I quite like the 4 years warranty myself, it means most of our buyer's bikes will be covered for the length of the finance term and then some, which is a big peace of mind for them - that warranty is paid for by us... at £350, so in effect you've saved that amount to start with.

We don't pre-reg anything except our demo bikes, which are then sold at low mileage used prices, not discounted new bike prices. I don't think any of our demos has ever done more than 300 miles, so the new owners get a hell of a bargain especially considering we ensure they are run in to the book and not caned mercilessly from new. Doing accompanied test rides ensures this, we set the pace and do stress that running in needs to be done.

The only firms who pre-reg new bikes nowadays are the likes of George Whites who do it purely to get their registration numbers up. The way some importers pay bonuses to dealers depends on new registrations, not the amount of bikes the dealer buys. Any dealer with enough funds or credit can buy as many bikes as he likes for stock, but he won't get the extra bonus if they sit in the showroom or a warehouse unregistered, so firms like George White with large stocks of new machines will register large numbers of bikes purely to get some cash flowing in from the bonuses, and then sell the pre-reg bikes at a little less than the usual discounted price to make them even more attractive to buyers, therefore freeing up more cash for more stock... and so the cycle starts again. They never lose, the bonus is big enough to cover any shortfall in the sale price from retail. Carnells and Motorcycle City used to play this game, which killed a lot of the smaller dealerships off because they couldn't compete on price.

It's not always about the initial price, it's got a lot to do with the ongoing service you get from your dealer. We work very hard on retaining customers once we've got them onto one of our bikes. Also, at the moment we are doing loads of service work for people who bought their bikes from a well known discounter not far from us, some of them come past that dealership to get to our place. They may sell more bikes than us, but we're not complaining as long as they are giving terrible aftersales service. Chances are we'll see these same people back at our shop when it comes to trade-up time.

Sorry for the long post, but the way main dealerships run isn't as simple as 'buy bike, sell bike, pocket money'

[Villers]

With regards to the pre reg thing I got the wrong end of the stick with you mentioning March/sept so sorry if that was wrong. The deals you do sound fantastic but for me theres not a bike I could buy that I would keep for three years let aline four. In which case saving £50 off a service or an extended warranty (although nice) is not exactly a big draw for me. A bigger enticement for me would be getting something like 500 off retail but like I said I am only one type of customer.

Where I live we have a 'sort of' aprilia dealer and he's a complete joke shop, the next dealer is 60 miles away. Perhaps thats why liyalty and promises mean nothing to me in the long run. On the other hand, if you were lical to me and you are as good as you say you would out do every dealer we have!