Britons waste £456 million every year buying the wrong car
Britons waste £456 million pounds a year on bad purchasing decisions when it comes to used cars – simply because they don’t do their homework.
Almost a third (28%) of used car decisions are regretted and more than half of us (54%) know someone who has made a bad used car purchase, according to research from Network Q, the UK’s number one used car retailer. By not shopping around for better advice and deals, consumers are literally throwing money out the window and with 7. 5 million used cars sold in the UK every year, that’s a lot of unhappy motorists.
According to the research, most bad decisions (45%) are made at local independent dealers, which are responsible for over seven times the rate of bad car buys than national used car retailers, with a further 40% of respondents claiming to have made a bad car buying decision through private sales.
32 per cent of respondents quote ‘lack of knowledge’ of used cars as the main reason for making bad purchasing decisions, whilst 23 per cent claimed that untrustworthy sales people were responsible for driving them to a purchase they would later regret.
If they had the opportunity to do things differently, 35 per cent said they would buy from a more trustworthy retailer and 45 per cent would insist on an approved mechanical check before purchasing.
Unfortunately our bad purchasing decisions are not just restricted to used cars. The research revealed that 89% of Brits admit to having made a bad purchase and that we waste £9.2 billion every year, an average of £290 per person per year, on purchases we regret.