Is cash not King anymore?

[obewan]

A month ago on a Blood Bike run I was hit at a junction by a young lad in a car that had just passed his test
He turned across my path. Unsurprisingly the bike is a total loss.
I'm looking around for a replacement and I've emailed several traders about bikes they have for sale.
To date none of them seem willingly to move from the listed price

Is this the new norm? (Don't get me started on Admin fees!)
Is it that they'd rather sell on finance these days?

[Chippie]

Bikes seem to be fetching a premium at the moment, so it’s not really suppressing the people aren’t willing to come down on the asking price

[buzyg]

It's been a long time since cash was king.

[Smartbear]

A month ago on a Blood Bike run I was hit at a junction by a young lad in a car that had just passed his test
He turned across my path. Unsurprisingly the bike is a total loss.
I'm looking around for a replacement and I've emailed several traders about bikes they have for sale.
To date none of them seem willingly to move from the listed price

Is this the new norm? (Don't get me started on Admin fees!)
Is it that they'd rather sell on finance these days?

What bikes are you considering?
Rob

[obewan]

A month ago on a Blood Bike run I was hit at a junction by a young lad in a car that had just passed his test
He turned across my path. Unsurprisingly the bike is a total loss.
I'm looking around for a replacement and I've emailed several traders about bikes they have for sale.
To date none of them seem willingly to move from the listed price

Is this the new norm? (Don't get me started on Admin fees!)
Is it that they'd rather sell on finance these days?

What bikes are you considering?
Rob

TBH Smartbear I've revised my options a bit. I was looking at similar cc to what I had, 600-700
At the time of the accident I was 90% through an IAM course (Ironic I know).
On passing I can ride the area Blood Bike - BMW 1300 (same as a Police bike)
Being retired, my main use of my bike was the BB's. Other than that short ad-hoc about town stuff.
So, not wanting to drop too far, I fancy a Honda CB500F

[M1k3yC]

Is it that they'd rather sell on finance these days?

When I bought my MX-5 earlier this year (I'm well aware it's not a bike ) it would have been a better deal to get it on finance because with finance you got a couple of services thrown in. You could pay the finance off after the minimum number of months to qualify for the free services and the interest incurred was lower than the price of the services, but not by much. In the end I just paid for it in full because it seemed like too much effort when compared to the saving and I'm thinking about modifying the car.

[Argyll Andy]

Again not a bike but when I bought the 35 from a BMW dealer in September while trying to do the deal and weighing up my options I asked the usual, how much discount for no trade in and/or paying cash. Answer Zero for both. We negotiated my trade in up the way but they were totally unwilling to reduce the price of the car.

Told him I was surprised at that when I was picking the car up, his answer, I make more commission off the finance deal than for selling you the car. The commission for selling is based on the price achieved so that’s why they wouldn’t drop that.

[jamesditchy]

We were looking for a new car for SWMBO a few years back and she liked the look of the DS3 cabrio. Test drove one but it wasn't for us but talking to the salesman and he said he had a guy in the showroom who picked a car he wanted. He asked the price (around 12k) and he got out a carrier bag with the cash in. Salesman says I can only take 7k on cash, the rest must be from bank transfer/cheque. Guy says I've just drew the money out the bank. Was on his bucket list to walk into a dealers and buy a brand new car for cash. Salesman says I can take the 7k cash but you will have to put the rest back on the bank and pay the balance thru them. Cash is no longer king but an absolute PITA. As a small business myself, everyone wants discount for cash but you can't make any significant purchase with it as everything nowadays is linked electronically via email, loyalty cards, paperless receipts etc. I think cash will be tried to be phased out as much as possible over the next few years. Sad times in my opinion

[Mr Tidy]

It doesn't seem to be, at least not with traders!

A mate of mine used to run a motor salvage business and he loved cash at one end of each deal but nowadays banks want to know where you got it from.

Still it worked OK for me when I bought my MC privately last December and took my carrier bag.

[jamesditchy]

It doesn't seem to be, at least not with traders!

A mate of mine used to run a motor salvage business and he loved cash at one end of each deal but nowadays banks want to know where you got it from.

Still it worked OK for me when I bought my MC privately last December and took my carrier bag.

Private sales are always the best problem is those bags for life are a pound each so I don't like to part with them

[Armscarf]

We were looking for a new car for SWMBO a few years back and she liked the look of the DS3 cabrio. Test drove one but it wasn't for us but talking to the salesman and he said he had a guy in the showroom who picked a car he wanted. He asked the price (around 12k) and he got out a carrier bag with the cash in. Salesman says I can only take 7k on cash, the rest must be from bank transfer/cheque. Guy says I've just drew the money out the bank. Was on his bucket list to walk into a dealers and buy a brand new car for cash. Salesman says I can take the 7k cash but you will have to put the rest back on the bank and pay the balance thru them. Cash is no longer king but an absolute PITA. As a small business myself, everyone wants discount for cash but you can't make any significant purchase with it as everything nowadays is linked electronically via email, loyalty cards, paperless receipts etc. I think cash will be tried to be phased out as much as possible over the next few years. Sad times in my opinion

That sounds like anti-money laundering rules to me so the dealer wouldn't have had a choice. As for the OP the cash is expensive to deal in, I'm a business owner and I actually charge extra for cash transactions to put people off, the Bank charges for cash handling need to be accounted for. In 2020 if someone if expecting a better deal for cash then nine times out of ten they are really expecting the Business not to declare all the revenue to the HMRC (VAT or no VAT registration) and to pass some or all of that "difference" on to them. Dealers being firm on car prices is a slightly different issue, we can thank modern business practices, transparency across the market and the internet for that. I looked at a 3.0i Zed last summer on a private sale, the guy wanted cash, when I eventually established that he didn't even have the V5C in his possession I soon understood why cash was important to him so I walked away.

[Mr Tidy]

Private sales are always the best problem is those bags for life are a pound each so I don't like to part with them

That wasn't a problem. I only handed over the cash - I brought the bag home!

[jamesditchy]

Private sales are always the best problem is those bags for life are a pound each so I don't like to part with them

That wasn't a problem. I only handed over the cash - I brought the bag home!

[Zedebee]

I bought a brand new car around twenty grand for family duty a couple of years ago. The salesman would barely give me a couple of hundred quid off the list price but said if I took it on finance I could get a three grand “dealer contribution”. I reckoned with the interest it would work out at roughly the same price. Then he said I could pay off the finance any time I wanted without penalty. I read the terms of the agreement and this was indeed the case. So I took the discount, signed the finance agreement and then paid it off before the first payment was due. Net result was three grand off which I couldn’t have got with cash; and all because, I guess, the salesman got a hefty commission on selling the finance package.

[BTZ461]

Yes all the above is indeed a sign of the times, the new normal etc etc.
Anyone remember "mates rates"? Another idiosyncrasy slipped by the wayside