“Advertise your number plate for free”
When selling a personal number plate – there seem to be many number plate dealers and companies offering to sell your number plate on your behalf free of charge – is it an offer that’s too good to be true?
“Selling a number plate is like selling a house”
Number plate selling – via dealers – is similar to selling a house and enlisting the services of the estate agent. Both are professional companies and skilled at what they do – both will market and conlude the sale of your house / number plate and both will charge you hand
Why it’s never free
As nice as number plate dealers are - buying and selling number plates is their bread and butter income. As with all things that sound too good to be true this is no exception- but its worth explaining how they charge.
“As a seller you will pay no money to the number plate dealer – but this doesn’t mean free”
As a seller you will pay no money to the number plate dealer when you sell your numberplate – but this doesn’t mean free.
The dealer will add their commission to the asking price of your number plate. On the face of it this is great – much like a no-win no fee solicitor but if someone pays £5000 for your number plate and the dealer passes you £3500 then surely you have paid £1500 for their services?
The true cost
Using the above example – someone has paid £5000 for your number plate but you only received £3500. It makes sense that were you to have found and dealt with this person directly you would be £1500 richer.
“If you dealt directly you would have been £1500 richer”
Different number plate dealers charge differing percentages of commisson. When negotiating the number plate sale it’s worth remembering the number plate dealers’ first priority is a sale and the second priority is getting a good price. It has been known for some dealers – as with estate agents and any kind of broker- to apply pressure to close a sale for the sake of “doing the deal” and earning a commisson- albeit not as sizeable as it could have been.
Save money – DIY
“There is now a cost effective alternative”
There are two main hurdles for anyone wishing to buy and sell number plates –
knowledge of how to transfer number plates
finding the appropriate buyer / seller
Number plate dealers take car of both these areas and on this basis make a living but as with anything- from pay as you go mobile phones to low cost airlines there is now a more cost effective alternative.
Number plate classifieds website give buyers and sellers of number plates the choice and chance to find each other and deal directly- ultimately saving money.
Isn’t transferring number plates difficult?
The DVLA and government have made the DVLA number plate forms extremely straight forward and useful documents. They can still be daunting but they aren’t in the league of filing a tax return(!)
So long as the criteria are met – there is no real mystery or difficulty when transferring number plates – just need to “dot the i’s and cross the t’s”
Not sure? got questions?
check out these links or drop us an email – info@smashing-plates.com
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