Totally agree. I am sure Raymond will have done his homework on the price of the car he was looking to buy before settling on this one. Dealer may well have contacts to take the part ex off their hands. They will have a profit margin in mind and probably met it or surpassed it. Chances are they had about £2k or more added to the price they paid for the Volvo. As you say if the parties involved are happy that's all that matters.
Raymond has done well. He took on board the advice given on not wasting his time and money on the repairs and has come out of it very well indeed.
People who key cars should be castrated.
Well, we can look at it all now with the benefit of hindsight.
The MOT for the Yaris runs out
on 21/04/2016.
I have been looking at C30 for over 3 years on and off, and I know a bit about them, know the platform that they are based on and of any known problems from owners, the car has been out since 2007 so most problems or defects are well known, which there are not many.
I know roughly the current going rate for one, depending on engine, pre-post facelift, age and mileage and kit, private or dealer. I would say mine is at the top end of the bracket (£10,500). Generally even a 11 or 12 plate with say a slower 2.0L Diesel engine (most popular) or the 2.0L Petrol engine goes for between 8-9k, so a T5 (2011) for £10,500 isn't too bad considering it's also R-Design with Geartronic which were like £3,000 option combined. Also, I have not been any facelift C30 T5 on Autotrader right now, and not been for about 10 days. When there was, 90% of them have over 50k in mileage, since they were discontinued since 2013. So one with 16k miles with full dealer stamped history that I can trade my car against was pretty much the perfect scenario given the time constraints that I have, hence the deposit down without even seeing the car in person (but subject to inspection).
I am also away on holiday for the next 10 days so unable to look at cars too.
The Volvo was £10,500, I didn't try to haggle them down from that, just got value for my car. If I had paid cash outright I would have offered £10k flat and that is probably their margin too being £500 over £10k. My car goes for £2900 private on AT in good condition, if one were sold through a dealer, it would probably go for £3500 or £4000. The Yaris has low mileage relatively speaking, 65k on the clock from 08 is much lower than the national average. For all I know the dealer could just replace the bumper (£200 genuine part from Toyota + respray, which they could no doubt do it in-house for cheap) and fix the exhaust by their mechanic then it would be fine. Anyway, that is a lot of speculation on what they could or couldn't do. But from my maths, they have the £500 margin and then another £1400 (£3500-£2100) to fix the car and sell on. That's £1900 margin to play with, without even thinking about the profit on the sale of the Volvo, I would imagine they bought that for £8k or there abouts, and it would be the 3rd time they made money from the same car.
Like I said in the other thread, I purchased the Yaris for £6,500, driven it for 5 years and by all accounts I have had my money's worth from it and if I had to scrap it, part of me wouldn't care that much because £6,500 depreciation in 5 years is low cost of motoring on the grand scheme of things. By that I mean when I gave the guy the keys to check my car out, if he had come back and want to adjust the price of the trade in, I was fully prepared to lower it, in fact, I had pretty much made up my mind to take the Volvo home pretty much no matter what because in part I wanted it (I know it was my best shot at getting a good one) and also I know if I didn't then there is a good chance I could be stuck with the Yaris on my drive SORN for months come
21st April. Basically the closer I get to
21st April, the more desperate I will get to get rid of the Yaris and the lower price I would accept.
Also, on the days leading up to picking up the car from deposit taken to viewing (there was a 5 day gap), I did some more last minute research on what else I could get, looked at BMW, Audi etc, I just could not find a car matches that C30 in spec and condition and mileage.
In terms of the possibility of running into the same problem as my Yaris for rare parts. I researched into that too.
The difference is that my particular model Yaris was not a UK production car, it was sold in this country for 6 months only and they were imported, and I think they sold only about 500 of such model total, hence spare parts needed to be imported from Japan and why they are expensive.
Volvo C30 however is based on the P1 platform that the Focus shared (and another car which escapes me now), along with the fact that the C30 ran from 2007 to 2013 so had 6 years of production and Volvo stocks spare parts in the UK for 15 years after production ends. So I still have 12 years of spare parts of stock left from Volvo. Add to the fact that because of the same Focus platform, they share quite a lot of the parts which means cheaper repair through an indy.
I went into this eyes open, done my initial research way back as far as 2012, kept my eye on the market value, I know what spec are rare and what defects to look out for (foggy headlights is a common one, mine are not), I got a decent deal in a trade in, the dealer had ample time and opportunity to check out my car in the workshop and they had driven it.
So, given that what had happened, would anyone have done anything different? (short of just buy a cheap Civic as a run-around!)
. Not saying that you are these people if you happen to own one. 
- http://www.volvopartswebstore.com/showAssembly.aspx?ukey_product=1164080&ukey_assembly=802182
