Part Exchange and Depreciation

['Little' John]

Hi guys. Wondered if anyone in the collective had an opinion on this and whether I'm being over-sensitive/a pain in the neck.

I've been shopping around for a bit but not really found anything to replace my Cupra. I'm less concerned about the performance than I used to be and don't like everything being on a touch screen. In addition, a spare wheel was preferable and I don't want to have to pay luxury car tax. As you can imagine this narrowed the possibilities quite dramatically. Finally I settled on a Renault Austral (please don't hate me!). Since I wanted to have the spare wheel it had to be a factory order. This has taken a little over four months to arrive. However, once the car arrived at the dealership they contacted me to say that they wanted an additional £1000 to cover the depreciation on my Cupra between ordering and delivery. Is this normal? It's not something that I had experienced before, but then the lead time on both my SEAT and Cupra was a little under three months. When making the deal I had taken into account that there would be depreciation and so hadn't pushed as hard as I could have on the part-exchange. Surely the dealer should know how long a factory order would take (4 months seems to be about normal for the Austral) and how much depreciation would occur in that time? Am I being unreasonable in expecting them to honour the original agreement?

 

[SRGTD]

Is there anything in the small print in the original order documentation you signed for your new car regarding adjustment of the value of your part exchange to allow for depreciation? Was the part exchange figure shown on the documentation shown as ‘subject to adjustment’ (for depreciation) of some such similar wording?

When I’ve part exchanged a car in the past against a new car, the dealer has always made it clear if there is to be any adjustment to the part exchange value between time of ordering and delivery. When this has happened (and it only happened once - back in 2020), I was quoted a monthly depreciation figure up-front at time of ordering the new car and this was stated on the order for for the new car.

Are you committed to part exchanging your current car? If not, then I’d try some of the car buying services such as Motorway and Carwow to see if you can get a better price for your current car than the adjusted (for depreciation) trade in value being quoted by the Renault dealer.

I don’t hate you for buying a Renault - I bought one last year and have been really happy with it (a Clio self charging full hybrid). My car was in-stock at the dealers and it also didn’t have a spare wheel which was a deal breaker for me, so the dealer added a spare wheel to another customer’s order and when that customer’s car was delivered to the dealership, they just swapped the spare wheel in that car for unused tyre inflation kit in my car.