Dealerships not doing repairs on trade-ins

I have noticed this a lot lately. Been out looking for used vehicles in the past few weeks on two separate occasions with people wanting to upgrade. We went and looked at about a dozen different vehicles ranging from 2008-2016. All but 2 were in need of repairs. The dealers did the inspection, then put them on the lot as a "you fix" vehicle. Now none of the repairs made them un-drivable, but this really surprised me. Also noticed this on Kijiji with a Jeep Wrangler I was looking at for my MIL. In the ad it states that they inspected it, and are offering you "massive discount" as it needs repairs. Funny enough, not one of these units was actually priced accordingly. Has anyone else noticed this? nothing we looked at had over 200k kms, some even less than 100k.

Nothing wrong with it. It is something that can be negotiated on. They are being up front about it.

To be honest, I don't notice one way or another. Even when they "recondition" units, they tell sob stories about how much it costs for them to get a vehicle ready for purchase so it's all noise to me.

They may be up front about it but they're probably also not pricing them proportionately. Profits gotta be made one way or another.

Caveat emptor. Best defense is to be an educated consumer.

What sort of repairs are they saying these vehicles may need?

Last few used vehicles that i have looked at on large chain name dealers have had multiple warning lights and issues. These dealers are not disclosing in their ads and the AMVIC mech fitness report shows up with no issues :rofl:

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Originally Posted by spikerS

Nothing wrong with it. It is something that can be negotiated on. They are being up front about it.

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Never said I had a problem with it, but price them accordingly. And I wonder why only some are like that...why not all then? Is anything being left out? Just really surprised me, this was not common practice when I used to be in the industry 12 years ago.

I'd rather have a discount then the repairs completed on anything that's past the factory warranty period. Take it to a mechanic I trust when I feel like doing it. I always assumed that used vehicle reconditioning was done by the lowest pay-scale tech in the shop no matter how complex the job, to save on mechanic wages.

I dont trust any car seller to either a) know all the issues or b) disclose all the issues.

Take it to a shop that knows the specific issues.
Do a quick browse on a specific car forum for the vehicle.

Save yourself huge headaches.

been a while, but I think lease backs get reconditioned as the manufacturer pays for it. Outside that I doubt it's worth it.

Usually when this happens, its because the estimate to repair everything with labour is too much for them to sell and make a profit. Each used car they have a set profit margin in mind, so the estimate exceeds that, they just sell the car as is. Its not quite crappy enough to sell to the wholesaler, so they'll list the car as is, and for example if customer is interested and it has 5 things it needs for repairs, sometimes the dealer will repair 1 or 2 items and then give customer a discount.

In the reconditioning side, before we would use OEM parts to do oil changes on used off brand make units then we started ramping up our used car volume and now I'm forced to use aftermarket Worldpac/Altrom parts for repairs. Sometimes, I'm even forced to find used wrecker parts on big ticket items, headlights, seats, diffs, axles etc. But if its a Star certified, I have to use OEM parts for repairs.

This is becoming more common as the economy changes and the used market continues to go south I find.