Improving the buying experience: our final step in addressing admin fees on Auto Trader
By Ben Smith, Product Lead, consumer products, Auto Trader
On 22nd September we’ll complete our admin fees journey by adding the admin fee into the total advertised price and reflecting this in our valuations and price indicators. Read on and signup to the webinar below for more information on this change and others as we continue to deliver on our customer promise.
Register for our next webinar for more information
We’ll cover the change in more detail and answer your questions on our webinar on 22nd September as this change goes live.
Including Admin fees in the advertised price
The latest improvement to the buyer experience is the final step in our Admin fees journey which we started in June 2020 by adding a “No admin fees” flag to retailer adverts. We then collected the amount charged by those retailers who do charge admin fees and added this to adverts in May 2021 The final step to complete our admin fees work, which will provide complete buyer transparency and a level playing field for retailers on Auto Trader, is to add the admin fee into the total advertised price, with this being reflected in our valuations and price indicators.
I don’t charge admin fees, what does this mean for me?
The main benefit to you will be that this delivers a complete level playing field when it comes to price transparency with all other retailers on Auto Trader. There will no longer be any competitive advantage to be gained from charging an admin fee on Auto Trader.
Here is how your adverts will look from 22nd September on mobile and desktop.
Changes to Retail Check and Retail Accelerator
If you use our Retail Check or Retail Accelerator products, any competing vehicles which include an admin fee will be shown in the competitor market with their total price inclusive of the admin fee and the admin fee charge will be shown within their vehicle details accessible from the competitor market.
Changes to our Retail Metrics API
If you use our Retail Metrics API, any competing vehicles which include an admin fee will be returned in the competitor response with their total price inclusive of the admin fee. Any competing vehicles which include an admin fee will be returned with their price indicator and price position values calculated from their total price, inclusive of any admin fee charges.
I do charge admin fees, what does this mean for me?
If you do charge fees, your fee will now be shown to buyers on your adverts as part of the total advertised price providing complete price transparency to your buyers. Your price position and price indicator flag will be calculated based on the total price of the vehicle, inclusive of the admin fee charge on the vehicle.
Here is how your adverts will look from 22nd September on mobile and desktop.
No change to advertising or editing vehicles
The admin fee you have configured in the business account area of Portal will be shown wherever you view or edit prices in Portal, so you don’t need to remember to input this information every time you change or set a vehicle price.
Changes to Retail Check and Retail Accelerator
If you use our Retail Check or Retail Accelerator products, you will see an additional field on the pricing calculator within Retail Check which will show the admin fee charge on the vehicle.
For a stock vehicle:
For an out of stock vehicle:
For Retail Accelerator customers, all pricing alerts and strategy price values will be based on the total price of vehicles inclusive of any admin fee charges.
Changes to our Retail Metrics API
If you use our Retail Metrics API, the price indicator flag returned in the API response will be calculated based on the total price of your vehicle, inclusive of the admin fee charge.
Delivering on our customer promise
This change is part of our customer promise, which we introduced in August 2019; this provided direction for improvements we wanted to make to the buying experience. It underpinned everything from Relevance Sort Order, Vehicle Check, Price Indicator, Admin fees, Retailer Stores and lots of other improvements we’ve made over the last two years to our search listings and retailer adverts.
Our customer promise aims to deliver three things to create a better platform for retailers to sell and buyers to buy through.
Trust: Giving car buyers confidence in the vehicle, the retailer they are buying from and the price of the vehicle.
Transparency: Giving car buyers the information they need to feel confident in the buying decision.
Time: Making car buying easier by showing relevant results and useful information upfront to car buyers. Helping connect them to the right vehicle, the right retailer, delivering more meaningful connections to retailers.
Summary of our upgrades over the last 12 months
Our product teams have been working hard for you and your customers
They have created a summary of all the product updates our teams have been working on over the last year, all designed to help you reach more buyers and help buyers find their perfect next car.