Tips for writing an admin fee description
By Ben Smith, Product lead, consumer products. Auto Trader.
We’ve taken the next step on our admin fees journey; adding the fee charged to retailers’ adverts. If you do charge admin fees, it’s important that you let buyers on your adverts know why and what your policy is. With 91% of retailers not charging them, buyers have plenty of choice so be sure to explain to a buyer what this fee includes and why it represents good value.
Real-life customer examples – the good, the bad and the ugly.
The good
Since every retailers’ reasons for charging admin fees will differ, we won’t share real-life examples, but here are some top tips for writing yours.
Explain to buyers your policy and why you charge fees
Make sure you personalise this to your offering
Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes – what would you want to know, would you think these fees sound fair?
Use sentence case and check your spelling and grammar
The bad
“INCLUDES ALL PAPERWORK” – All caps aren’t recommended as it makes reading harder for some consumers. You may also want to consider what benefits the paperwork offers the buyer so they understand how it justifies the fee charged
“INSURANCE FUEL FINANCE” – This isn’t particularly clear for buyers to understand exactly what this means
“All our vehicles apply admin fees please read the full description.” – the buyer has clicked on the information icon next to your fee, so they will expect to see your explanation here, not in the description
“A compulsory variable administration fee is charged depending on your circumstances.” – it would be useful to buyers to know how the fee varies and in what circumstances it applies
The ugly
“The full stop” – some retailers have simply put a full stop. We hope you were planning to come back and edit that later, if you didn’t, now’s the time.
Repeating the price – we’ve seen some retailers just put “£99” in the description – this is just repeating what will be shown on the advert and won’t help the buyer.
Mis-classified admin fees
We’ve also seen some instances where, judging by the description, it looks like some retailers have incorrectly flagged that they charge admin fees, misunderstanding our definition. Below are some common examples we’ve seen and this recent blog post outlines what is an admin fee, what isn’t and some other common questions we’ve had.
Fees only when you pay on finance: This isn’t an admin fee as the buyer has the option to pay cash and avoid the fee
Fees only when a 3rd party finance broker is used: This isn’t an admin fee as the buyer has the option to pay cash and avoid the fee
Fee already included in the advertised price: We’ve seen a few retailers state in their description that the admin fee is already included in the advertised price