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Car dealers reveal their most unusual experiences from the last year

Some of the most memorable customer interactions with car dealers in the UK have been revealed as part of a new study.

Dealers often have to field all manner of unusual questions and requests prior to even meeting a customer, with the strangest reported by used car buying platform CarGurus over the last 12 months including if a car could fit a medieval jousting pole and whether a dealer would pay the buyer’s insurance for them.

Buyers’ families were often included in the buying process, with one customer telling a dealer that his wife would divorce him if there wasn’t a bigger discount applied to the car. Another even offered his children in part-exchange.

One customer even stated that the dealer was offering them too much for their trade-in vehicle, before settling on a valuation halfway between the dealer’s and their own.

Car dealership
(CarGurus)

Chris Knapman, global director of editorial content at CarGurus, said: “While an increasing percentage of the research required to purchase a car is now carried out online, visiting a dealership remains a crucial part of the buying process for many people.

“The last 12 months have seen plenty of weird and wonderful interactions between car buyers and dealers. There’s certainly never a dull moment on Britain’s forecourts.”

These interesting interactions weren’t reserved for the forecourt, either, with test drives proving to be another area for strange requests. One customer had to swap shoes with the dealer so that their feet could better fit the pedals, for instance.

Dealers also had to tackle odd items being left in trade-in vehicles. CarGurus reported that everything from severed mannequin heads to false teeth was left in cars, alongside prosthetic limbs and ‘mysterious powders’.