Brexit exit: first step. With a stumble

There’s always one thing that goes wrong, isn’t there? Still, as long as it all works out in the end, it’s hardly worth complaining. And I call an excellent unplanned Chinese meal a good ending.

Some time ago, I mentioned that my wife Danielle and I have brought forward our plans to move to Spain. That’s our exit from Brexit and if we’re reasonably quick, we can probably pull it off before the UK leaves the EU.

The first concrete step was selling Danielle’s car. It was a small car and already second hand when we bought it so we knew it couldn’t be worth much. In fact, a little online searching suggested the best we could hope for would be around £3100.

So she advertised it for £3200.

First step towards the Brexit exit:
a bit of a wrench but we had to part company with Danielle’s Aygo

She also contacted one of those online organisations that buy cars for the trade. Once she’d given all the details, they suggested they might pay £3100. That sounded fair enough, so we agreed they could send someone round to check out the car.

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Danielle said, ‘these guys are well known for always finding reasons to knock a price down after an inspection.’

The character from the company showed up on Saturday. A large cheerful man, all hail-fellow-well-met, with lots of jokes, and an open, friendly countenance. So naturally I decided I couldn’t trust him any further than I could kick him, and given his size, I certainly wouldn’t have been able to kick him far.

He checked out the car and expressed himself satisfied with its state. He liked the fact that the service record was bang up to date. He liked the fact that Danielle had all the documentation ready for him. So he phoned his head office. Then turned to us and cheerfully announced, ‘we can offer you £2300.’

Danielle looked shocked.

‘Down from £3100?’

‘What’s the least you’d accept?’

‘Not less than £3000,’ she said, firmly.

He rang his office again.

‘The best we can do is £2600,’ he told us.

We said goodbye.

Danielle immediately re-advertised the car. Again at £3200.We weren’t best pleased with the trader, so we were delighted that it was the very next day, on Sunday, that someone expressed an interest in it.

It was a family from Milton Keynes, about 40 minutes away from where we live in Luton. They wanted the car for their daughter. All three turned up to see it.

They too were impressed. By the state of the car. By the service record. By the fact that all the documentation was available.

So we reached the key moment.

‘Are you OK with our making an offer?’ said the father.

‘Please do,’ said Danielle.

‘Would you take £3000?’ he said.

Danielle looked at me.

‘What do you think?’ she asked.

‘It’s your car,’ I said, which was a copout, I know. But I’ve cocked up this kind of negotiation more than once in the past.

A silence fell. I’ve learned the power of silence so I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to break it.

‘What about if we split the difference?’ he said. ‘Would you take £3100?’

Since that was exactly the figure she’d first thought of, Danielle didn’t hesitate. ‘Yes, that’ll be fine,’ she said.

Given we’d been offered £2600 the day before, that had to represent about the quickest £500 we’d ever made.

Everything had gone smoothly up to then. Now we just had to manage the financial side of things. That, sadly, involved a bank.

‘I’ll send you a pound first,’ said the buyer, ‘to check that the details are right.’

Minutes later a pound showed up in Danielle’s account.

‘Excellent,’ he said, ‘now for the £3100.’

‘3099,’ I corrected him.

‘The pound’s on me,’ he said, jovially, as he pressed Submit on his phone.

And then his face fell.

There was another silence. Not a powerful one this time. More distraught, really.

‘Is there a problem?’ asked his wife.

‘They’ve blocked the transfer.’

Well, I’m not going to bore you with the details. Let me just say that twenty minutes later he was still arguing with his bank.

‘I know it’s a security question,’ he said repeatedly, ‘but how can I possibly tell you how much the last payment from my account was for, since I’m not at home and don’t have access to any statements?’

His wife had been able to access the account, and she showed us that the £3100 had already been debited from their account. It just hadn’t reached out ours.

We could hear the bank representative talking to her husband.

‘That’s fine now, sir,’ they were saying, ‘the payment will go through. It shouldn’t take more than two hours.’

‘Two hours? But I’m sitting in someone else’s house. And trying to buy a car we were going to drive home. You expect us to sit here for two hours?’

We suggested that we could take them out for dinner somewhere. They didn’t like that idea, since their dog was at home and no doubt getting sad.

‘No,’ he said, looking defeated, ‘we’ll just have to come back tomorrow.’

We weren’t keen, particularly as it would mean we were looking after someone else’s car overnight. What if some moron scratched it? It wouldn’t have been the first time.

And then an idea dawned on us. The Taipan restaurant in Central Milton Keynes is one of the best Chinese I’ve ever been to. We hadn’t eaten there for ages.

The Taipan in Milton Keynes:
one of my favourite Chinese restaurants. Anywhere

‘We’ll go and have a Chinese in Milton Keynes,’ we told them, ‘and you can pick up the car there when the money comes through.’

Which is how things worked out.

They were pathetically grateful.

‘It’s so good of you to have come up here with the car,’ the father told us.

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’m indebted to you for a great dinner I wouldn’t otherwise have had.’

‘Oh, yes. I suppose I made that possible.’

‘You and your bank.’

‘Right. I can’t take all the credit.’

So things all worked out fine in the end. Everyone was happy.

And I enjoyed the object lesson as much as the meal: things go well while people of good will are working with each other. But that doesn’t include professional car dealers. And once a bank gets involved – watch out. They don’t make those massive profits for nothing – they’re world-class champions at turning a simple transaction into a major inconvenience.