Flaming Forums...

During my motor trade sales apprenticeship, I acquired the affectionate nickname of 'the geek' long before it was cool. This was purely down to the fact that I had been to university whilst my colleagues were alumni of the university of life and would be lucky to scrape a pass.


Back then, a geek was someone who had their name sown into their socks, wore the sort of glasses that could withstand an IED and who actually knew that a Bunsen burner was for something other than setting pencil cases on fire.


However, two years ago I bought a left hand drive Mercedes and I turned into a geek...


My website designer, for the sake of this article I will call him Adam, that is actually his real name so my apologies for the lack of creativity, had introduced me to the world of Google Analytics. 'You can do loads of stuff like checking entry paths to your website, check search keywords, geographical data etc etc' he told me. 'OK mate, will check it out' I replied.


This Mercedes was a minter, 25 years old, one owner, primrose yellow and proper history. Nothing too out of the ordinary but not exactly your every day retail fodder.


Analytics told me that there was a large interest in the car from a large motoring forum and my daily web traffic went bananas. I set up a log in and password to the forum and I officially started wearing trousers which were too short for my shoes.


If you have had no experience of motoring forums, they are like the masonic lodges of the car industry. Code words, inside jokes, regular meetings and special favours abound. I commented on the thread (discussion about a topic) and got absolutely no feedback. So over the next few months I observed, read and occasionally commented on various threads and gradually got to know the terms and inside jokes.


As I got a bit braver I started a couple of threads which were motor trade specific. At this point it is worth confessing to not being a car enthusiast like many. I am a trade enthusiast. As people had seen some of my posts and I was no longer a 'newbie' a few people started to comment, some with good feedback, a few with negative. Nothing I could not handle.


Then I started a thread called 'What planet do some car buyers live on?'. With hindsight this is probably the most incendiary title I could have written. In my OP (original post) I posted an e-mail conversation with a guy who had bid me £1500 off a £6000 car which had gone a little unsavoury. To be fair to the customer, he was as polite as could be before he hammered my twig and giggleberries but I bit and sent him a rather flippant e-mail back. Cue a bit of a slag fest where he questioned my business credentials and I - humble as ever- questioned his human worth.


Anyone who has ever sold cars for a living will hopefully understand the point of my question but the motoring masons did not. In metaphorical terms I was stripped naked, tied on horseback and paraded through the streets of London with the angry townsfolk hurling flaming turnips in my direction. In three days it drove literally thousands of people to my website. All PR is good PR or so they say. Not me, I was close to calling Red Adair to put out the fire.


After about a month and me begging the administrators to take the thread away, I could pick through the embers of what had been my forum life.


It taught me a massive lesson about how we in the trade are perceived and how I must empathise more with each individual car buyer. Just because I have heard 'what is your last price?' a million times this week, to that customer he is spending his hard earned and I must acknowledge and appreciate the opportunity for him to spend it with me....