Taxi Driver Online

Someone must be bullshitting or that was the last of the high-value plates. There's one on Trainer's website for £55,000, less the price of the vehicle that's £25,000-£26,000. I think it's fast getting to the point, if you don't take what's on offer you're not selling.

The longer you wait to buy the more desperate the seller, the lower the price.

http://www.petertrainer.co.uk/node/120

The plate price is £34,000 according to the front page of the website?

And as I said in another recent thread, there does seem to be some discrepancies in the prices - probably just errors in the main, or odd valuations for vehicles which are a bit different from the norm.

But the two plates that are offered for sale without the vehicle (presumably) are both shown at £34k, which I suppose seems what might be expected, because it would be odd if the same broker offered plates on their own at different valuations.

That's a 10k discrepancy but it's worth noting the word, "reduced." It's becoming a buyer's market, and that means you can demand what you like, but you're only getting what's on offer - take it or leave it.

Now that I think about it Dusty, I think Trainer is at it. The “discrepancy” over prices might not be an accident but a ploy, to tempt potential buyers onto the phone. You know the script, “ah sorry that's a mistake, but I do have one reduced to 30K, for the plate, and 26K for the taxi.” He then phones up the plate holder telling him that someone may be interested but for a slightly reduced price.

And if it does sell, he just marks it up as sold on the site.


It just goes to show that the pressure is on the seller.

Does that other website with the list of plate prices still exist, you know the broker that was associated with that Mark Greenhalgh or whoever who did the TV advertising screens and was on Dragons' Den? Forth Street I think it was in?

Or is this the same business??

Trainer is a different guy, but it's the same scam. Sorry, na Greenhalgh is history.

of course its a scam
the plates aint selling
the prices are all different and if something sells then why go to the bother of typing sold rather than just deleting it
its a classic case of talking up the market estate agents do it all the time
the last plate sold for £26k with a motor,wonder what the next one will go for its gotta be less than that i would think

That's exactly what I heard, 26K. I'll tell you what though, Trainer must be feeling the pinch when he's making the carrot as obvious as that.

For someone not interested in the Edinburgh taxi trade skull, you sure do keep harping on about it!

Have you answered my question yet, no, well there's a surprise?

Oh and incidentally Longshanks, I enjoy watching guys like you suffer from the downfall of your little illusion. It just had to happen.

Even if a plate did go for £25k or so (presumably the motor isn't worth much) I wouldn't place too much emphasis on it, because in any market there will always be 'outliers' that don't really represent the true state of the market, whether a price is well below the norm, or above.

For example, in the former case someone might need a very quick sale, and clearly this time of year isn't a good period for selling anything, particularly since sentiment is always rock bottom in the trade during this period.

As regards someone paying well over the odds, this could just be because someone doesn't know the market for plates, or because the price of the plate is normally conflated with the vehicle and they don't know the market for the vehicle, thus it might look like they're paying over the odds for the plate whereas they're quite possibly paying over the odds for the vehicle.

Of course, people in the market - or commenting on it - will nevertheless use these outliers for their own purposes, for example someone selling will state the highest value around, while someone buying will obviously exploit the lowest know price in their negotiations.

Which of course is all to do with lack of transparency in markets, and one problem with plate prices is that there are relatively few transactions, and the pricing information isn't readily available to buyers and sellers. Compare the market for stocks and shares, say, where brokers have the very latest information on prices on their computer screens.

But the 'insider information' problem as regards stocks and shares is also relevant to plate transactions, although it's probably better termed 'asymmetric information', ie where the parties to the transaction don't have the same information about the market. This is especially so where a few big players - the two in Edinburgh and the guy in Glasgow - dominate the market, and thus they're the ones who'll know the real state of play, but clearly they're not going to be entirely open about what's going on to people buying and selling.

Of course, there's also a wider asymmetry in the plate market in that many people don't really know the score, for example that the council can pull the plug at any time. Or that in Scotland the legality of it all is a bit ropey. Buyers aren't told that - they're told it's goodwill on a business, and that it's more or less set in stone etc.

For example, the chap from last weekend will have no doubt been told as such when enquiring about buying a Glasgow plate, but I'll bet his perspective on the whole idea has changed since reading the News of the World article.

But of course it suits the whole vested interest group to cover up the facts (aided and abetted by the councillors and politicians) but the bottom line is that to that extent the market is far from transparent and the information available to buyers and sellers is often asymmetric.

On the other hand, in some ways it's not the normal problem of asymmetric information - for example, the seller of a car keeping quiet about the fact he knows the clutch is on the way out, or that a house vendor doesn't let on that they've got the neighbours from hell - because in the plate market some of those spreading disinformation think they're acting in good faith because they genuinely don't know it's bent, or that plate premiums don't really represent goodwill.

Of course the selling of these plates could have something to do with money laundering. For example seller A sells the plate "legitimatly" to buyer B at a price of say £50,000. Some months down the line buyer B sells the plate back to seller A for £25,000 thus producing £25,000 of "clean" money.

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Grandad,

I don't have a problem with much of the above. However, we are in the middle of a recession/depression with major world economies teetering on the brink. No one knows how bad things are going to get, or how long it will last. And this makes it a whole different ball game. People are reluctant to buy or invest because of the uncertainty, and it's now become a batten down the hatches' approach to survival, in most cases. There are of course exceptions but the taxi trade isn't one of them. If you've got a lot of cash sloshing around, and you can afford to take a punt, you might make a lot of money but that's not buying a plate and working yourself to death to pay for it.

You will always get the anomaly with more money than sense that may pay stupid money for something devaluing in price, but I think this is the exception and not the rule.

The easiest way to research your market, if considering buying a plate, is to hire taxis and ask the guys doing the job.

I would start by asking the drivers first and then the owners.

I don't think it would be long before you were put off the idea altogether.

Yes, and as I said it suits some people to talk the market down and vice versa.

Of course, the same applies to the economy as a whole, since if people believe your own economic Armagedon scenario then that's what keeps the economy on its knees, becasue people won't spend money and business won't invest. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.