Motorcheck no longer posting daily updates

Leonard Hofstadter

http://www.motorcheck.ie/blog/stats

A real pity, I always looked forward to seeing these every day, particularly as I am subscribed to the daily feed and had wondered why the stats only go up to the end of January nowadays.

Maybe this should be included in the "Scrappage Scheme Working" thread, if the moderators want to move there I've no problem with that.

Anyhoo new car sales are now up to 22,860 as of yesterday, up 16.3% on the same period last year. Looks like Scrappage Scheme is having the desired effect, OTOH the fact that sales were so low last year meant that the only way is up and an ageing car fleet is bound to mean that car sales will have to pick up as some cars become life expired. The SIMI will be delighted that imports are also down 36% on last year as well:rolleyes:.

Important Notice

• We regret to inform you that Motorcheck.ie has been asked by a third party to remove the daily update of vehicle statistics from our car index. At this time monthly statistics in arrears are still available as normal.
• A concern was expressed that industry practitioners may find the information 'commercially sensitive' - hence the request to remove the data.
• Motorcheck.ie will be meeting with the complainant shortly to discuss this opinion. In the interim we have published an online petition that we encourage you to sign in support of the ongoing delivery of daily statistics.
• To sign the petition please click on the following link:
  http://eepurl.com/id8S

dizzydiesel

I got this response below too....please sign the petition.



Thanks for your email regarding the new car statistics. We've been asked by a third party to remove the daily update of vehicle statistics from our car index as a concern was expressed that industry practitioners may find the information 'commercially sensitive'.
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We will be meeting with the complainant shortly to discuss this opinion which we believe to be based on an assumption (in our opinion an incorrect one) that one could identify a specific dealers sales & turnover by virtue of the registrations for his franchise in that county.
In the interim we have published an online petition that we encourage you to sign in support of the ongoing delivery of daily statistics.
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I'd be much obliged if you could sign the petition which we have put live at http://eepurl.com/id8S.
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Obviously the more signatures we get the more compelling our argument to have the statistics reinstated will become so feel free to share it with anyone you're aware of that may have found the statistics useful.

Cionád

You can find a trimmed down version over on mywheels: http://mywheels.ie/VehicleStatistics.aspx

There were ~16k new vehicles regsitered in Jan, so ~9k have been sold so far in Feb, thats up from ~7k for the whole month of Feb last year.

Stevie Dakota

So a dealer if concerned that people may know how many or how how few cars they are selling? WTF?

Cionád

Stevie Dakota wrote: »

So a dealer if concerned that people may know how many or how how few cars they are selling? WTF?

Maybe there is a successful dealer somewhere down the country who is selling buckets of cars, and he wants to hide his success so that rivals don't set-up next door...

vang

why not name and shame the protester. If it is legal to publish the info why not publish it.

Leonard Hofstadter

vang wrote: »

why not name and shame the protester. If it is legal to publish the info why not publish it.

I'm pretty sure it is someone/group in D2, can't prove it obviously but I certainly wouldn't put it past them.

Zonda999

Had been wondering for a while why they had stopped updating their figures and at least this explains it. My guess is that its from a dealer in a county in which it is the only dealer in the county with that franchise, in tyat case one would be able to see exactly what they're selling. Theres a case for this but the information is legal and public so i cant see why it shoud be stopped at the moment

Big Nasty

Zonda999 wrote: »

Had been wondering for a while why they had stopped updating their figures and at least this explains it. My guess is that its from a dealer in a county in which it is the only dealer in the county with that franchise, in tyat case one would be able to see exactly what they're selling. Theres a case for this but the information is legal and public so i cant see why it shoud be stopped at the moment

+1

Thought the exact same myself - for example there's about 5 dealers in Leitrim, Lunney's Garage is the only Citroen dealer, probably the only franchised dealer, in Leitrim. Very easy to figure out their sales by looking at the stats.

Motorcheck

Hi y'all,

Thanks for supporting the petition - we hope to have the stats back up and running soon.

A quick note on the point regarding individual garages and their sales. Give it some further thought and you'll see that using registration statistics to work out sales for a particular dealer isn't as easy as you think.

To assume registrations for a particular county equalled sales for the local franchise dealer you would be assuming that;

a. The local dealer has a monopoly on all cars registered in that county for that Make and
b. That particular dealer didn't sell any cars to customers with home / business addresses in another county

This just isn't the case - Leasing companies will buy from the cheapest provider not the closest. That could mean a Cork dealer supplying a Dublin company hence a 'd' registration but purchased in Cork.

Car rental companies buy all over the place and register cars in Dublin, Cork and Limerick for remarketing purposes.

Also, our stats are for ALL new car registrations. This includes 'New Imports'. You probably know that there were significant numbers of new cars imported by private buyers from north of the border last year. These would have been registered in the south to the county of the registered owner but have been purchased in a completely different country.

Anyone guessing sales from registrations is doing just that - making a guess!

Here's hoping you'll agree that guesswork shouldn't be the cause of taking down something that's proven to be really useful to the trade up and down the country?

dizzydiesel

Great news - looking forward to reviewing the stats again shortly.

flabbergasted

Anyone know why today's update of the figures on Motorcheck.ie show no change from yesterday, although the date has been increased by one day as per usual? If taken literally, it means no cars at all sold yesterday? That is impossible to believe, so there must be some other explanation.