G3 Remarketing runs some of the busiest online sales in the north of England, and its catalogue is laid out differently from BCA's. The valuations are thinner, the condition reports are richer, and a couple of costs hide on the listing page rather than in the export. Here is how to read it so the car you bid on is the car that turns up.
The catalogue export
Each G3 sale can be downloaded as a spreadsheet: one row per lot with registration, make, model, derivative, mileage, colour, fuel, gearbox, grade and the vendor. What it does not usually carry is a full set of guide prices, so you cannot lean on a CAP column the way you might with BCA. That is not a weakness if you know your own numbers, because your own achieved prices are the better guide anyway.
The condition report
This is where G3 earns its keep. Every inspected lot has a tick-list report: a page of items each marked with a green tick or a red cross, a tyre table, and an inspector's comments box. Read it in this order:
- The red crosses. Each one is a fault the inspector saw. Warning lights, non-starters, damage and missing items all live here. Count them and price them before you look at anything else.
- The tyre table. Tread depth per corner in millimetres. Anything at or near 3 mm is a tyre you are buying. On a large SUV that is a three-figure bill per corner.
- The inspector's comments. Plain English about what the ticks and crosses cannot say: "intermittent fault", "smells of damp", "keys: one". This is the paragraph most buyers skip and most regret skipping.
- The grade. G3 grades run from 1 (best) downwards. Treat 3 and above as "price the work in" and read the report to see what the work is.
The costs on the listing page, not in the file
Two things appear on the lot's web page and nowhere else:
- The vendor surcharge. Some vendors add a fee on top of the buyer's premium. G3 quote it before VAT (for example £85 plus VAT, which is £102 to you). It is not in the export, so it has to be ticked on per car when you plan.
- The link to the car. Photos, the full report and the surcharge live on the listing. Keep the link with your notes so you can get back to it on sale day.
Two quirks worth knowing
- The tyre table is printed beside the vehicle details, not below them. If you copy a report into a spreadsheet, the rows will be jumbled; read it by column.
- Some headings arrive with the spaces missing, so "TYRECONDITION" and "INSPECTORCOMMENTS" are what you will see. They mean what you think.
Setting a top bid from a G3 lot
Worked example
A 2017 Vauxhall Mokka, grade 4, 81,000 miles, two red crosses (one tyre at 2 mm, one warning light), vendor surcharge £85 plus VAT. Your last seventeen Mokkas at a similar age and mileage made a median of £4,000 and half of them sold inside 13 days.
- Retail you can expect: £4,000
- Fees and delivery: £600 · Surcharge: £102 · Tyre and diagnostic: £180
- Margin you want on a two-week car: £700
- Top bid: £4,000 − £600 − £102 − £180 − £700 = £2,418, so call it £2,400
A quick seller at the right money. The same car at £2,900 because "it's only a Mokka, they always go" makes nothing.
Doing this for a whole sale
A G3 sale can run to two or three hundred lots, each with a report to open. ForecourtIQ reads the catalogue export, attaches and reads the condition reports so the crosses, tread depths and comments are on the card, checks every registration with the DVSA, and scores each lot against your own sales. The surcharge is a tick on the card. The top bid is worked out from your figures, and the whole shortlist prints in lot order to take to the sale.