12:39 pm, November 12, 2025
Auto Trader says that its controversial Dealer Builder product adds ‘flexibility and choice for buyers’ as it looks to allay growing pressure from retailers.
Car Dealer reported earlier this week that dealers are threatening mass cancellation of their Auto Trader accounts in protest at the measures, which they say are costing them leads.
While the numbers participating in that action, scheduled for today, remain unclear, Auto Trader CEO Nathan Coe has moved to try and cool the mounting fury.
In an attempt to clarify the thinking behind the measures, he has been answering some of the most frequently asked questions around the product.
Here is what he had to say…
What’s changing?
NC: ‘Deal Builder is now available to all retailers as we evolve the buying journey on our platform. It’s designed to help you capture high-intent buyers by delivering deals with stronger purchase intent, providing valuable insights about buyers and enabling faster, more efficient conversion opportunities.
‘This adds flexibility and choice for buyers. Some may choose to start a finance application or get a part-ex valuation online before visiting you, while others will continue to call or visit you first.
‘The goal is to give buyers the freedom to move at their own pace throughout the journey, whilst keeping you informed and central to the process.’
What’s not changing?
NC: ‘The existing touch points you have with your customers remain unchanged. Buyers can still see your contact details and message you directly from your adverts, and most will continue to engage with you in the same way – through enquiring and visiting your forecourt.
‘Deal Builder does not force buyers to complete steps like finance applications or reservations before reaching out to you – it simply gives them the option to do so if it helps them through the journey. Deal Builder is just one route for car buyers to use, in addition to the existing journeys.
‘We fully acknowledge the conversation and questions taking place across the retailer community regarding the evolution of our platform and the role of Deal Builder.
‘We want to be clear that we are listening intently, taking your feedback very seriously, and are committed to a transparent partnership.
‘The following FAQ addresses some of the most common concerns we’ve heard from our partners and provides clarity on how Deal Builder is designed to drive more higher-quality, higher-converting deals directly to you.
‘We have also discussed retailers’ questions in detail during recent webinars, including one today (Nov 12), which you can watch here.
‘We hope this has helped clarify some of the key concerns around Deal Builder. If you have any further questions at all, or would like to discuss in more detail, please do speak to your account manager.’
Do all consumers have to go through the Deal Builder journey?
NC: ‘No. Deal Builder is an optional journey. Most car buyers on Auto Trader will continue to engage with you in the same way they always have — seeing a car they like, making an enquiry, and visiting you in your dealership.
‘Deal Builder is an optional journey that adds flexibility, allowing customers who prefer to organise steps like part-exchange or finance to do so online before finalising the purchase with you.’
Can consumers still contact me in the usual way?
NC: ‘Yes, absolutely. The existing customer touchpoints remain unchanged. Buyers can still see your contact details and message you directly from your adverts.
‘Our goal is to give buyers the flexibility to contact you however they want, ensuring that traditional methods like calling or enquiring are still fully available.’
Will I be charged a fee for every deal that is submitted?
NC: ‘No. Deals with or without a reservation will not be subject to an additional charge for retailers. We used to charge a 0.25% transaction fee in the past; however, we removed this charge in May, following the decision to make Deal Builder central to the buying journey on Auto Trader.
‘It will be part of our annual package update next April, along with Buying Signals.
‘Buying Signals will be going live next week and will provide retailers with enhanced levels of consumer insight which will be shown alongside every deal delivered through Deal Builder, revealing exactly how engaged each potential customer is, where they are in their buying journey and how ready they are to buy.’
Will a car be reserved for 30 days, and in effect take my stock off sale?
NC: ‘No, the car remains on sale. When a customer reserves a vehicle, it is not taken off sale; the advert remains listed but displays a “reservation in progress” flag.
‘While a reservation can stay in the system for 30 days if neither party acts, we rarely see this happen.
‘Retailers are encouraged to proactively manage deals in Portal or in their own system via Auto Trader Connect integration, and you have full control to cancel a deal to immediately remove the reservation flag if the sale is not progressing.’
Will Deal Builder disproportionately impact smaller retailers?
NC: ‘No, not at all. Deal Builder and Buying Signals are designed to level the playing field. They provide all retailers, large and small, with access to sophisticated customer intent data and enable them to provide a seamless online to offline car buying journey.
‘This positions every retailer, regardless of size, to capture the highest-intent buyers and drive conversion.’
Are ‘call’ and ‘reserve’ the only option for consumers to do on my product page now?
NC: ‘Absolutely not. Buyers can still interact with retailers in whichever way they feel most comfortable.
‘The new product page that will go live next week is optimised for driving even more engagement with the retailer overall and our aim is to give buyers the flexibility to contact you however they want.’
Why have you made consumers sign in to Auto Trader to be able to submit a message?
NC: ‘This change is designed to improve the buying experience by making it more secure, seamless, and consistent with what users now expect across digital platforms.
‘The majority of buyers are already signed in prior to submitting a lead, so this isn’t an extra step for them.
‘A signed-in experience allows buyers to pick up where they left off, track their interactions, and feel more confident engaging with retailers.
‘There are also huge benefits to retailers – when the buyer is signed in, it means we can validate email addresses to make sure you can contact them and nudge buyers to enquire to drive more response.’
When a customer submits a deal, what personal details do they have to include?
NC: ‘To build a deal, the user must be signed in to Auto Trader, which the majority of our users are already.
‘This means we can pre-fill their contact details, including email address (which is validated upon submission) and phone number.
‘The user can choose not to include their phone number (an option that we include from an accessibility perspective), but less than 10% of buyers don’t include one, making deals even more powerful than emails ever were, when phone number was rarely included.’
Removing customer details from lead emails prevents the staff without Portal access from contacting the customer. Why were customer details removed?
NC: ‘Lead notification emails are designed to notify retailers of a new email or deal landing.
‘The information we’ve historically included in these is PII (Personally Identifiable Information). Sending this kind of data over email carries a higher risk of being accessed, misused, or exposed in a data breach.
‘By removing PII from lead notification emails, we’re taking proactive steps to safeguard consumer data and reduce risk across the board. Find out more about why we made this change
‘Retailers can still access the customer details by logging into Portal or Auto Trader Connect.’
When a customer reserves a vehicle, is it taken off sale on Auto Trader?
NC: ‘No it remains advertised on Auto Trader – it will just have a “reservation in progress” flag displayed on the product page.
‘We don’t allow two buyers to reserve the same car, so this option is removed when it’s been reserved, but buyers can still see the vehicle and enquire on it – just as they can today.
‘We have made a recent change to the product page to change the flag from “reserved” to “reservation in progress” and made the flag less prominent, which has resulted in improved performance of reserved stock, so you should not see any drop in performance.’
What if a consumer reserves multiple cars?
NC: ‘To date, we’ve only seen a small number of buyers reserve multiple vehicles at the same time, it’s around 2%. So there’s no suggestion that buyers are using this as a hold whilst they decide between multiple vehicles.
‘As with all deals, we’d encourage retailers to reach out to the buyer as soon as possible to conclude the deal – either cancelling the deal to remove the reservation or completing the deal to take the vehicle off sale.’
What if another retailer reserves my car to remove competition?
NC: ‘We have a dedicated team of Customer Security specialists monitoring this to identify if this happens, and we would of course take action if we received evidence of this.
‘However over the last four years of evolving Deal Builder we have not observed this behaviour.’
How does the reservation work if the reservation journey on Auto Trader is different to that on their own website? Is this just creating complexity?
NC: ‘The reservation journey on Auto Trader doesn’t replace a retailer’s own process – it simply acts as the first step that captures strong buyer intent. Retailers stay fully in control of how the sale progresses.
‘Many retailers still take an additional deposit against the vehicle to secure it. Most retailers have cited that buyers are happy to do this when it’s explained helpfully and clearly up front.
‘We encourage retailers to contact the buyer as soon as a reservation comes in. This early conversation helps confirm the buyer’s plans, agree when they’ll view the vehicle, and gives the retailer confidence in how that deal is likely to progress.
‘If, for whatever reason the sale is not moving forward at any stage, you have full control to cancel a deal which will return the £99 back to the buyer and remove the reservation flag from your car or van.’
Why is Auto Trader taking the £99 reservation fee?
NC: ‘We take a £99 holding fee from the consumer, which always gets returned to them regardless of the outcome of the deal. The fee is returned to them when either you tell us it’s cancelled or completed, or the buyer cancels the deal.
‘If neither party tells us within the first seven days, we refund the money to the consumer but keep the deal open so you can conclude on this.
‘There have also been some questions on whether Auto Trader earns interest on reservation money, and we can reassure retailers this is definitely not the case.
I sell cars worth £90k, why is the reservation fee £99 for everyone? This won’t signal intent for my cars
NC: ‘The reservation fee is not a deposit and shouldn’t be confused. We would encourage retailers to follow up these reservations in the same way they normally would and qualify the reservation before proceeding.
‘It would be up to the retailer if they wanted to ask for a higher holding deposit at this stage.
‘However, we still see the same level of intent from users who reserve higher value cars. We’ve heard some misconceptions that behaviour and intent are different on higher priced vehicles, but we’re not seeing it in our data.’
If we don’t cancel the reservation on Portal, how long will the car be reserved for?
NC: ‘If neither a retailer nor the buyer tells us the outcome of the reservation, then the vehicle will stay reserved for 30 days.
‘We rarely see this happen, as most reservations are processed within three to four days and we encourage all retailers to proactively manage their deals in Portal or via their own system through AT Connect.
‘Whilst consumers can still enquire on the vehicle even when it’s reserved, retailers are fully in control from the minute you receive a deal to cancel this and remove the reservation if you don’t believe the sale will go through.’
If I have a reservation come through on my own website, how can I update Auto Trader so someone can’t reserve it there as well?
NC: ‘It all depends on how you update your stock today. If you’re a Portal customer it’s very straightforward, as soon as the car is reserved, you simply mark it as ‘reserved’ when you are ready to in Portal – everything is in sync.
‘If you’re a customer with real-time stock updates via AT Connect to a third-party tech partner, the integration means the status is updated straight away.
‘There are some nuances to work through for data feed customers as the status update is not real time but we’re having conversations and working through these scenarios with all customers this applies to.
‘We have our whole team ready to help work through such scenarios so if it does apply to you. Reach out to your Account Manager or call us on 0345 111 0002 if you need any guidance.’
Will there be a means of distinguishing between a full end to end ‘deal’ and a finance enquiry ‘deal’
NC: ‘With Deal Builder, buyers have choice over how much of the buying journey they want to complete online.
‘This means that some deals may come with multiple attachment types including finance, part exchange and a reservation, whereas others may only include one attachment type (such as delivery).
‘Each deal will be tagged accordingly in Sales Hub. Here you will be able to see the different types of deals at a high level. You can then find out more about the attachments by clicking into the deal for more information (about their finance preferences, for example).’
I get all my leads into my showroom/lead management system today. Will deals carry on happening in this way?
NC: ‘The way deals are received by retailers depends on the current set up you have.
‘For Portal retailers everything is in Portal. It’s your one stop to accessing all the rich deal information, including Buying Signals.
‘If you’re a customer that uses AT Connect into your own or a third-party system, you will have access to all this rich data via the Deals API. We’re continuing to work with these retailers directly or their third-party integrators to help get them live as soon as possible.
‘If you don’t know which of the two applies to you, please reach out to your Partnership Manager or call us.’
What if I don’t want Deal Builder enabled on my adverts, can I opt out?
NC: ‘Deal Builder is now central to the buying journey on Auto Trader, it will no longer be possible for car or van retailers to opt out.
‘We’ve been trialling this journey with thousands of retailers over the past few years, and we’ve found that buyers who submit a deal are more committed to vehicle and have a higher intent to purchase.
‘Now, it’s about us creating a consistent experience on Auto Trader, with the same journey on every vehicle advert. This is key to making users feel confident when going through their car buying journey.
‘By enabling users to do more online we can understand more about them and pass this valuable insight to retailers.
By enabling Deal Builder for all, we’re increasing our media investment to talk to consumers about the new buying journey with a second wave of our multi-million-pound campaign beginning in January.
‘We are also enhancing alerts across push-notifications, on-platform messaging and email to nudge consumers at the right point in their journey to deliver even more deals to retailers.’
Why do other dealers not have this on their adverts, especially some big customers?
NC: ‘The new Auto Trader buying journey will be enabled for all retailers regardless of size. The reality is that with 14,000 customers, we have had to do this in phases of a few hundred customers at a time.
‘This has enabled us to reach out to these customers, make sure they’re comfortable with the change and help them make the most of their deals.
‘For those retailers not using Portal to manage their leads, we are working in partnership with their 3rd party tech providers to make sure they have the same functionality in their own systems.
‘This can mean some added complexity for larger customers, so we are working closely with them to enable them to start benefitting over the coming weeks.’
Why are retailers not consulted on products like Deal Builder before you enable them for all?
NC: ‘We always work with retailers to develop our products; we wouldn’t be able to evolve our platform without both retailer and buyer input, as both sides are important for Auto Trader.
‘We’ve been trialling Deal Builder with thousands of retailers over the last four years, evolving the journey based on their feedback. Between 2021 and 2023 Deal Builder was in a beta trial.
‘Last year we opened Deal Builder up to all retailers, constantly evolving the journey as we go.
‘If you want to get involved with developing our products in the future, you can sign up to be a part of our Retailer Discover group here.’
Auto Trader’s CEO Nathan Coe is set to appear on the Car Dealer Podcast this week. The episode will be published on Friday afternoon on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and later on YouTube. If you have any further questions you’d like to put to him please send them to [email protected].
