...only seem to want to pay wholesale prices on used cars?

Following on from my earlier post, I have been shopping my RS around at various dealers and they have all offered rather low trade in prices.

I have only focused on dealers that sell the Skoda brand. Obviously, a Mercedes dealer (for example) isn't going to want a used Skoda on their lot so they would probably just send it to the auctions. In that case, I accept that their trade in price might be $10,000 below what another dealer could sell it for (taking into account some profit for the Mercedes dealer, the auction house, and the dealer eventually sell the car). But based upon the trade in prices that I have been getting, I think that even the Skoda dealers are simply quoting the lowest value from Redbook (or whatever) without putting any thought into it.

A typical example was an exchange with Rockdale Skoda (Stewart Automotive). I described my car (2008 RS, diesel, wagon, DSG, 42,000 kms, new Michelin tyres) and e-mailed them some photos and the salesman came back with a value of $15,000. But at that price, there's no point in selling the car. Plus, they have a 2007 RS (petrol, hatch, manual, 57,000 kms) on their website for $26,888. Even with a generous $10,000 mark-up on my car, you would expect that they would list it for more than $25,000.

Can anyone shed some light on why this seems to be? Is it just the path of least resistance (laziness)? That is, just send my Skoda to the auctions.

Based upon the various quotes, $15-17,000 seems to be the going wholesale price. Of course, I am not expecting $25,000 for it but I would jump if a Skoda dealer (intending on reselling it themselves) said $20,000.