Agree 100%. Rarely see these guys last more than a year or two. I always dress down because I don’t want them to think I’m made of money. In the end it is all about management - do they want to cut the price to sell me a car today or wait on a prayer that a whale will swim up and pay MSRP plus the finance ripoffs.
As for the broom, just smile when this happens and tell the salesperson that he needs to watch the Beverly Hills shopping scene from Pretty Woman as you are walking out the door.
To anyone who knows…
When dealers sit on cars, do you know who accounts for the inventory on the books, is it the dealer or the manufacturer?
In other words, let’s say a car sitting at a dealer has a cost to the dealer of $50k, is the dealer potentially paying interest and or tying up capital on the $50k in the time when it’s not sold ?
Read up on the term, “floor plan.” Most** dealers do not own the cars outright. They finance them.
It doesn’t matter. People ask this question all the time and even before covid-related production/inventory shortages there has never been a way to predict when a GM or owner wakes up thinking
A. I’m getting rid of this POS paperweight
Vs.
B. I’m waiting for a sucker who’ll take 5% off MSRP on an MY18 in September 2020.
We live in the Information Age and salespeople seem to be reliant on us becoming experts on our own. Many brands don’t even call them salespeople anymore because they realize that they do very little selling.
This doesn’t matter and shouldn’t factor into your negotiation. I can see this line of thinking is going to lead to believing there’s a systematic way of determining the best target cars to get the best deals on.
There’s no easy button on negotiation. You just have to reach out to the right dealers at the right times to get the right deals. I’ve heard of dealers who will sit on inventory for years and not budge on price and other dealers will be desperate to give up their inventory after 180 days with major discounts.
I do not have a list of those dealers.
There’s really no way of getting around the dealer issue, we all have to work with it.
Indeed. I’m stunned it’s still as bad as ever, here in Covid 2020. Last few buys have been through broker, and were only decent deals, but pulling teeth with sales on my quest for a Bolt, has revealed nothing has changed, in decades.
Huh? I don’t understand what you mean by this.
This weekend, I had a deal in writing for a Trail Boss MSRPing at 61.5K with $1,712.44 DAS and $585.95 36/12 after about a month of work. The next best deal I had in hand was in the mid $600s.
I drove an hour to the dealership (they knew I was coming, they called me en route for my ETA), they had me take it out for a test drive on my own and when we sat down, they told me there was a mistake and the actual payment was going to be in the mid $700s, for a truck that MSRP’d at $56K since the $61.5K one hadn’t arrived yet. I didn’t even look at changes in DAS before I got up from the table and left, after a cordial exchange of thoughts and words.
How do they expect buyers to even begin to respect them?
For the longest time there have been attempts to disrupt the disgraceful business model of dealerships, but as long as manufacturers are required to sell via dealers, any of these “disruptive” changes in business model (Rodo, etc.) depend on the same dealers; you’re just adding another party that needs to get paid and can’t always come through because they have zero control of inventory. A couple of weeks ago I had an order with Rodo for a Trail Boss with an MSRP of $57.6K for $596 a month, $596 drive off. They came back to me a week later, after multiple texts and calls, saying that the truck was sold.
They know buyers don’t respect them so they will continue to use tactics. Keep in mind, buyers use tactics as well and they deal with that more than you deal with their tactics.
Sometimes you have to walk a mile in their shoes to understand their perspective. For them, it’s in their best interest to make a sale maximizing their profit as much as possible. It is what it is. Just need to find a dealer to play ball. if you can’t and that doesn’t exist then you need to compromise on the car. If unwilling to compromise then you need to pay the price. Those are really the only options.
I don’t know man; most buyers don’t really know anything about car sales or their tactics which is why you see people posting horrible deals on SL. My wife despises dealerships and hates going to them because she feels like she is never getting a fair deal. Someone, somewhere, is always ripping her off. She got an incredible deal on her CX9 and to this day she believes she got screwed over somewhere. Obviously, most people in this forum are light years ahead of the average car buyer in terms of knowledge. I know I’ve learned everything I know from this forum and keep doing so almost every day.
I would rather be spending time doing something else, honestly, but I don’t want to end up overpaying thousands of dollars on an essential good like a vehicle if I don’t have to. If dealers did business differently, there wouldn’t be a need for something like Leasehackr.
Not sure what’s unclear to you. Information Age = Tech Age = Internet = Knowledge. Salespeople today rely on you getting your own information on the product and them just facilitating a transaction.
Most salespeople I’ve encountered who rely on their customer to know their stuff do not work at the same store for a very long time. Dealerships are notorious for high rate of turn over.
Yes and I see the “old school” salesmen who have been at the same desk for decades for a reason. They are a commodity in the industry.
I despise the dishonesty from some dealers/sales people. There is no need for me to walk a mile in their shoes. I get it that dealerships are in the business of making money, but a car is a commodity. If dealer A does a bait and switch on me, I will just work with another dealer who is upfront and does not lie.
You could have avoided all this by telling them to send you the contract via email. I would never drive more then 20 mins for a deal that’s not written up for me.
Blast them all over social media for this also. Best you can do. Hit all the review websites. People read reviews and it 100% negatively effects their business. If enough people leave bad reviews they will change their deceptive practices or lose a ton or business.
Unfortunately for this mindset, there have been plenty of customers that have lied and went back on their word. The member on here who posted about their check fraud situation to force a dealer to rework a BMW 5 series loaner deal to the member’s advantage is one such incident.
People just suck in general. The dealers run a business. If you don’t get the experience you want from one dealer, give you money to another who will work with you.
We can agree on this.
Surely you’re not equating the number of dishonest buyers to the number of dishonest dealers?
If we are going purely on volume, I’m sure there are many more dishonest buyers than dishonest dealers.