In the last few weeks Ive had probably a dozen situations where I reach out to a dealer through their website to request pricing, have them respond to me/call/email to greet me, gather info (name, zip code, lease terms) etc for them to give out pricing, then never hear back.
It doesnt even get to a point where I’m negotiating or making offers, but simply ASKING them to provide pricing and then having them ghost me.
I contacted Puente Hills Nissan for a quote on one of their leafs 3 days ago. The sales consultant calls me to greet me, hands me the phone to the sales manager who sounds pretty professional. He tells me “sorry sir we’re under new ownership and doing construction, the system is down for a few hours, promise I’ll return with pricing in about 3 hours”… 3 hours turns into the next day, I get an email saying “sorry sir our system is still down, just a few more hours”… Then nothing… I follow up. They tell me “just need a few more hours”… still nothing. Next day follow up over email. Sales manager calls me apologizes, says he’ll have pricing to me in 20 mins. 3 hours later… nothing.
I mean its just beyond unprofessional. One can argue if you make a lowball offer they dont respond. Ok I get it. With this I dont even get to that point. Its not even just this one dealer. a bunch have done this.
I’ve done it the other way too, where I put an offer together with my requested sell price, drive offs etc. When I dont get a response on those types of offers, at least I understand. But asking for a simple price quote and getting ghosted? Come on!
This is sorta the exact reason I use lease brokers.
Perhaps low on inventory, staff, or just can’t be arsed to make an internet deal.
One dealer who I’ve gotten two cars delivered one to me with 2 scratches, promised touch up paint, and 1+ month later gave me touch up paint for a different color car with the name scratched out.
Seriously. its like if you cant do the deal or dont have the time, say so.
The same exact scenario kept happening with Glendale Nissan. I went back and forth for a week and nothing. I never got a response from all the people I talked to there.
Anyway I’m going with Jeff from Beach cities auto as a broker, just as you say. Ridiculous how bad these dealers are.
I want wait until the market takes a dive and these dealers are begging for anyone to buy a single car off their lot. It’s coming…
I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon. GM has already said they won’t return to building lots of inventory - why would they? - they can make much more profit on limited inventory but I digress…
The process is frustrating. I went through the same thing with Hyundai dealers in SoCal recently too. Ultimately the only thing that worked was putting together the kind of realistic deal I wanted and asking dealers to better it, or at least try to match it. A couple of days of texting finally resulted in the exact deal I wanted. It’s frustrating but persistence is the only way to get the deal - last week of the month probably helped too.
yeah i was cross shopping the Kona EV and ran into that problem with Hyundai too. I actually think Hyundai dealers are even worse to deal with.
I think the crash will happen sooner or later, when inflation goes out of control and interest rates go up. Everything is propped up for now. But hey who knows. Maybe I’m wrong. It wont be the first or last time dealers have to beg people to buy cars.
I got zero when I was looking. Reached out to 4 local dealerships. Everyone was like ‘when would you like to come in to discuss a deal?’. I thought I was speaking another language.
Yeah we were cross shopping the Kia Niro EV and a Sonata Hybrid (weird cross shop I know) but I have to say the Kia dealers were so completely awful to deal with that it totally put me off the entire brand.
Hyundai was frustrating too as many just insisted on only providing numbers in person but at least of couple of them were honest and just flat out said no to what I was asking for - at least I knew to just move on. I think I contacted every dealer from Ventura to San Diego. It can be exhausting - especially with all the phonecalls, I was getting 7 or 8 a day - that’s why brokers are often the best choice.
I had a bimmer dealer do that to me the other day, I found the car I wanted in another dealer and I’m waiting to take delivery of it. Part of me wants to drive over to the dealer and show them my new car. haha. But, I won’t I will just leave them the proper review.
I will say, I’ve had several interactions over the years with different Puente Hills dealerships, both online and in person, and have not even been impressed.
I’ve been behaving myself with my responses lately and customers have generally been fairly cordial. One customer did tell me the market is “so unfair right now” and I realized customers never think about how supply-and-demand always works against the dealership, not the customers.
From a dealer perspective… my two cents:
What I have seen is many people submitting leads to many different stores for many different prices, which is great! That is the smart thing to do for a consumer, but while someone is submitting for an internet lead, there is very often someone here in the showroom looking at the same car, or they have already looked and already priced it. So a salesman sees that someone is here driving, negotiating, etc, they are less inclined to reply, because at least here, that is nearly a sold deal, since Mercedes inventory is so low. Now, we do our best to respond, since we actually get paid on customer satisfaction. But really, we have never had so many people come in off the street and just purchase from us without ever calling, emailing or whatever before coming in. And maybe it is different for a Nissan store (much higher volume, less CSI training), but that’s what is happening with my store. We didn’t think we’d be here either!
Last month, I had discounts on my lease spreadsheet of 5-12% off new cars, 20% or so off of demos, but now I am barely past invoice on a few cars. A lot of my cars are MSRP with 100 basis points on top of base MF. G550’s are 25k over sticker, G63’s 55k over sticker. All because people will pay for what they want most. We still get people who are shopping around, and then they come back to us a week later and they are upset when the car they were on sold. The “short supply” argument is not a sales tactic anymore.
Anyway - if you arent using a broker, you can most certainly ask a salesman where they are pricing “x” car. We are invoice and beyond on GLB’s and GLC’s, just because we have a good amount of them, and I will tell clients that over the phone. A good salesman should be able to tell you that, I would think. If they cant figure it out, on to the next. I myself am trying to find another car (non-Mercedes) and I see and feel your guys’ pain. Who wouldve thought the top tier Tacoma and 4Runner trim would be 10k-15k over MSRP on certain lots. Ugh.
I get what youre saying cBergman. but these are leftover 2020s or 2021s im asking for quotes on that have been sitting for quite a while. I really highly doubt right at that moment where I ask for a lease quote, they are all the sudden showing that exact stock number off.
Again, I’m even okay if they tell me 'listen we’re not going to do the back and forth game over email, come in"… what im not ok with is “ok sure, let me go talk to my sales manager and i’ll let you know shortly” (ghost)
