Will we be able to lease hack in the future?

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everything-must-go-the-american-car-dealership-is-for-sale-11631332812?st=sgbq7vnpdcl0rky&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

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Probably not. Go hack Amazon prices )

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This is reminiscent of the what the surging wave of mp3’s were to the music industry. In a ‘build back better’ motif, where centralized power structures crumble, it’s those still holding the reigns that are least prone to recognize the enormity of decentralization, plan or capitalize on it.

“It was my time to ride off into the sunset,” said John Medved, 73, a Denver-area dealer who last year sold his six-store chain to a larger dealership group in Canada. Mr. Medved, a recognizable face and voice on local airwaves, said he wasn’t sure how to connect with consumers who wanted to shop online.

“Nobody’s seen anything. Nobody is touching anything. I can’t do that.”

Translation - i can’t train my sales people to use dirty sales trick or finance guys to dupe people into buying overpriced F&I products.

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Or ‘the gig is up…folks now know they can get free nitrogen at Costco’.

“La jeux sont fait. Translation…the game is up!”

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Opinion and conjecture alert* :sweat_smile: Yes, once the SC issue is sorted, hackable deals will come back in full force. However, the vehicles will probably be 5%-10% more expensive over all, as a result of todays current inflationary pressures.

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Why do you guys think online will be better? How is 250 dollar order fee from another thread better than mandatory vin etching?

If you look at 3p sellers for a commodity item and then lookup that sellers direct site there is a good chance that the price will be cheaper as they don’t have to give Amazon 15%. That’s just one way. But no one does that because they’ve been brainwashed into PRIME means good and addiction to garbage useless products.

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No one is saying “online only” will be better.

We all know that people don’t have problem with paying fair & properly disclosed prices.

The issue with traditional dealers is the practices that take advantage of the unknowledgeable & naive buyers.

Ok, so if I properly disclose Vin etching, nitro fill, and then make it mandatory because I’m now the only source of the product and dafaq are you going to do, that will be good for consumer?

Expectations. Generally, an online price is the price paid, and typically available to anyone, so all pay that price. When TMobile added a ‘service fee’ to all of their SIM cards, the only reason this new surcharge was remotely palatable was because their competition does it, and everyone else is paying it too. With a dealer, it’s a never-ending shell game of addenda, that only the savvy can recognize, and the skilled can either leverage or escape.

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Coupons, affiliate pricing, targeted sales, dynamic site pricing. What you think of as online price doesn’t really exist. So basically welcome to being the uneducated consumer that this site makes fun of in car leasing.

Yet there will always be hackers working a better deal than any given online price. The tools are available, or will be, as new tools are built.

You’re getting it wrong.

2 buyers at the same dealer can pay way different prices for the same car cuz of their knowledge, situation or any other number of reasons.

The issue is with the way they conduct their business not the business model.

There still be be negotiating power for the ones who want to do it but the Unsuspecting buyers won’t feel like they were made a fool for buying 500% marked up F&I product cuz they were locked in the office for 3 hours & they wouldn’t let them leave until the buyer signed.

Without fail, this exact same article is written at least once every year—sometimes more. And that has been true since I’ve known how to read.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/everything-must-go-the-american-car-dealership-is-for-sale-11631332812?st=sgbq7vnpdcl0rky&reflink=share_mobilewebshare

Things change and don’t stand still. Wow, what a revelation.

And what a wild coincidence that all parties quoted therein have a gigantic stake in the premise coming true. If I was the editor I’d have sent this back.

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Until the franchise system changes it’s unlikely we will have wholesale change. It’s not like Amazon replacing Barnes and Noble. Amazon didn’t need entrenched laws, supported by powerful financial interests, changed in every single state.

My uninformed prediction is, at least on a regional level, some large auto chain will decide to be the Carvana of new cars. They will let you do everything online at home and have car delivered. For this service you will pay a premium. For the painless transaction your deal will be below average, like buying from Carvana. They can capture the people who want a painless transaction while allowing people who want to shop the old fashioned way to continue to do so.

Carvana and CarMax came first because franchise system doesn’t apply to used cars but seeing their success someone will figure out a way to replicate this idea for new cars.

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The game is the game.

Agree - this one comes out several times a year like clockwork.

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I have never heard anyone whistle “the Farmer in the Dell” in a dealership though- not once.

Yet it’s going to happen. The only question is when, and I think, we will witness noticeable change within next 2-3 years.