"You see, they put that TruCoat on in the factory. There's nothing I can do...
Person sounds like a good oid. Robot to accept anything.
Incredibly naive and uneducated as well.
Buy it from the manufacturer? Nissan? Send it back to the factory when it needs something? How does that work?
What a pant load, but bloggers gotta blog.
In fact the person makes any number of mistakes and either flat out lies or is, to put it politely, completely misinformed about any number of things.
It’s been a long time since I was in Europe but I had noticed in France they had showrooms and no car lots. I could not figure that out at the time.
Her article explains a great deal to me.
My last 3 cars have been bought online with the requirements I wanted. I still had to go to the dealer to pick it up.
It would be a nice option if the Manufactures left Americans buy direct but that is an unheard of in this Country.
She also doesn't mention that vehicles in the U.K. cost about twice as much as a comparable vehicle in the U.S. Sure, you can get a tiny econonobox for fairly cheap, but it's something most Americans wouldn't be willing to drive. To buy and operate a car that most Americans would find acceptable (decent power, air conditioning, automatic transmission) you'd pay a lot more in the U.K.
I wanted to buy a certain color. The dealership didn’t have it, so they called other dealerships. They found one 25 miles away. They sent a person to go pick it up, and I got the color I wanted
A big aspect of *most* automobile sales (both at dealerships and ‘privately’) is freely, albeit deceptively, giving up your new or used automobile ownership to the state. And, paying for the privilege of doing so. What you are doing (and I’ve done in all my automobile purchases too) is converting a perfectly good automobile into a motor vehicle.
You are at the dealership salesperson’s desk, you fork over the money, he takes it, and now you own an automobile. Then, he says, “and for an additional $300, I can get you plates so that you can drive it off our lot”. You then fork over another $300, and what he does is send the MCO/MSO paperwork, the allodial title of the automobile, to your state RMV, they create and give you back a ‘Certificate of Title’ which is a mere Color of Title and plates, and they retain the allodial MCO/MSO title.
A ‘Certificate of Title’ is NOT pure ownership. It entitles you to transfer ‘color of title’ to a new owner, pay auto excise taxes on it every year, and drive your motor vehicle.
Only with an Allodial Title, can you be the COMPLETE Sovereign owner of an automobile, pay no taxes on it, no excise taxes, and freely *TRAVEL* with it.
You pick the car you want, with the accessories you want, and negotiate a price.
Lots of competition, most of the time. The last year has been weird because of chip shortages.
No prices fixed by the government.
You get to choose the dealer you wish to deal with.
Tesla has no dealers, and sells direct from the manufacturer.
The dealership model in the US is a financing vehicle for the auto manufacturers. The dealership will have a continuous loan of several million dollars and the manufacturer sends the dealer the cars the manufacturer makes, without regard with what that dealer can sell. So, a dealer in Miami who could sell Corvettes all day long may get one along with a defecation-load of unsalable lesser cars. The dealer then has to trade with other dealers to get the corvettes that went to a ten-car dealership in East Podunk and give them a heck of a deal on the eBolts and iJinks that will most likely sell in East Podunk. There are scads of laws intended to protect the system as it exists and companies that want to use a different model, like Tesla can’t actually sell you a car in lots of places.
The writer obviously doesn’t know how to negotate.
Go in on the last sales day of the month. If they’ve met their quota for the month, and aren’t near another incentive point, it’s time to get busy. If they have, wait a month or shop around.
Go in about 45 minutes before closing. It’s important that you don’d start negotiating until 15 minutes before closing. Make them think they have YOU on the hook. (Helps to have a spouse that really likes the car. But wants an upoulstry color or paint that they don’t have on the lot. Or a different option package. So you go in circles. Negotiate 45 minutes to an hour. You are now well after closing. It will be down to you, the sales guy, and the finance guy (who is actually the closer for them).
Finally, just slump in the chair with a resigned look and say, that’s just $1000 more than I had budgeted. And I want to pay cash. When your hand hits the door handle, you’ve just saved that last $1000. Or they’ll get really creative with an offer.
The car is an appliance, it’s nothing more than a refrigerator or a stove with wheels on it and brakes. It will get you from point A to point B, safely.
That’s how you have to look at a vehicle, when your in the market.
I bought a car at CarMax, smooth transaction best deal I think I’ve ever made on a two-year used, fleet vehicle. All mileages are 25k or thereabouts.
No she doesn’t.
She seems to talk about buying right from the mfr SIGHT-UNSEEN in England.
That to us is “ordering”.
She totally neglects ordering from a dealer. You don’t HAVE to buy off the lot. I do. I do not want to buy a huge thing like a car sight-unseen with no test drive for said car. But it is not a necessity.
How, honestly, is this really different from buying much smaller items? For ages stores have bought “wholesale” from the mfr, then the STORE customers buy “retail”.
Buying a car in the USA is still a lot easier than getting dental care in the UK.
When I sold new cars, every now and then a customer would say, "What's your best price?" And I would say that my best price is the one on the window. Then I would ask, "What's your best price?"
My experience was that while most people were aggravated by the process, they felt it was necessary to get a good deal. There are some dealerships that have gone to a non-negotiable sale price, but I'm not sure if that is the preferred way these days. And when there's a trade-in, it's a whole different story. No two used cars are the same, and the values can vary.
“...this is how I think y’all buy cars.”
There’s a phrase: “Sod off.” whatever that means.
I used to work for a copier(remember those) company we’ll call Brand X. There were no published list prices for those X copiers. A sales rep could charge as little as 85% of those unpublished prices which only his management was supposed to know (but we figured them out) with special permission and a lot of pleading.
On the plus side, if he could get away with it, he could charge 250% of the mythical price and split the excess three ways with himself, his boss and Rochester, I mean the home office.
Somehow that business model failed when the Japanese started selling really nice copiers for a whole lot less.