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What I do or don't do is none of your business, sounds like you are trying to make this personal.
Apple owns their stores. The car manufacturers do not. A manufacturer would have to get in the business of real estate, construction, hiring more people if they were to follow the model of the Apple store. There are a few manufacturer owned stores, you can look up how they interact with privately owned franchises in the same market. The relationship could be described as...sticky at best.
However, for the most part, dealers are privately owned. They BUY the cars from the factory and RESELL them to the consumer. Therefore they get to sell the car below (or above) MSRP if they so choose and the market demands it.
Do you understand? It is too late to put this genie back in the bottle. Unless the car makers buy out every dealer and they all become factory outlets, they can not fix prices. And like Nole said earlier, do you think prices would go up or down if the car makers suddenly had more expenses?
And yes, it is important to note that the people wanting the "Best Buy" experience when buying a car should realize that Best Buy is on the brink of going out of business.
One of the most cringe worthy statements I ever heard was a salesman talking to someone who wanted a 4WD Highlander. We did not have a 4WD model in stock, but had a few FWD. This salesman tried to tell a customer FWD was just about as good as 4WD in snow.
This reminds me of the time I was in the market for a First Generation Kia Sorento (we ended up buying the larger Borrego). We wanted the First Generation (Second Generation models had just come out) specifically because Kia had stuck with a traditional selectable high and low range 4WD and a body on ladder frame design. The Second Gen models were AWD/unibody. Two different salesmen in two different dealerships had not a clue about the differences between selectable 4WD or a body on frame design vs. a unibody (especially with regard to towing-which was an important consideration for us) and simply tried any which way they could to steer us toward the newer model. Needless to say their lack of knowledge only reaffirmed my believe that they (and dealerships) serve no purpose and add no value to the car buying process.
Apple owns their stores. The car manufacturers do not. A manufacturer would have to get in the business of real estate, construction, hiring more people if they were to follow the model of the Apple store. There are a few manufacturer owned stores, you can look up how they interact with privately owned franchises in the same market. The relationship could be described as...sticky at best.
Doesn't Tesla own all their own dealerships & run things sort of like an Apple store? I think they are the only manufacturer like this.
What I do or don't do is none of your business, sounds like you are trying to make this personal.
Apple owns their stores. The car manufacturers do not. A manufacturer would have to get in the business of real estate, construction, hiring more people if they were to follow the model of the Apple store. There are a few manufacturer owned stores, you can look up how they interact with privately owned franchises in the same market. The relationship could be described as...sticky at best.
However, for the most part, dealers are privately owned. They BUY the cars from the factory and RESELL them to the consumer. Therefore they get to sell the car below (or above) MSRP if they so choose and the market demands it.
Do you understand? It is too late to put this genie back in the bottle. Unless the car makers buy out every dealer and they all become factory outlets, they can not fix prices. And like Nole said earlier, do you think prices would go up or down if the car makers suddenly had more expenses?
And yes, it is important to note that the people wanting the "Best Buy" experience when buying a car should realize that Best Buy is on the brink of going out of business.
Didn't know Apple owns Best Buy, Walmart, Staples (hint: places where you can buy Apple products)
And Best Buy is on the brink of going out of business due to online sales. Something dealers are very scared of and fighting tooth and nail against.
But I don't begrudge dealerships. They are necessary due to after sale maintenance and warranty/service.
I just wish the purchasing process just wasn't so cumbersome and a bit more streamlined.
Doesn't Tesla own all their own dealerships & run things sort of like an Apple store? I think they are the only manufacturer like this.
This has been pointed out many times in this thread. The dealership apologists simply dismiss this as an anomaly and get very angry when it's brought up. Then they cite Saturn's failure at no haggle pricing. I would argue that it failed because they were still using the dealership model and because everyone else was using the "lots of haggle pricing" model.
Didn't know Apple owns Best Buy, Walmart, Staples (hint: places where you can buy Apple products)
And Best Buy is on the brink of going out of business due to online sales. Something dealers are very scared of and fighting tooth and nail against.
But I don't begrudge dealerships. They are necessary due to after sale maintenance and warranty/service.
I just wish the purchasing process just wasn't so cumbersome and a bit more streamlined.
Sigh. Apple controls the pricing at those stores. Walmart might get a little ballsy and price something at 699.70 instead of 699.99, but that's it. Apple owns all their Apple stores. True statement. I did not say that you could only buy their product at an Apple store. But you will pay Apple designated pricing. If you don't they yank all your inventory if they can or claim that any chump that buys its product from you has a voided warranty and no tech support. Sounds nice and friendly huh? What if Toyota did that? All you that paid less than MSRP for a Camry have a voided warranty! Ha ha, yeah right.
"Online sales" would be the same as "factory direct sales." I can buy "online" through a dealer right now and pay less than MSRP if they accept my offer. Why is that bad?
I just wish the purchasing process just wasn't so cumbersome and a bit more streamlined.
Customers make this process to be cumbersome
The customers who come in and pay MSRP get in and out in about an hour and 15 minutes when they work with me. The 4 and 5 hour long deals are because customers wanna play games or they can't decide between the 5 cars they're looking at
Can we please stop acting as if MSRP is a number that's grounded in reality? It's an artificially inflated starting point and nothing more. I'm betting that if you actually were able to analyze the number of cars nationwide that sold for MSRP it would be exceedingly low, which would prove that it's higher than the market would normally bear.
Can we please stop acting as if MSRP is a number that's grounded in reality? It's an artificially inflated starting point and nothing more. I'm betting that if you actually were able to analyze the number of cars nationwide that sold for MSRP it would be exceedingly low, which would prove that it's higher than the market would normally bear.
What about when it is higher? Do you want to ignore all those times when people pay more than MSRP because it doesn't fit your narrative?
The customers who come in and pay MSRP get in and out in about an hour and 15 minutes when they work with me. The 4 and 5 hour long deals are because customers wanna play games or they can't decide between the 5 cars they're looking at
What type of vehicles are these buyers paying sticker for? Rare, high performance, or specialty models I hope lol.
I just started at the Toyota dealership I mentioned in the late 90's. I was there for the last two years of the Supra. Our sales manager would not allow any customer to walk out the door without paying sticker for one of those, but they were pretty rare so customers really didn't get too bent out of shape over it.
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