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our store has an internet department. You could spend 8 months talking to the internet rep and come in the store and spend 2 hours with me - I get all the commission, the internet rep gets like 20 bucks
So, do the Internet guys ever complete the sale or does it always get passed to a salesman?
The place we bought my Wife's Jeep a couple years ago we went through their internet guy, but then he was the one who did the rest of the deal too.
So it sounds like some places just have a few people,who are essentially on salary just answering emails and keeping the site up?
I went to a Chevy dealer to look at a truck on their lot. I was scouting out my next truck and was a real customer looking to deal, they sent three guys to look at my trade, I had already found the truck I wanted on their lot. The salesman came in and I asked, "So, what number are you putting on my truck ?"....his response, "What is your payoff ?"....I told him "I know my payoff, but want to know the number they put on my truck"....he refused to tell me....got me peed off....he even had the owner introduce himself and said " Tell us what your payoff is, and we'll tell you what your trade is worth....that's the way we work around here"....so I told him how much, got up from my chair and walked to my truck leaving my Wife stunned sitting at the desk.....she told him ?" You had to push....I gotta go, he's leaving". I went down the street 10 miles to the next Chevy dealer and bought a truck that same trip. They called later, and I told them, "you lose, I already bought a new truck". I don't care for the pressure sales.
They take your DL for insurance reasons. If you go out and wreck the vehicle during a test drive or worse, you don't bring it back.
You need a SSN to run a credit check, so unless you SSN is printed on your DL the dealer wouldn't be able to run a credit check.
I worked at a Porsche dealer who had an appointment for a customer to test drive the owners Porsche (not cheap !).....the guy walks in, all diddy'd up with expensive suit, Jewelry, the whole nine yards....salesman was so excited, got the customer in the car, customer fires it up, and hears the aftermarket exhaust....salesman explains it's not in the pricing, but will be right back to check how much more.....as soon as he had both feet out the door, the guy took off......never got a copy of his license, never found the car.
I would like to see a company use publicly available MV data to canvas every car buyer and publish their bill of sale online (minus personally identifiable info of course). This way we, as car buyers, can establish a true market value for all the components of a car deal.
Edmunds claims to do this with their TMV, but they are intertwined with generating sales leads for car dealerships and I don't trust them any more than I do the car dealers and salesmen who are a proven and verifiable lot of cheaters.
The biggest reason car salesmen continue to rip us off is because we let them. They control the data, and that is why we have to work so hard to buy a vehicle without getting ripped off.
If all, or most, bills of sale with complete details were available in a database, we could establish the market value of the car, the market value of the upsells and other dealer-added nonsense, and the market value of the financing package.
We need a better way to figure out how the car salesmen are swindling us. We have the data as car buyers. We just need a way to share it and manipulate it. In other words, we need to establish a centralized source of sales data.
This could be sold on a subscription basis to the public. I'm sure most car buyers would eat this up.
Notice how the car salesmen think they did a good job if they swindle someone but he is "happy"? Can it get any more sociopathic? Perhaps a new dealership model could be introduced where all sales personnel are salaried rather than commissioned. As it stands, the biggest hustlers are the ones that swindle people the best, and are vastly overpaid with the swindled profits.
In other words, the best car salesmen, who are the most sociopathic, inflate the cost of cars by the "swindling increment". The best car salesmen sell most of the cars, and do it by using con man charms to pull money out of unsuspecting consumers who don't realize how evil these guys can be, will be, are paid to be, and are admired to be (within their dysfunctional and damp "boiler room" world).
Therefore, the entire car market is skewed because of the "swindling increment", which I estimate to be about $4,000 per car on average for cars selling below $50,000, and MUCH MORE for premium vehicles.
Last edited by Marc Paolella; 09-30-2015 at 08:37 AM..
I went to a Chevy dealer to look at a truck on their lot. I was scouting out my next truck and was a real customer looking to deal, they sent three guys to look at my trade, I had already found the truck I wanted on their lot. The salesman came in and I asked, "So, what number are you putting on my truck ?"....his response, "What is your payoff ?"....I told him "I know my payoff, but want to know the number they put on my truck"....he refused to tell me....got me peed off....he even had the owner introduce himself and said " Tell us what your payoff is, and we'll tell you what your trade is worth....that's the way we work around here"....so I told him how much, got up from my chair and walked to my truck leaving my Wife stunned sitting at the desk.....she told him ?" You had to push....I gotta go, he's leaving". I went down the street 10 miles to the next Chevy dealer and bought a truck that same trip. They called later, and I told them, "you lose, I already bought a new truck". I don't care for the pressure sales.
I've read through some of these posts and I'm amazed at the entitlement that some people have. They expect the dealership to just hand over a vehicle at no profit. The holdback that everyone feels entitled to receive is not yours to have. The holdback is a small percentage of profit on the back end that is between the manufacturer and the dealer and paid out only after the vehicle has been sold and warranty registered. No dealer is ever required to show the holdback or even offer it. In the past few years it has become almost expected that the dealer show and offer their holdback.
Every manufacturer is different with their holdback, but the number I see being thrown around on here is 3%, so let's use that. If you walk into a dealership and expect the dealer to sell you a vehicle at invoice price, plus incentives and rebates, that leaves him with a 3% profit that will not be paid to the dealer immediately. A 3% margin on a $50k vehicle is $1500. For a lot of customers this still isn't good enough and they want part of that, which unfortunately I see some dealers willing to offer half of their holdback. That leaves 1.5% ($750) for the dealer to pay the sales guy, finance guy to complete the paperwork, sales manager, title dept, detail guy, advertising, electric bill, water bill, etc. See where I'm going with this?
The new car department of a dealership makes a lot less money than what everyone thinks. The service department is the bread and butter of a dealership. I know several dealers (large dealers) who could actually take a loss on the sales side and still be very profitable at the end of the month because of their service department.
What's even more baffling is that quite often the local used car lot selling a 180k mile, $5k junk car is making more on that sale than the big franchise dealer selling a shiny new $50k car that is under warranty with no miles.
Next time you try selling your home using a realtor, which will most likely be a much greater amount than your average vehicle, ask the realtors to work for you for only a 1.5% commission. Walk into an Apple store and ask to see invoice on a new MacBook and tell them you're only willing to pay invoice. The automotive industry is the only industry that I can think of where everyone loves the product they're buying, hates the establishment offering the product and expects to pay the same amount the dealer is paying.
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